Tokyo RailwaysElection, Olympic Games, Economy, and Armageddon
(Election, Jeux Olympiques, Economie, et Armageddon)
The aftermath of the ABC-hosted debate between “Obama” and “Hillary” might still continue to ensue for some time with almost 20,000 comments delivered to an ABC online site.
But, I have really recalled a scene, from the movie "Nixon," that President Richard Nixon and Mr. Henry Kissinger together fell on their knees and prayed to God in the White House. The present issue seems to be who with whom for what will pray to God in the White House between 2009 and 2013.
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...The prayer seems to soothe the President and demonstrates God's calming influence.
While this film is full of profanity, racial slurs, and alcohol use, it is merely a reflection of the tapes made by Mr. Nixon himself. Clearly, Nixon is an enigma, and one Stone is not afraid to tackle.
Year of Release — 1995
http://www.christiananswers.net/spotlight/movies/pre2000/nixon.html
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SECTION I: Beijing Olympic Games 2008
I do not want a failure in the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.
It must be Chinese people that should find inappropriateness of this year’s Olympic Games to be held in China.
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Public statements by President Hu Jintao, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and other senior officials suggest China's leaders are well aware of the widespread corruption but have been unwilling to curb it. The report says: "The odds of an average corrupt official going to jail are at most 3 out of 100, making corruption a high-return, low-risk activity." The reason: If Mr. Hu comes down too hard on corruption, he risks losing support of delegates to the recent party Congress who elected him. Those delegates are drawn largely from party officials at the local and provincial level.
Mr. Pei is not alone in assessing corruption in China. George Zhibin Gu, an investment banker who was educated at Nanjing University and earned a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, has suggested corruption may destroy China's economy that has been surging ahead by 8 to 10 percent a year. In the West, a 3 percent growth rate is respectable...
Unemployment and under-employment, in which a worker has only one or two days of work a week, may be more than 25 percent. Paradoxically, China has begun to experience shortages of skilled labor needed for its expanding industry...
In China there are about 117 men per 100 women, meaning 17 men out of 117 cannot find wives. That has led to kidnapping girls or importing women from Southeast Asia.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071202/COMMENTARY/112020007
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I hope that Prime Minister Mr. Yasuo Fukuda and President Mr. George W. Bush, when they visit Beijing for the Olympic opening ceremony, will kindly advise Chinese leaders on this issue of the large-scale public-sector corruption, so that China will find the shift to democracy to be inevitable in the modern society.
From a historical point of view, it is however no wonder if the Tibet issue triggers a new revolution in China soon or later.
(By the way, do you know that the "National Flag of Tibet" was designed based on the navy flag of the (past) Empire of Japan which is however still used by the Maritime Defense-Forces of Japan today?)
Interestingly, some Japanese critic once said that in North Korea people were too poor and hungry to carry out a revolution; but now Chinese people are gaining lots of stamina and physical strength due to economic boom.
SECTION II: Double-Dip Recession Possible in the U.S.
A certain ex-bureaucrat politician in Japan showed her concerns about the double-dip recession in the U.S., even if the present sub-prime loan problem is somehow contained in near future.
The most effective solution, according to her idea, is carrying out large-scale public fund infusion in one shot to the related market at a critical moment.
As Japan experienced one or more double-dip recessions in 1990’s, her experiences might be suggesting something worth listening to, though top US economists seem to have already studied it well or at least to some extent.
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Double-dip recessions are rare, and not well defined. It is common for a period of shrinking GDP to be punctuated by at least one positive quarter, as occurred in 2001, but the imprecision of GDP and frequent revisions means that at the time, it didn’t feel like much of a rebound occurred. An exception is 1980-1982 which the official score keeper, the National Bureau of Economic Research, considers two recessions but some say should be considered one, punctuated by a year of growth.
During the 1990s, Japan also experienced several periods of expansion often driven by aggressive public works spending that fizzled as asset prices fell further, eroding the banking system’s capital and suffocating the supply of credit. It’s too soon to forecast the same for the U.S. whose underlying growth is higher thanks to a growing population, and whose financial system is (on the surface at least) better capitalized. Nonetheless, widespread declines in real estate collateral values may make this cycle be different from most post-war recessions
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2008/02/08/double-dip-recession-ahead/
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I suppose there are two types of potential in the society in terms of economic trend: the negative type and the positive type, of course.
If a negative trend is working in a longer period, it will persist as an underground flow waiting for a chance to come up to the surface whenever a positive trend gets weakened.
(The weakened dollar and the surge in oil prices have virtually lowered the real value of US stock market indexes, thus becoming unable to cover the loss booked after the burst of the housing bubble, in one theory.)
Mr. Greenspan and Mr. Bernanke seem to have failed in correctly measuring the power balance between the two types of potential; they must have thought too optimistically that the positive potential of the US economy could conceal the negative potential the outstanding subprime loans were generating.
SECTION III: Armageddon Behind the Scene, 2008 -2012
Rev 20:08 And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog, and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.
Rev 20:09 And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.
Rev 20:10 And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
Rev 20:11 And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them.
Rev 20:12 And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.
(You might wonder where the Religious Revolution has gone while Armageddon has become the main issue nowadays.
Oh, boy, as I had a nice dream last night, there may be a strong chance that possibility of the Religious Revolution will surpass that of Armageddon.
But, I will not go out this Saturday to Tokyo, since I will be busy while the fateful end of April is coming near and the gasoline price in Japan might be raised again as a consequence of the political strife between the ruling parties and the Oppositions…)
“Unless you believe like children…”
“Es sei denn, Sie glauben, wie Kinder…”