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Yakutadazu
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Country: United States
Interests: Procrastinating. Technically this could be considered my occupation.
Expertise: If I have one, it's news to me.
Industry: Investing
Message: message me
Member Since:
8/25/2003
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| mixed feelingsoh WoW. how would i survive without you and your spazztastic love. it's like being in fandom again, only with, you know, guys.
i love WoW, mostly unambivalently.
my feelings are mixed, nevertheless.
escapism, unlike placebos, is special in that it can still work even after you know how it does. i settle for dragging everyone in after me; making new friends is nothing compared to the joy of rediscovering old ones.
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| ramblingi don't know what it says about my life but the only thing i can bear to commit in words right now is this:
the dislocation in credit markets will last until some replacement is found for the massive uptake that used to occur as securities were repackaged. the dislocation in housing markets may determine how long the dislocation in credit markets will last, although it's entirely possible (and to my mind, logical) that they will lag a recovery in the credit space. and finally, i would distrust a strong recovery in equities until there has been a strong recovery in credit. yes, spreads have come in some. no, everything is not fine. does it matter what the fed does, as long as banks continue to be stingy with loans?
the question for banks is, can they raise enough capital to outpace their losses? the balance sheet is shrinking; this can only be counteracted (in the short term) by holding out for more equity. (debt too, but uh, i don't really know how the market is for financial paper these days...) in the long-term, of course, we can predict a return to profitability...or bankruptcy.
just as the dot-com bust ended the days of brainless VC financing, the obvious argument now is for the end of easy credit. in the process of the last bust, a good deal of capital was destroyed. blown up. dollars down the drain. and for a while thereafter, even good ideas found it hard to find money to back them. so do the markets really understand the concept of a world without easy money, i wonder... to my mind, uncertainty generates premiums, and premiums make capital expensive. some people will no longer be able to afford capital--for example, a student wishing to go to college.
some believe consumer spending, the mighty engine in this massive machine, will continue unabated. but you have to wonder, with headwinds like inflation, falling home prices, and slower growth prospects (incomes never rose that fast, even in the last few years of strong bull markets), will we really be buying up the latest iPods?
the equity markets represent the "real" economy, perhaps. company earnings, we understand those. sure, so banks are still sucking wind. but everything else is ok, right?
and yet, inevitably, the worlds of finance and management collide. main street and wall street intersect. cost of capital is related to profitability; profitability to sustainability.
don't believe me? just ask the city of vallejo.
one wonders why the fed cuts weren't able to save them.
gut check time: when i ask myself, was that really it? is it really over?
the answer i get back, oddly enough, rhymes with vallejo.
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| weekenda lot can happen in 48 hours.
Friday
on my way home from the gym, i decided to call my parents. at the tail end of a long and chatty convo, i found out that someone i knew had passed away.
what? i said, and really?
...that's so sad...
the death of a young woman is always tragic, but something about this one provoked more than mechanical sympathy.
actually, i began to cry, standing there in the brightly lit kitchen, stirring my dinner with one hand.
chinese dance troupe, looking back, was something of a gauntlet to me. for those who have always felt secure in themselves, it may be difficult to imagine the tight, unhappy ball of adolescent angst i was back in high school. thinking back on it exasperates me--i was mired in self-consciousness, holding myself back more effectively than anyone could've held me.
ultimately, petty teenage humiliations and all, i think it was worthwhile--i did eventually figure out that i love to dance. unfortunately, not having a convenient time machine whereby to inform my younger self and choosing to disbelieve my mother, i didn't know that at the time, and the vast majority of the hours i spent in tights and a leotard were miserable ones. i was starting at thirteen to dance with girls who'd started at the age of seven, i was physically and socially awkward, and if those odds weren't bad enough, the teacher disapproved of my parents' inability to donate sufficient hours or dollars to her art society.
i can't really blame her. she didn't charge the performance troupe for classes, after all, so donations were key. and i did put on weight after she'd told me expressly to lose it, so it's not too surprising that the costumes wouldn't fit. i suffered under her dignified displeasure, but anyone under the age of 18 could tell you that being disliked by your teacher is nothing compared to the scorn of your peers. -_-
almost ten years later, i can see why i found it so hard to make friends with the rest of the class. there is a little bit of bully in all of us, and it's difficult to respect someone who so clearly doesn't respect herself. with the advantage of greater maturity *ahem* and perspective, i don't blame those girls for not being nicer to me.
...at least, not MUCH. <_<
krystal, though...was different. she was undeniably the star of the troupe, pretty, slender, graceful, with superior technique and great artistry. as if this weren't enough to incite envy, she was also good at the piano, intelligent and diligent (she later went to harvard for her undergrad studies) and genuinely kind. when i first started dance and couldn't keep up with the choreography (it takes some time and training to develop that kind of physical memory), she took time out of her schedule to go through the moves with me, leading me through the steps while my mom sat by and videotaped.
naturally, all the other girls were rotten with jealousy and didn't so much pick on her as simply leave her out. she once confessed to her mother that out of the entire class i was the nicest to her (i have never seen the point of disguising envy as dislike, would wind up hating half the bloody world).
i could have said the same of her.
so there we were, the star of the class and the laggard, bound by our isolation and a shy amicability. and after all, we saw each other every weekend for a number of years--she even went to the prom at my high school freshman year, having been asked by the older brother of another girl in the dance troupe.
i remember that she looked very beautiful.
throughout our association i never once saw her behave in anything but a graceful, friendly fashion, never saw her attempt anything she did not succeed at. yet we worried about her vaguely, my mother and i. sometimes it was almost as if she were unhappy, or rather, there was a slight air of tragedy that hung about her.
this is not my attempt to play the prophet; we actually had a discussion once about it.
it's because she's always trying too hard, i said. she tries to be good for everyone.
maybe, my mother said thoughtfully.
and yet if you'd asked me before friday night where i thought she was, i would've told you, happily and successfully employed, perhaps engaged. it would be so easy to fall in love with someone like krystal, easier, perhaps, than it would've been to be her friend.
actually, she was wasting away of a deadly and rare form of cancer that escaped detection until it was too late.
according to report, there was hardly anything left of the beautiful girl i'd envied so fiercely when she died.
it was a while before i could stop repeating myself over the phone, but after all, it had been a number of years since i'd seen her, and we'd never been that close. i got over it, and got online, and after telling my brother the sad news, played WoW for the rest of the evening.
it's merely sometimes that when i think back of all the people i've envied in the past, the popular, the talented, the smart and good-looking--i feel like i've been repeated whacked by the two-by-four of irony. zach, candy, diana, now krystal--
it's just so sad, i kept repeating to my mom on the phone.
and,
you never know, i said, to my brother.
Saturday
LTB came up this weekend, and around noon i received a summons to rengstorff park in mountain view. it was classic bay area weather, the sunshine bright but not dazzling, a light breeze just sufficient to dry the sweat off your skin. i parked and called AJ.
just look for the big blue rope they strung up, she said, you'll find us.
indeed, i had no trouble picking them out, slacklining while AJ sat on a blanket beneath one of the supporting trees. arthur and jing were there, already resting their feet in the cool grass, and it wasn't long before i joined them in abandoning my socks and shoes.
i have never been very good at resisting pleasure or maintaining caution. i am a barefoot hedonist by nature.
the frisbee came out and i decided i could manage a few tosses, gimpy ankle be damned. after marcus showed up, a few tosses somehow became more than an hour of running over the grass, trying not to leap too high or stop too hard on the wrong foot, finally abandoning all caution in a race against schreiber to scoop the frisbee off the grass. i clutched it to my chest, laughing in triumph, squinting against the sun and discovering that i had managed for the first time in years to give myself a genuine grass stain.
i'm pretty shite as a frisbee thrower; i can have range or accuracy but rarely both. james spoiled me anyhow, with his ridiculous reach and willingness to run like a deer to snatch the most impossible passes. if anything i'm even worse on the catching end, and with my gimp ankle i was more reluctant to move than usual. but when one throw from marcus went far, far, wide, i was somehow running before i knew it.
it shot out to my left, then began to torque, slicing slowly even wider. i ran with half an eye on the frisbee and lept with half a mind on my foot, feeling something like total surprise when the disc smacked into my hands.
i flung them up in triumph, then had to catch my breath. marcus signalled his approval and went over to check up on AJ.
the weather was perfect and the catch was perfect and the people i cared about were lounging happily on the grass, in love, or at any rate, out of the cubicle. marcus and ben had made up, and my ankle didn't hurt. there might have been bombs in the middle east and genocide in africa and a recession in america, but in that moment, my own small world was full of peace and light.
in that moment, i felt sorry for everyone who wasn't me.
French 101:
Vivre
Je vis
Tu vis
Elle ne vit pas mais
Nous vivons
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| four yearsdavid is set to graduate from UCLA this year; he has a job offer already with Accenture in San Francisco. in some ways he's still the bluff, boisterous boy you knew, getting into the occasional scrape and with hardly any notion of frugality, but in other ways he's really matured. i like the person he's become; he's so far removed now from the little boy who used to sulk because he couldn't win King Java.
i hope his girlfriend makes him happy. you must've known her, they dated before, when he was in high school. and while a part of me balks at the notion, isn't it somewhat nice to have a second shot at things, even if only to confirm that they aren't meant to be?
dustin is set to graduate from high school; we're not sure yet what school he'll be going to. i worry for that boy, just like everyone else does. it's sad that you've become, to him, an excuse to be angry, to engage in self-destructive behavior. not that i have much room to throw stones in that department, as i'm sure you're well aware.
your mom is going to visit you today. i have tutoring after work; i won't be able to make it. marcus and i can make the trip on the weekend. i don't dream of you, coz, and i rarely say your name even when you cross my mind. you may have been my closest cousin, but i would never delude myself into thinking we were close.
yet--
your picture is still on the wall of what is now my bedroom, the glamour shot that you had made into a wall hanging, filling the space across from your basketball pics and that one of you doing the long jump, mouth drawn into a point of concentration on your sunlit face.
even now, when i look at it, sometimes i can't help thinking how much better things would be if you were still here.
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| FMORBecause I was having an argument with someone the other day about capitalism and income inequality in China...
Rural areas see rapid consumer growth
| Last Updated(Beijing Time):2007-10-11 14:12 |
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Low-income earners in rural areas were more active consumers than those
on higher salaries in the 2002-06 period, the National Bureau of
Statistics (NBS) said. The bureau put rural residents into five categories by income
level and found low-income earners spent 61.4 percent more in 2006 than
in 2002. The growth rate for middle-income earners was 56.1 percent and
for high-income earners 50.8 percent during the same period, the bureau
said in a report released yesterday on its website. Supportive policies have seen consumer growth in all rural regions increase rapidly, the report said.
Farmers in Northeast China, which covers the three provinces of
Liaoning, Heilongjiang and Jilin, registered the highest consumption
growth rate of 62.7 percent, followed by the central provinces. This indicates a more balanced consumer structure nationwide, analysts said.
Since the nation put forward the idea of promoting scientific
development and building a harmonious society, policies have been
implemented that have significantly improved income and living
standards, which are behind the increased consumption, the report said.
In 2006, urban residents earned an annual income of 11,759
yuan, 52.7 percent more than in 2002, when the 16th National Congress
of the Communist Party of China was convened, the report said. The
inflation-deducted annualized growth rate was 9.2 percent during that
period. Of urban residents' income sources, that from household businesses and property has more than doubled compared with 2002.
Farmers, meanwhile, registered a 44.9 percent growth in income.
The annualized income growth was 6.2 percent excluding the impact of
inflation, the report said. Rising wages have pushed up consumption, the report said.
In 2006, urban per capita consumption expenditure increased 44.2 percent over four years ago.
In rural areas, farmers spent an average of 2,829 yuan each in 2006, an increase of 8 percent per year since 2002.
The annual growth rate of farmers' consumption in the past four
years was 1.8 percentage points higher than that of their income
growth, indicating accelerated consumption, the report said. Farmers' expenditure on transport, communications and health
increased by the highest rate during the 2002-06 period, the report
said. Expenditure on transport and communications increased by 1.2
times while health spending rose by 84.2 percent. Money spent on
clothing increased by 60 percent. The report said Chinese spent more on non-food items such as entertainment and health.
Transport and communications are a new consumer growth engine.
In 2006, the per capita expenditure by urban residents on
transport was 607 yuan, 1.27 times that in 2002. Communications
expenditure for this group increased by 50.4 percent. Culture and education expenditure by urban residents increased
by 33.4 percent from 2002 to 2006, while their health expenditure rose
by 57.4 percent. In rural areas, the aggregate proportion of expenditure on
transport and communications, culture, entertainment, education and
health combined increased by 3.6 percentage points, the report said. Reduced expenditure on food is reflected by the declining
Engel coefficient, or proportion of expenditure on food to total
consumption, an international measurement of living standards. In 2002, the coefficient in urban areas was 37.7 percent. In
2006, it dropped by 1.9 percent, indicating the improved structure of
urban consumption. The rural Engel coefficient was 43 percent in 2006, 3.2 percentage points lower than in 2002, the report said.
Another sign of changing consumer habits is that the proportion
of expenditure on services has been on the rise, the report said. From 2002 to 2006, urban residents spent 47.9 percent more on
services, while the proportion of services expenditure to overall
consumption rose by 0.7 percentage points. Farmers spent 64 percent more on services from 2002 to 2006
and the proportion of their services expenditure to overall consumption
rose by 1.8 percentage points, the report said. The improved consumer environment has given residents more access to quality products and services, the report said.
In terms of consumption structure, urban residents are consuming less grains dining out more frequently.
Rural residents, meanwhile, are consuming less grains,
vegetables, edible oils and sugar while their demand for meat, eggs,
milk and aquatic products has risen rapidly, the report said. The change in the structure of food consumption indicates living standards are improving in rural areas, the NBS said. |
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