(A Waterfall Brook along Town Stairs)
Like a Hero or an Avenger
What will you do if you are another J.P. Morgan or a Prime Minister of Japan?
SECTION I: Postal Service Privatization
A few years ago, the biggest political agenda in Japan was the postal service privatization.
Then Prime Minister Mr. Jyunichiro Koizumi strongly promoted the policy to privatize postal services including postal savings.
However, then Minister of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications Mr. Taro Aso was against the policy, though he did not openly come into collision with his Prime Minister Mr. Koizumi then.
Yet, Mr. Aso is said to have exchanged harsh words with Mr. Heizo Takenaka, a notable economist who was then appointed to a state-minister of the Koizumi Cabinet for promotion of the postal service privatization.
( http://ameblo.jp/aratakyo/ )
In fact, Mr. Aso was later reassigned to a new post, Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2005, while Mr. Takenaka was promoted to a new post, Minister of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications.
Now, as Mr. Taro Aso is Prime Minister of Japan while Mr. Koizumi has already announced his planned retirement from the politics and Mr. Takenaka has returned to the academic community, the process of the postal service privatization in Japan might be significantly altered.
Anyway, the one-trillion dollar scale of postal savings of Japan might undergo a further change, since the myth of Wall Street is now fading away even among Japanese politicians, economists, and journalists.
SECTION II: Global Economic Boom A Year Ago
A year ago, the world was enjoying great economic boom or at least a sense of great economic boom.
Mr. Taro Aso, the LDP Secretary-General then, wrote in September 2007 that the world was enjoying unprecedented business boom. “Though the housing loan problem is making the situation unstable, the value of the dollar is well maintained. Globally the main trend is toward tightening of money, but the financial market is in a state of a money glut. While crude oil prices are getting high, many countries do not inflate, and there is no deteriorating employment situation. This is a situation no economics textbooks have ever dealt with.”
So, Mr. Aso concluded that we had to expand business, or preemptively take a risk aversion strategy in that unusual economic boom just a year ago.
( http://www.aso-taro.jp/lecture/kama/2007_9.html )
He finally added that Japan should have more confidence in its underlying strength and vitality the diligent people have built up (over its unique two-thousand-year history).
Anyway, a year ago, the world was enjoying great economic boom or at least a sense of great economic boom.
SECTION III: "Warren Buffett Braves a Crisis"
Though now it seems to be the U.S. Congress that holds a key to salvation of failing businesses, including GM, once it was an individual.
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Like J.P. Morgan, Warren Buffett Braves a Crisis
October 6, 2008, 8:23 am
…
But those were dire economic times. Morgan gathered his fellow financiers at his Manhattan mansion and hammered out a rescue plan. After a few rocky weeks, the panic subsided.
“In 1907, Morgan was not only committing some of his own money but also organizing the entire financial community to join in the rescue,” Ron Chernow, a business historian and the author of “The House of Morgan” (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990), told The Times.
Indeed, Mr. Chernow said, one motivation for creating the Federal Reserve in 1913 was that Morgan would not be around forever. Morgan died that same year.
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/like-jp-morgan-warren-buffett-braves-a-crisis/
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Just 100 years ago, the financial crisis on Wall Street was prevented from leading to the whole Great Depression by an individual, namely J. Pierpont Morgan, who took an initiative in mobilizing super-rich people.
Will Mr. Warren Buffett act like another J. P. Morgan?
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As far back as 2003, Mr. Buffett had warned that the complex securities at the center of today’s troubles — once so profitable, but now toxic — were "financial weapons of mass destruction." These securities were engineered by the math quants on Wall Street, and in the interview Mr. Buffett expressed his disdain: "Beware of geeks bearing formulas."
To help pay for the rescue, the government should raise taxes on the wealthy, Mr. Buffett suggested. "I’m paying the lowest tax rate that I’ve ever paid in my life," he said. "Now, that’s crazy."
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/like-jp-morgan-warren-buffett-braves-a-crisis/
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If all the super-rich men in the U.S. become super-poor through taxation or other system to save the world economy, the world economy must be surely saved.
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Jesus Christ said that you cannot serve the two masters at the same time, since you will surely hate either of the two.
You have to serve the God instead of Mammon.
Ultimately there are only two things you can love in whatever situations: the God and/or money.
But, eventually you will devote your love to the God, or submit your money to the Devil, both the final collectors of fruits of human life.
So, from a religious point of view, it depends on how much the leaders of Japan and the U.S. as well as super-rich people in the world would resist the reign of Mammon if not welcome the reign of the God, since they are not the Pope.
(Do you know a difference between a hero and a proud man? A proud man cannot be a hero necessarily; and a hero cannot be a proud man sometimes. Choose a humble believer rather than a proud but bogus hero.
http://www.fukuchan.ac/music/movie/proudones.html )
Mar 11:26 But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.