The Money Tower of Babel in Wall Street

The Money Tower of Babel in Wall Street



When Lehman Brothers was hit by the Angel of Economic Armageddon, a notable global economic forum was being held in Tianjin, China.

Now, folks, G7 meeting is being held in Washington D.C. with the Japan’s Financial Minister and the Governor of Bank of Japan attending.

Yet, this is the smash delivered by the Angel onto the Money Tower of Babel in Wall Street.

The cause is simple: the anger of the God.

So, the solution is simple: the total piety for God.

The U.S. President and his Treasury Secretary must pray to the God so that the God will ease His anger.

Jesus Christ said that no single stone would be left of the Money Tower in Wall Street.

This is the beginning for the complete cleanout of the Money Tower in Wall Street.

It might still take decades, but I believe that the word of the God will come true.

However, let’s check some non-nonsense opinion:

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Wall Street's Coming Reforms
September 17, 2008
Author Lee Hudson Teslik

The turmoil that rocked the global financial sector this week, bringing storied institutions to their knees and prompting harrowing declines for major stock indices, left more than a measure of uncertainty in its wake. Analysts generally declined to hazard near-term economic predictions, focusing instead on what might halt the contagion. Just when the government appeared to have said "enough," refusing to save the investment bank Lehman Brothers, the potential collapse of America's largest insurer, AIG, forced Washington back into the bailout pool (WSJ). One of the few consistent refrains was that reform of the financial system—on a much larger scale than many had previously considered—now seems increasingly likely (WSJ). Yet with a new U.S. president and Congress set to assume power, analysts say 2009 could bring dramatic regulatory changes for U.S. banks, potentially spelling major changes for the future structure of the global financial network.

…

Beyond technical market governance, some analysts say markets face a bigger problem. "The Street's fundamental problem isn't lack of capital," writes Robert Reich, the former U.S. Labor Secretary. "It's lack of trust. And without trust, Wall Street might as well fold up its fancy tents." Reich says the trust problem goes even deeper than the subprime mortgage mess. The recent market blowups, he says, have exposed a complicated game involving subjective ratings agencies, off-balance sheet liabilities, complex derivatives, and seemingly endless leverage. Here, however, the regulatory picture gets more murky—particularly given the global nature of financial markets. Once a new president takes office, Washington may well act to limit how much risk U.S. investment banks can assume. But analysts say that won't necessarily solve the problem. If Washington imposes very strict regulations on investment banks, Plender says, "a lot of those very clever, ambitious people, the investment bankers, will jump ship." The effort to regulate could thus backfire, he says, prompting an expansion of the "shadow banking system" of hedge funds and financial institutions in countries with looser laws, and leaving Washington's regulators with even less power than they have now.

Weigh in on this issue by emailing CFR.org.

http://www.cfr.org/publication/17257/wall_streets_coming_reforms.html?breadcrumb=%2Fissue%2F2%2Feconomics

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The War on Wall Street and the global like must be given the highest priority in the U.S. Government.

Anyway, the following are the minimum measures to be taken to avoid the possible Great Depression:

1) U.S. elite should fear the anger of the God.

2) U.S. elite should respect Japan.

3) The U.S. Government should declare that it would disable occurrence of the possible Great Depression by applying any tough measures to the super-rich and the rich so that they will offer at least a half of their assets to the possible solution planned and promoted by the U.S. Government, if so needed.

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That is all for today.




(Tomorrow I may further check the security around the Diet before the noon, since it is Sunday tomorrow and the Monday is a national holiday of Japan.)




"Salvation Comes from Zion as All want Salvation and Bailouts"

PERMANENT-MOVEMENT ELECTRIC GENERATOR

PERMANENT-MOVEMENT ELECTRIC GENERATOR




This is an idea for official patent application, though still pending.

1) The iron ball falls in the vacuum cylinder.

2) The ball hits an upper plate attached to the spring.

3) The upper plate, the spring, and the lower floating plate will also fall in the cylinder.

5) When the pressure of gas, in this case CO2, in the lower cylinder gets higher enough, it holds and stops the fall of the above structure.

6) Then the iron ball will bounce back upward.

7) The structure, including the upper plate, the spring, and the lower floating plate, will go up again.

8) The magnet on the ceiling will come down close to the highest position of the hopping ball, according to data provided by the sensor, so that it will give more upper momentum to the ball if the ball loses the height when bouncing back.

9) The condensed pressure of CO2 will be converted to mechanical movement of a turbine inside the electric generator.

10) The movement will repeat forever.

In this way, we can get electric power forever without inputting any extra energy to this system.

However, note that the perpetual motion is impossible according to physical laws.

Yet, feasibility of this system is of my great concern.


(This is a very personal choice of a song, since the skating season is near. Do you think she will win the Gold Medal in the next Winter Olympic Games?

http://www.hpmix.com/home/kitano/images/sc4_37_1.mid

Source: http://www.hpmix.com/home/kitano/C4_4.htm)



"FOLLOW ME AND TAKE MY YOKE WHICH IS NOT HEAVY AT ALL"

Something More Dangerous than Wealth

Something More Dangerous than Wealth




It is interesting to see how American millionaires expected or forecast in advance the economic conditions of 2008.

It is because there are many politicians, economists, journalists, and people concerned in the world, including Japan, who believe that America is a kind of almighty and thus the American millionaires and super-rich never fail.

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Wealth in America 2008
Findings from a Survey of Millionaire Households
January 2008

Northern Trust commissioned Phoenix Marketing International to conduct the survey, which was administered online and drew from a panel associated with Phoenix Marketing International’s Affluent Marketing Service program. A total of 1,014 online questionnaires were completed; all respondents had stated liquid assets of $1 million or more.

…

The 2008 Wealth in America study was conducted in October, 2007, a period marked by gloomy news about the U.S. economy and by uncertainty as a result of ongoing crisis in the credit markets. Despite the onslaught of negative economic news, most millionaire households retained an optimistic outlook for the performance of the U.S. stock market in 2008. Three reasons were cited by the optimistic households: some foresaw a decline in interest rates in 2008, while others were confident about strong corporate earnings growth or expected strong U.S. economic growth.

Of course not all were optimistic. Those who expect negative or flat market performance in 2008 almost doubled in number since last year’s survey, from 6% to 11%. These households’ negative outlook is based mainly on their expectations of slowing economic growth and a continuation of the downturn in the real estate market.

…

Wealthy Gen X households were considerably more optimistic about the stock market’s performance in 2008, with 28% expecting the market to increase by at least 10%, compared with 14% and 9% of the Boomer and Silent generations, respectively.

…

Most millionaires contribute both time and money to charitable and philanthropic causes. The average total donation among millionaires in the past year was $11,000, and, among decamillionaires, nearly $36,000. This represents a significant decline from 2005, when charitable contributions were unusually high in response to Hurricane Katrina and the Southeast Asian tsunami. In general, millionaires have very altruistic motivations for their charitable giving: supporting causes that they personally believe in and making a difference in their community rank far higher as reasons for why they give than do honoring a family member or creating a legacy for oneself.

…

2008: three-quarters (76%) expect a market increase of between 1% and 10% in 2008. However, there is some sign of increased pessimism this year. Compared with 2006, nearly twice as many respondents this year say they expect the stock market to be flat or fall in the coming year.…





When making decisions about investing, millionaires most commonly obtain the relevant investment information from their principal advisor, followed by financial websites.

…

Millionaires represented in this survey are predominately well educated, middleaged　professionals, with average investable assets of $3.6 million.

http://www-ac.northerntrust.com/content/media/attachment/data/white_paper/0801/document/wealth_america2008.pdf

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American millionaires are not a kind of omnipotent at all.

They and their advisors, in addition to financial web sites they rely on, cannot foretell this large-scale Wall Street organizational crisis and the global money market recession that is still proceeding as of early October, 2008.

If so, how super rich Americans could know this crisis beforehand?

What I want to emphasize is that politicians, economists, journalists, and people concerned in the world, including Japan, should not blindly believe that America is a kind of almighty and thus American millionaires and super-rich people never fail.

Now, the key to solving this global financial crisis triggered on Wall Street has to be the good practices of charity.

AS the above document indicates, "the average total donation among millionaires in the past year was $11,000, and, among decamillionaires, nearly $36,000."

In order to prevent the possible Great Depression, the average total donation among millionaires in the coming year must be $110,000, and, among decamillionaires, nearly $3,600,000.

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That is all for today.

One more scientist of the Japanese race has won another 2008 Nobel Prize.

"A clever trick borrowed from jellyfish has earned two Americans and one Japanese scientist a share of the chemistry Nobel Prize."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7658945.stm

You know mankind, including the American super-rich, cannot even create a jellyfish.

The American super-rich are not a kind of almighty at all like all other members of mankind.

They cannot even trigger a financial crisis on Wall Street.



(There is a generation called “Zen-kyou-tou Sedai” among the Japanese population; some of those who belong to this generation must have a memory of joining anti-Vietnam War demonstrations conducted on streets in Tokyo and other major cities and in universities in Japan. Nowadays some of them might spiritually reach an age to win the Nobel Prize or deal with the possible Great Depression comparable to the one that occurred before WWII.

Now what generation do you belong to, say, in Paris or New York?

http://www.fukuchan.ac/music/j-folk2/tomoyo.html )






"GIVE ALL THE MONEY RECEIVED TO THE POOR AND FOLLOW ME, THOUGH YOU CANNOT SINCE YOU ARE RICH"

Presidential Matter since September 2001?

(Three pictures I posted on October 6, 2008, foretelling three Japanese-race scientists winning the 2008 Nobel Prize as reported in http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/science/08nobel.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin , since I recently argued the issue of P = P + P* and each of them has a Japanese surname associated with one of the three pictures, respectively.)



Presidential Matter since September 2001?



The Far East Network radio station broadcast the Presidential Election debate live from Nashville.

So, I listened to them, Mr. John McCain and Mr. Barack Obama, here around Tokyo.

They were cool. They were doing their job as much as flawlessly.

But, there is a big flaw in the American history since September 11, 2001.


SECTION I: What is AlQaeda?

Everybody knows now what Nazis were.

Everybody knows now what the Soviet Union was.

But, nobody knows precisely what AlQaeda is, since no authentic documents have been compiled with all accuracy and details.

http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-osama-has-helped-usa.html

Even some people, who never believe the conspiracy theory that President Mr. George W. Bush ordered the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to his secret agents behind the scene, seem to doubt that CIA has still some dubious ties with AlQaeda.



SECTION II: What is Mr. Osama bin Laden?

Mr. Osama bin Laden has two faces: a son of a super-rich clan of Saudi Arabia and a leader of an Islamic armed movement.

It is said that one of his brothers died in a plane crash that happened in Texas decades ago.

It is also said that another brother of his was joining a conference held in New York where Former President Mr. George H. W. Bush attended on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

What is really Mr. Osama bin Laden who could escape from the all-out efforts by the U.S. Government to arrest or destroy him?

The sole military super-power on the earth, the U.S., cannot capture a single person so well identified and traced.

Then, what is the super-power United States of America?



SECTION III: What have been Efforts to Capture Mr. Osama bin Laden

While the U.S. had to mobilize hundreds of thousands of soldiers and spend billions of dollars to defend the nation, will not its ally Saudi Arabia offer full cooperation along with the whole bin Laden families so close to the royal family of Saudi Arabia?

What happened or did not happen in this context, say, aiming to contact Mr. Osama bin Laden, persuade him to stop direct attacks on U.S. facilities and citizens, and snap up a deal to contain his military and political adventure?

If the U.S. Government had ever applied the above said operation to Mr. Osama bin Laden, what would have been or actually is the outcome?

If the U.S. Government had not applied the above said operation to Mr. Osama bin Laden, what is the reason for the forbearance or the omission?

Honestly observing, with hundreds of thousands of soldiers and billions of dollars applicable to the operation to take on Mr. Osama bin Laden, the U.S. Government seems to have spent and still spend only a tiny portion of the military and financial capability for the restricted target Mr. Osama bin Laden.

With hundreds of thousands of soldiers and billions of dollars, they took on Saddam Hussein but it was a wrong person; America must have seized Mr. Osama bin Laden if it had failed in finding and apprehending Saddam Hussein, from a historical point of view.

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To our surprise, after seven years since Sept. 11, 2001, nothing crucial for reviewing and understanding the 9/11 Terror has been solved.

Yet, the Presidential Election is going on.

And, today, two candidates with confidence said that they would strengthen U.S. military power in Afghanistan and intensify pressure or manipulation on the Pakistani Government, which however must have been an issue in the immediate wake of the 9/11 Terror.

This one aspect can make the 2008 Presidential Election something akin to a low comedy or a farce.

If the U.S. Government cannot arrest Mr. Osama bin Laden, how can it contain the possible Great Depression?

This doubt alone can trigger a financial crisis on Wall Street as it actually happened a month ago.



(Do you know the difference between the Beach Boys and the Ventures?

http://www.fukuchan.ac/music/folk/cottonfields.html )




"LOVE YOUR NEIGHBORS AS MUCH AS YOU LOVE YOURSELF"

ONE CENT = ONE YEN ?

ONE CENT = ONE YEN ?


Yes, I watched the change of today's Dow Jones industrial average, too.

It eventually secured the 10,000-dollar level.

Nonetheless, the focus should be also placed on the value of the U.S. dollar.

So, I have to refer to some figures presented in the blog of Mr. Hideo Tamura, a journalist associated with the Sankei Shimbun newspaper of Japan.

(Click to enlarge.)

( http://tamurah.iza.ne.jp/blog/entry/742299/ )

The figure shows that FRB has been providing dollar bills to the U.S. financial sector in a frenzy of passion.

FRB printed dollar bills in this month alone as much as it did during the past year.

Though the value of the U.S. dollar is kept and preserved so far owing to various factors, there are grave concerns about its possible crash.

So, let’s check the trend of relative value between the dollar and yen as well as Euro and other currencies.

The value of the dollar is rather getting stronger against other currencies,such as the Australian dollar, the British pound, and the Swiss franc, except the Japanese yen.

(Click to enlarge.)
( http://zai.diamond.jp/servlets/Query?SRC=zai/news/top&newsid=5810 )


As I wrote the other day, Japanese banks and other financial institutes are the least hit and affected by the Wall-Street-triggered financial crisis.

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Today, the media people and politicians have been busy in Japan, since the Q&A session of the budgetary committee in the Lower House of the Diet has been broadcast live on TV all day long.

So, that is all for today.

Trust in the Japanese yen.

Trust in the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Respect hard-working and well-meaning regular folks in Japan.



(Do you know the difference between the Ventures and the Beach Boys?

http://www.menziesera.com/midi/pipeline.mid

Source: http://www.menziesera.com/media/music_jukebox.htm)





"LOVE YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT AND MIND"

Regulations Prevent Great Depression

(Around Tokyo Station in 2008)



Regulations Prevent Great Depression


I do not think Great Depression will be brought on in the near future, following the current global financial crisis triggered on Wall Street, probably, by the Angel of Justice or the economic Armageddon if not by the God.



SECTION I: Mr. Rothschild Loves Licensing

Mr. Evelyn de Rothschild seems to love regulation and hate corruption.

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Rothschild: Banks turned a blind eye to sub-prime
Jonathan Prynn and Hugo Duncan
02.10.08

One of the banking world's most respected grandees criticised the City today and called for a massive overhaul of regulation.

Sir Evelyn de Rothschild said there had been a collapse in ethical standards among banks in recent years, which had been ignored by watchdogs, rating agencies, shareholders and accountants.

The 77-year-old head of the banking dynasty issued a sombre warning that the crisis would get worse before it gets better. "We should not be under any illusion in this country that subprime is only an American problem," he said.

It came as another senior City figure, private equity boss John Moulton, said it could take seven years for the British economy to recover from the crisis that has brought the world's financial system to its knees.

The outspoken comments were made on another day of grim economic news pointing to increasing damage to the "real economy" from the credit meltdown.

……

But the worsening economic outlook increased recriminations over how the City landed the economy in such a mess. Sir Evelyn, speaking on Radio Five Live, accused the banking community, including the regulators, of turning a blind eye to the explosion in the British sub-prime mortgage market.

He also declared that investors in the banks should have acted to control bankers' pay and the risk-taking of management. "What are shareholders for? I think shareholders have not been speaking up."

He added: "You can also look to the accountants. It is their job to dig deep into the accounts and assess the risks a bank is taking. I mean, some of these American banks were 20 to 30 times leveraged - that is something I have never heard of."

De Rothschild said the only way out of the crisis was to improve regulation and license anybody involved in financial services.

The veteran financier, who has seen many crises, added: "You have to have regulators who are properly paid and who properly understand the situation. And you should have a licensing system like you have in pubs where if you break the rules, they take away your licence."

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23563009-details/Rothschild:+Banks+turned+a+blind+eye+to+sub-prime/article.do

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I do not think that the Rothschild clan truly welcomes the possible Great Depression.

Their wisdom is that regulation can prevent its occurrence.




SECTION II: Liberal Regulation Caused Subprime Loan Crisis?

It might sound like a conspiracy, though it sheds a light on a less-discussed aspect of mentality of the U.S. elite.

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Friday, March 07, 2008

Who Exactly is Responsible for the Sub-prime Meltdown?

by David Hinz

We have heard professional Congressional bureaucrats scream about the Sub-prime Mortgage meltdown. We have heard about predatory lenders and unscrupulous mortgage brokers taking advantage of poor and minority homeowners; homeowners who were unqualified for the loans they received.

So who really is to blame for the resulting crisis? Well, while banks and mortgage lenders are not blameless, Congress must bear a large part of the blame as well. It has been Congress, and their (we can only assume) well-meaning meddling with the economy, in the interest of fairness, that has created the fiasco.

Congress, in an attempt to confront discrimination against minorities, enacted the The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) in 1975. The purpose of the act, according to the FFEIC website:

The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) was enacted by Congress in 1975 and is implemented by the Federal Reserve Board's Regulation C. This regulation provides the public loan data that can be used to assist:
 in determining whether financial institutions are serving the housing needs of their communities;
 public officials in distributing public-sector investments so as to attract private investment to areas where it is needed;
 and in identifying possible discriminatory lending patterns.


So, in 1975 the Federal Government decided to monitor lending institutions, scrutinizing them for any perceived discrimination against minorities -- and guaranteeing by their very action, that lending institutions would be lenient in their lending practices toward minorities -- for fear of being deemed to be racist.

Since it's passage, the HMDA has gone through several amendments -- all of which have been detrimental to lending institutions, while providing windfall opportunities for poor and minority homeowners.
In 1980, amendments to HMDA directed the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) to compile annually for each Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) aggregate lending data by census tract for certain lenders. In addition, the FFIEC was directed to produce tables for each MSA that aggregates the lending activity of institutions by various categories of census tracts, grouped according to location, age of housing stock, income level, and racial characteristics.

Lending institutions in metropolitan areas have been accused of "redlining."
Redlining is the practice of arbitrarily denying or limiting financial services to specific neighborhoods, generally because its residents are people of color or are poor. While discriminatory practices existed in the banking and insurance industries well before the 1930s, the New Deal's Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) instituted a redlining policy by developing color-coded maps of American cities that used racial criteria to categorize lending and insurance risks. New, affluent, racially homogeneous housing areas received green lines while black and poor white neighborhoods were often circumscribed by red lines denoting their undesirability.

Redlining, discriminating because of race, was made illegal by Congress, and so lending institutions would be naturally fearful of being accused of such a practice. The HMDA, and other subsequent acts of Congress sent "a chill wind" blowing through the lending institutions.

Throughout the history of the act, amendments and revisions have occurred on nearly a yearly basis -- each amendment or revision making it abundantly clear to the lending institutions that it was in their best interests to extend credit to poor and minority homeowners, regardless of creditworthiness.

This government interference in the private lending sector has been a primary cause -- as much or more than greed -- for the sub-prime meltdown we are currently experiencing. A quick overview of some of these revisions and amendments throughout the years;

.....

In 1993, Regulation C was revised by the Federal Reserve Board to incorporate amendments contained in the Housing and Community Development Act of 1992. The amendments required institutions--in response to requests from the public--to make a modified version of their loan/application register data available within 30 days of the date it was due to its regulatory agency...

...

In 1994, Regulation C was amended by the Federal Reserve Board to make HMDA data available to the public earlier, to improve the accuracy of the HMDA data, and to clarify and simplify the reporting requirements...

In 1977 Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which, like the HMDA was intended to compel lending institutions to "reinvest" profits back into the community in which they have offices. Like the HMDA the CRA had the unintended effect of intimidating lenders into making questionable loans, out of fear of being deemed racist in their practices. As explained on the government CRA history page:

……

The CRA requires that each insured depository institution's record in helping meet the credit needs of its entire community be evaluated periodically. That record is taken into account in considering an institution's application for deposit facilities, including mergers and acquisitions.

With each subsequent act of Congress, banking institutions have felt increased governmental pressure to provide loans to poor and minority applicants, regardless of creditworthiness; to look the other way regarding unfavorable credit history. To hold that credit history against a minority applicant is to be labeled as racist -- and lending institutions have been loath to be so labeled.

Have there been unscrupulous mortgage lenders who have preyed upon the poor and uninformed? Without a doubt, there have been. But it would be a travesty to look at the lending climate today, and to to exempt Congress from its fair share of the blame.

Congress, holding congressional hearings on the subject will conveniently forget their own culpability in the entire affair. We must not.

http://www.hinzsightreport.com/2008/03/who-exactly-is-responsible-for-sub.html

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I do not think that the American elite truly welcome the possible Great Depression.

Their wisdom should be directed to other way of applying regulation so as to prevent its occurrence.


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I do not think Great Depression will be brought on in the near future, following the current global financial crisis triggered on Wall Street.

Yet, it is time to think about the difference caused by different scales.

Regulation to be applied to trillion dollar operation must be different from regulation for billion dollar business or million dollar transactions.

Code of practices for dealing with weapons must be different in its contents and application between nuclear weapons and a handgun or a knife.



(But, good girls, your love to God must be far different from your love to any person or persons even if you want to be a blessed wife, though there is no regulation on human love except what Jesus Christ specified.)




"BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO ARE POOR, SINCE THEY WILL BE HAPPY IN HEAVEN"

HAPPY ARE THOSE WHO ARE POOR

HAPPY ARE THOSE WHO ARE POOR


I have been to Tokyo Station today.

Construction work was all around the station plaza leading to the Marunouchi business district.

Even the Tokyo Central Post Office building was closed in preparation for a large-scale renovation with a newly planned 200 meter-high tower.

I saw one homeless man on a foot pavement over the main street on the Yaesu side of the station.

Nothing unusual was found there. Not so much crowded at all, since it is Sunday.

So, I decided to go back home taking a direct train line.

Therefore, I did not see how the Tokyo Tower looked today.




"HAPPY ARE THOSE WHO ARE POOR"