Year 2008: Retrospection and Introspection

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

and wisdom to know the difference.

Oh what a year 2008 has been, and how it will go down in history!!! I am still amazed by the drastic turn of events, and I still catch myself wondering out aloud – can you believe this?! -- months after the Lehman bankruptcy and Obama becoming the president-elect.

Not trying to be a megalomaniac here, but I have been living in the midst of historical events this year. 2008 is such a roller coaster that I will never forget.

I remember January 3, 2008. I returned from my London trip and heard that Barack Obama won the Iowa primary at O’hare. I thought, cool, that’s awesome but it’s still a long shot. Hope of this campaign was so remote and so fragile that I dared not even spell out its goal in fear of jinxing it. If you ask me how I spent my spare time this year, I tell you, I glued to the Internet tubes, quoting Alaskan senator Ted Stevens, and cable TV, gradually becoming exclusively MSNBC, for every tidbits of campaign news with such want, as if I were my soft-shelled turtle yearning for sunshine. I am not exaggerating. Despite, or maybe because of, being a superstitious non-believer, I was an ardent supporter, a fanatic fan. I donated every month; I made phone calls; I went to the Rust Belt to knock on doors and caucus; I defended his positions and debated with anyone who disagreed, left and right; I even reinforced the opinions of those who do agree, hoping they could be better at explaining to others. Remember New Hampshire? I was convinced we had to try harder and not be complacent. Henceforth, the day before every primary, I superstitiously made additional donations and phone calls, and what a long primary it was! I would schedule my time around every primary night to make sure I was glued to the TV when the results came out. I would not even dare to verbalize this hope in my mind, and was content to leave that concept as an elusive fairy tale. If he won another round, I would say to myself, this is cool but it is still a long shot. It just seemed too good to be true. At this moment of retrospection and introspection, I am still shaking my head and saying, can you believe this? Can you believe a first-term junior senator from my neighborhood with exotic skin color like me and an even more exotic name, Barack Hussein Obama, that rhymes with Iraq Hussein Osama, is going to be the next president of the United States of America, the most powerful job in the world?! Quoting Jon Stewart, another hopeful non-believer, how is he going to break our heart?!

Life’s a Bitch. It taunts and bewitches and bewilders me. Certain things are indeed too good to be true. When my friends and family ask me about my job at Lehman, I would say, it is perfect. I like my group; I get to do what I want to do; the company takes the money issue off the table so we can focus; and the young people there are entertaining. I could not ask for more, and indeed, it was a fairy tale. Lehman’s fall was like a spectacular firework – I am simultaneously in awe and disbelief. I received in my mail some paperwork sent by a claims agency called “Epiq Bankruptcy Claims”. Get it? How appropriate. I feel partially vindicated by the economic depression we are heading into – Lehman was too big to fall. More often, though, my heart aches. I am still rubbing my eyes and saying, with utter disbelief and profound bewilderment, can you believe this? Can you believe Lehman, such a reputable bank, went bankrupt, whereas many moronic ones, not to mention the Big Three automakers, are still surviving? Can you believe that only three months before their retirement, this administration, a walking breathing monstrous Plague, has a chance to bring down such an enterprise like Lehman?! No bank, however solvent, can survive governmental public admonition; naked short sell and bank run like that. This administration, whatever its intentions are, does everything upside down. They turn gold into ashes and raise zombies from the dead. Again, quoting Jon Stewart, I know I am getting a bike for Christmas; I do not want to wait till Christmas; I want my bike now!

I can rant on forever about the Lehman bankruptcy and find many creative variations to describe and complain, but that is for another time. The two spectacular history-book-worthy events shaped my life in 2008 and hence I conclude my retrospection. Let me move onto introspection.

The Serenity Prayer that I quoted above is my favorite prayer. I think about it every year around the holiday season and I truthfully think I will be perfect if I can live up to that prayer. Courage, Serenity and Wisdom. I do not know about courage – that is for others to judge. I am a bit lacking in serenity, as I often find it hard to let things go. But I always thought myself to be somewhat wise. Year 2008 has posed an interesting challenge to my self-proclaimed wisdom.

Wisdom. Year 2008. An unlikely victory and an improbable fall. I am disoriented. What are the things that I can change and what are the things I cannot? When should I have faith and hammer on and when should I quit and do something else? Despite all my campaign trail activities, I never really believed this would work and mocked myself an idle fool. I would have given up if Obama were not such a good cheerleader. Even though Lehman declared Chapter 11 and my group got disbanded, I still wondered, privately, whether Lehman could come back from the bankruptcy proceedings and whether our group’s work could be resurrected. Now I understand why life is described as mischief by so many literary figures, across culture and time. I obviously do not have the wisdom to distinguish the difference. But the question is, should we even aim to achieve this wisdom? I remember somewhere along the Bible, someone said something like playing God is blasphemy. Paraphrasing, humans, through our divination, are offending the divine. Maybe we should just be happy-go-lucky.

Serenity and Wisdom. I have been watching too much MSNBC. The hosts are all going on vacation right now so they are just playing clips of the past. I have been pondering, quite a bit, now that this administration has come to an end, why we invaded Iraq. Books have been written on this but honestly we still do not know. Bush is an easy guess – he is not wise. His inner circle, however, is harder to interpret. Are they not wise enough or not tolerant towards a different political culture enough that they invaded? It really is a question of wisdom or serenity. Lack of wisdom is unfortunate but more excusable, but lack of serenity has a sinister tone to it. The Bush Doctrine of forced democracy does have an idealistic appeal. But when you really think about it, when Dick Cheney was asked what he thought about their low approval ratings, he answered, “So?” It

basically indicates that he values more of his own opinion than those of the popular mass, which means he does not really believe in democracy. It seems to invalidate the Bush Doctrine with which he shields criticism on the war. To me, it is his lack of serenity that was the root of his decision and this is sinister.

Back to my introspection: pondering why certain things happened could be not constructive in the short-term and an indication of my lack of serenity. What’s done cannot be undone. What is the use of wondering the true motivation of the war, or Treasury’s lack of support towards Lehman? Two trillion dollars have already been spent on the war and the bailout; Lehman is already bankrupt; more American soldiers have already died in this war than casualty on 9/11 not to mention the death toll of Iraqis. Time to move on and realize facts are facts and they are irreversible. I do think, over the long run however, it is still important to discern the true cause of certain events because otherwise we do not learn from the past and do not get wiser. However, for the time being, for the sake of a New Year, it is time for me to be serene and accept things that I cannot change. It is time to move on. Tonight, off to Florida I will go, with a feverish body and introspective soul.

Blogging is intimate and immediate, quoting Adrianna Huffington. It is not about perfect verses and intricately constructed thoughts. It is about bloggers jotting down their shifting thoughts. I will blog more in 2009.

Happy New Year.

Bane of Non-monetary Christmas Gifts

Christmas gifts tend to be double-edged swords. They bear goodwill from family and friends; they also incur unnecessary storage costs to the receiver.

I want very few things in life. As to the few items I do desire, I have purchased them myself already. It is highly unlikely all my materialistic needs are clustered around December 25.

Alas! Modern materialism and complex functionalities of gadgets have overwhelmed me so much I have shut down completely. At this point, I do not know how to put many things into proper use and it is not uncommon past cool gifts from you have been collecting dust in my humble abode. I do respect your goodwill, so I never throw away gifts. However, please beware of my lack of imagination.

Here is an idea: why throw cash to retailers when you can give it to me instead? I do desire a statistical software that costs 400 dollars to upgrade (I will try to split the cost with a friend so I am only soliciting 200). If you give me a Jackson for Christmas, I promise I will put your kindness into daily use and think of you fondly each and every day.

Mailing address is available upon request.

Value of Information

I want to share with you a brief remark I heard from a wise man I very much respect. He said it much more elegantly, and I can only paraphrase:

When we humans discovered the value of time, debtors started to pay interests; as we grew wiser, we learned to appreciate the value of alternatives, and hence came along the futures market. We value information now. Whoever that maintains and processes the most accurate information is looking at long-term growth.

This is a good motivation speech on why we should always be curious, be interested, no matter where we are in life. It is also encouraging to those who bury in books and learn painstakingly how to do research and dig insights out of books, papers, archives…

I have been wondering though: what’s the next valuable thing? Any guesses?

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

I rarely read these days, and when I do, I read popular new arrivals. New books are more relevant. They register new information in my brain. But they rarely get me to think. There is one rare exception, however.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist tells the story of a student from Pakistan coming to an elite university in the late 1990s. The protagonist got caught in the political whirlwind of September 11 and journeyed towards an identity he chose to form in the end. (I will not spoil the story. Read it yourself.)

This book does oversimplify and frustratingly falls short on helping me understand fundamentalism. However, the author was daring and made brilliant remarks all through. Any, who comes from a faraway developing land and starts off her American dream with the privileged Americans, can identify with this book.

The protagonist exhibited too many traits that are common among us lucky FOB’s. He was confident in his smarts. He possessed unswayable drive to succeed and unquestioned conviction that he would. He was shocked by the lack of social hierarchy in America. And of course there was his first love. He loved, like the rest of us who also obeyed the rule of large numbers, an American. Coming from a society where sexuality was a taboo, any display of sensuality, even just the bare skin of her arms, created such heightened sense of pleasure and longing within him…

He was living in an American Dream, but from the paradise he fell. Political climate for Pakistanis was not the best after Sept 11. Insecurity awakened our protagonist. External events forced him to ask what his cultural identity was and how much of that he retained. I enjoyed the rest of the book, although he became harder for me to identify with. He shifted his perspectives too quickly. I cannot grasp the intensity of Indian-Pakistan conflict in 2002 as I know so little about it…

No matters. This book does take me back 10 years. Much has changed! I can barely recognize the younger impressionable Kishuki at this point. Nowadays, I am battling with issues daily. Issues! What a foreign concept that would be to a younger Kishuki! I am no longer certain of my smarts. I have doubted the purpose of life many times over. And I have taken a most cynical view on romance. Once in a while, I still flinch when I see something too out of line from where I came from – take, for example, Columbia’s president’s welcoming speech to a guest this week, but this happens almost never.

What does it take for me to rediscover my own cultural identity, I wonder? Can I retain one while living in the other? If I cannot, where do I go from there? I was reading Obama’s first book very recently. He was describing some sentiments expressed by the more fundamental African-Americans. Let me paraphrase: when you go to their universities, go work in their corporations, you become assimilated. You become part of them. In return, you give away your root. And if they are nice to you, it is because they can. They have the power to be gracious. I was upset. I ended up not finishing the book. I doubt he can provide answers to that line of logic.

A quote

I read this in a corporate finance textbook today:

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

-- Oscar Wilde

It is quite an appropriate quote when it comes to many players, me included, in the capital markets.

New York

My first impression of New York City: this place smelt like trash, but somehow it took me less than a week to feel completely at home. New York reminds me of Shanghai, noise, people shuttling by, busy commercial activities… It is almost like living back home again.

I am enjoying my summer job. I have the opportunity to do quality corporate finance research with a group of friendly and intelligent people. I also get to roam around various groups in capital markets so I can observe finance in action. The work hours are a bit long and it is difficult to sit at the desk straight through, especially in the afternoons, but I am starting to get used to it. It is actually sort of nice to get one’s day started early.

I thought I would miss Chicago terribly, but somehow all the distractions have kept me busy. Honestly, Chicago is the best-value city in this country. Chicago is clean, convenient, has all the good food and culture, but it is not expensive to live there. If I work hard, I can see myself with a nice place of my own in a trendy neighborhood and a nice car. In Manhattan, it is a different story. People who work in Manhattan has such skewed income distribution and the city has such a prestige premium that literally no middle class can afford to buy housing. Before I moved here, I asked myself: can I live like Carrie Bradshaw, a perpetual renter, and living day-to-day? I mean, many components of the American Dream for immigrants are typical middle-class lifestyle: a nice house and a few cars. If I had a choice to be a happy middle class yuppie in Chicago, should I settle into the uncertainty in New York? Surprisingly, one does not know oneself until one takes action. I am actually ok with living in an overcrowded city and possibly being a perpetual renter. I didn’t grow up middle class – China had no middle class in the 80’s. I can just live like I did in my teen years. It is actually refreshing.

Back Again

I am back. A most mundane but crucial aspect of reality, survival, has pulled me away from my favorite hobby, political commentaries, for too long. To be honest, I kept my knowledge of the world to a bare minimum in the past two months. The networking world is so sunny that it doesn’t tolerate much sullenness. I just could not get myself to follow another story of disaster and incompetence. Instead, I have caught up on news in the business world, news important for individual survival and interesting from an economics geek viewpoint, but news ultimately ephemeral.

Networking in the past three months, and death of a family member dear to my heart, have been prompting me to think about what my life is about lately. I had a heated conversation with a close friend the other day. She quoted an equation, knowing that’s the format of wisdom I have most respect for:

Financial Capital + Educational Capital = Cultural Capital

For argument’s sake, I said I beg to differ. This world I am in right now has definitely evolved towards the prediction of Carl Marx. I run into people with Cultural Capital aplenty but no Financial Capital every day (Duh!).

However, I did come from a world where that equation is more or less true. In that world, if you are lucky, you can run into Porsche ostentatiously touring around on muddy country roads, and mansions that have stacks of books entirely untouched. More likely though, you meet people steeped in books but bitter towards life simply because they cannot turn their book smarts into financials and provide for their family. Probably because I was an excellent book worm in that world, my family warned me many times: pay attention to your EQ! Insecurity creeps in when you hear that enough times.

But I must remind myself I am in a different world now, a more advanced world perhaps. Financial Capital is no longer a necessary condition to achieve Cultural Capital. This world has plenty of options and mobility to allow its inhabitants to live with dignity, even with very little money. Although my insecurity is hard to fight back and I may still chase after greenies, my new perspective soothes me, because I do not have to feel the resignation Buddha had when he discovered the endless recycling of human birth, living and death. I am fortunately living in a society that has passed the Animal stage of Capitalism.