Episode 1: World Crisis (2)

I didn’t really like talking in front of hundreds of people, none of which I knew. Being in the midst of experts, academics, economics nobel prize winners, bureaucrats, or all the flashiness with mentioning each other’s background, from business cards to the moderator introducing them himself, actually made me sick.

The room was filled with world financial practitioners. Brokers, security company executives, directors of giant companies, CFOs, CEOs and various key managerial strata. They are actually jackals wrapped in suits, expensive ties, shiny shoes untouched by dust, and drove luxury cars that cost hundreds of times the salaries of their lowest hierarchy employees. Enthusiastically talking about regulation, good governance, but they themselves do not want to be regulated and controlled. Agreeing on global rescue and assistance, but they are busy earning profits in a chaotic situation.

There was only one reason why I attended this conference, giving an hour to be a speaker of it: the fee was expensive. The most reasonable reason for all humanity.

“This Uncle Terrorist—sorry, I’m tired of calling it a global economic crisis, subprime mortgage, or whatever that damn thing’s name, it’s too long and nauseating to hear it every day on television, newspapers, radio, internet, even taxi drivers are not left behind.  I will just call it Uncle Terrorist.  Any objections?”  I started the morning session with a relaxed opening.

The participants of the international conferences laughed. 

“Yeah, yeah, I know there are objections in the corner.” I pretended to put on a serious face. “However, in a world with interlocking economic systems, with the capital market and money market have no limit, a crisis like this is more terrifying than the terror of the extreme right or the extreme left. We’ve never seen the stock index go into freefall like today when WTC tower was destroyed, right? The index didn’t even twitch when Soviet nuclear submarines entered American waters in the cold war era. Nowadays, everyone is panicking, one by one, like children waiting for their shares of candy, giant companies applied for bankruptcy protection, and the price of securities became trash, no more than the price of an empty folio paper.”

I expressively flicked a sheet of paper, letting it fall from the table.

“People lose their retirement funds, health insurance, decades of savings, and Education Plans. We know very well, for people like us, this is the real terror. The anxious feeling upon the future. The heartbeat hardens every time you see a dip in price chart; the potential of wealth loss, sleepless, even one or two top executives chose to commit suicide.”

The participants of the international conference listened respectfully. I paused for a moment, grabbed a glass of water, feeling happy seeing their anticipating faces.

“Unfortunately,” I rumpled my hair, sighed, “This one Uncle Terrorist cannot be stabbed with a knife. Your president, I mean the president at the table in the corner over there, could easily send thousands of soldiers, warplanes, tanks, even an aircraft carrier to hunt down one single terrorist. The preaching on preventive strike could provide a sense of security for all the people, preventing the terror widespread. But damn, this Uncle Terrorist can’t even be held by their neck. —

— it’s not that this uncle can’t be seen, of course the origin of the chaos of our capital market and money market are very visible, it is not difficult to untangle the tangled threads. It is we can’t stab him, because if that were done, it is us over here who would get stabbed first. It is us who are too greedy and too creative in creating the patterns of financial transactions, let, even make the asset values swell out of control, ignoring the risk as big as Mount Everest in front of the nose. Don’t give a f̲u̲c̲k̲? As long as the annual bonus continues to soar and all the amenities—the jets’ companies, the best hotels, bougie vacations—remained, the audit findings are well wrapped up. The first warning is considered as a breeze. We then started to get used to dictating the information, manufacturing its package, then forgetting that there are limits to it. When the value of the securities ballooned over time, the price of a sheet of paper could be equivalent to kilos of gold, when in fact it is still a sheet of paper.”