Whose God is it anyway?
November 28, 2002
I understand that the religious people, Jews, Christians, and Muslims, believe in their God based on something called Tanakh, Bible, or Quran, an anthology, a collection of many small books, and they all appear to share somewhat related Gods of their own with each other, while they all are determined to kill, cripple, and tear each apart in order to propagate their own God as a one, only, perfect, and universal God.
The Jew’s “Word of God” become the Muslim’s heresy and the Christian’s interpretation of it is perceived the Jew’s nightmare.
Therefore, no one religion, unbeknownst to many believers, can be studied in isolation from others.
For example, Jews introduced their God based on Torah, Prophets, and Writings, a collection of books that Christians call it Old Testament, in which Christians read in relationship to prophecies of the Second coming of Jesus Christ and Jews make no connection between them or interpret them differently from the Christian views.
As Hillel, a Jewish rabbi in the first century said: “Do not unto others as you would not have them do unto you,” Paul, a Pharisaic rabbi and a real starter of Christianity, turned Hillel’s dictum on somersault, saying “Do unto others as though would have them do unto thee”…a subtle difference in expression, but an analogous quote as Confucius said: “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others,” or Aristotle in quote: “”We should behave to our friends as we would wish our friends to behave to us.”
Christians in the era of Jesus Christ (they were all Jews then, not Christians as same as if Rev. Sun Myong Moon is a Christian now, not a heretic.) follow the words of the same One God of Judaism that the Old Testament prescribes to them, only adding a sequel of New Testament later, which tells the story of Jesus Christ as Son of God and He was, surprisingly unknown to many Christians, a devout Jewish rabbi who was born, lived, taught, and died a Jew.
The early Christians called themselves Jews and thought of themselves Jews until when Christianity became the official state religion of the Rome Empire in which the separation between the Jew and the Christian was accomplished.
Muslims, a group of devout Semites in the God of Abraham, initiated, six hundreds years after Jesus Christ died (if he ever existed), their Islamic religion based on Quran that was given to their prophet Muhammad, and surprisingly Quran mentioned about Moses (he is known as “Musa" in Islam) a few hundreds times.
Muhammad was even inspired by an apparition called “Gabriel”—one of the most important of the Christian angels—to spread the message from “Allah”, that is, the conceptual root in Islam can be found in Judaism and Christianity.
However, when you put a Jew, a Muslim, and a Christian, a gathering of the devout and intelligent adult, in the same room and ask them whose God is right one, they can not agree with or can not agree to disagree with each other and get involved, at the drop of hat, with the fist fight like a bunch of red-faced teenagers.
The Jews boast: It is inconceivable to talk about history, world, or religion without Jew.
Therefore, there is no human being on the face of this earth exempt from the Jewish influence and Judaism.
The Christians, with superman, Uncle Sam, on their back, embark on the mission to perfect the world under the rule of the Christian God at any cost, as if all humans are wicked when they do not hold to the Christian religion.
The Muslims, while not denying their root in patriarch Abraham, demand an abject obedience to the Supreme Being of the Islam faith, “Allah”.
Islam is proclaimed the third and final revelation to God, warning infidels like Christians and Jews against the danger of false prophets and calling them to surrender to Allah or else.
No one denies the fact that more people because of religion have been murdered, tortured, maimed, hated, and humiliated than for any other reason in the history of man, and there has never been a genocide which was not fueled by religion, the most crippling detriment of them all to the human evolution.
Despite its otherworldliness, religion is entirely man-made and highly pragmatic human activity that could be justifiably abused in the name of God.
If we, humankind, endeavor to cultivate humanism among us, instead of surrendering to God or Allah, as an attempt to find the raison detre in life, all the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and atheists could agree with or agree to disagree with each other without the fistfight, because there are no perfect Gods but only the perishable mortals who share the equal and universal destiny without any exception.
Why do we need a God that makes us kill each other?
How about the humanism sans the worship of God as our religion?
Paul JDSN
November 30 2002
May I comment four points on your writing?
1. I totally agree that we need the study of comparative religion among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
2. I don’t agree that religious people are always immature ‘like a bunch of red-faced teenagers.’ I saw many holy believers who have tolerance to other religions.
3. You seem to argue that religion is the main cause of human tragedy like wars. Yes, partially agree on that. However, not only religion, but human actions like politics and economics can be charged as main factors of human tragedy
Do you think that the Korean War was religious war? Do you think that 9.11 tragedy was the only religious terror? I don’t think so. So it is wrong when you argue: “no one denies the fact that more people because of religion have been murdered, tortured, maimed, hated, and humiliated than for any other reason in the history of man, and there has never been a genocide which was not fueled by religion, the most crippling detriment of them all to the human evolution.”
4. In respect with humanism, I also worry that humanism also can be one of religions. I mean that it is hard to separate humanism and religion sharply, because they are all grounded on ‘human conviction’. Was Nazism a humanism or religion? I saw many cases when human beings hated and made harm to each other without real concern of religious truth. Humanism and religion truth are always good things. Problem is ‘distorted’ humanism and ‘corrupted’ religion.
Why don’t we talk about God who makes us in unity beyond differences of nation and ethnic?
If we have right faith in God, we must become peacemakers. This is the way religion can help humans be mature.
I think that true humanists and true religious persons have no contradiction.
To Paul
December 4, 2002
This is a reply to your four comments on my article: Whose God is it anyway?
I think that we could skip the first two comments you have made on the subject, and I would like to jump in to the number-three comment that “religion among other things has played a major role in the causality of the human tragedy.”
I would like to clarify that I did not claim “religion” was only factor in bringing the human tragedy, but “more people because of religion” have suffered in human history, that is, I was saying that, comparatively, more than any other factors, such as politics, economics, and other causalities, religion has impinged mainly on the human casualties. (Your view on the Korean War and 9.11 tragedy could be discussed in other time if you would like to have it with me.)
You have argued in the fourth comment that humanism can be one of religion and it is hard to separate between them ‘sharply’, since both humanism and religion are grounded on human conviction.
According to the Random House English Dictionary (unabridged), humanism is a variety of ethical theory and practice that emphasizes reason, scientific inquiry, and human fulfillment in the natural world and ‘often rejects the importance of belief in God.”
I agree that both humanism and religion are the human constructs and therefore vulnerable to become ‘corrupt’ and ‘distorted’ products, however, humanism is a mode of thought sans the divine entity and intervention in which human interests, values, and dignity predominate
As the title of my article indicates, “Whose God is it anyway?” I pondered why humans bother to keep a God that has harmed themselves for thousands of years instead of salvaging from the wickedness in human nature.
In your reply, you suggested that we could talk about “true God”, “true religion”, “right faith in God”, or “true humanism”…in which I frankly am not comfortable to define what “true” means. (By chance, the Moonies, in their theocratic political movement, advocate the “True Family, True Family Value, True Father, True Mother, and True Parents”, defining that their God is a one and only “True God” and Rev. Moon is a true Messiah.)
I would like to ask you again:
Could we ever produce a true God that brings harmony among many ethnic believers in various fashions?
Could a true God to you be accepted as a universally true God by others whose lives in toto are absolutely foreign to yours?
What does the word “true” mean to you?
Is ‘true” meant to you a thing against false, corrupt, distorted, wrong, or without reason or logos?
Could your term “true” last forever, considering that men’s views of right and wrong have varied such an extent that no single item has been permanent?
PS. As a leftwing contrarian, not an accommodationist, I always thrive on conflict, dispute, dissent, and argument, and I would be extremely felt rejected if I did not generate dissent.
Therefore, it would be honor for me to have you responding to my writing.
Incidentally, I am also surprised to discover that you have been at the Anti-War rally in Washington DC last month, and I respect you chose not to stay inside the church quietly on a diet of benign passivity but to participate actively in your belief; “Love thy Neighbor whoever they are.”
I wonder aloud why none of your congregants gave you “a HIGH FIVE”…Pity!
Paul JDSN
December 4 2002
Happy to share with your idea
I can make a little comment on ‘truth’.
I understand truth in the sense of becoming or changing.
So when I mentioned ‘truth’, I didn’t mean a static or fixed reality.
When people hear that God is a being of change, it might hard to accept the idea, because people normally have the common sense that God is forever and unchangeable.
The Western mentality makes us difficult to value ‘change’.
Philosophy is metaphor. It has nothing to do with definition.
I think that the metaphor of change is more applicable to explain God or truth than metaphysical concept of perpetuity.
Water can be stayed in every kind of bowl regardless of its shape and size. I think that truth must be like this.
Whoever we are, God can be with us in every form.
Therefore, I think that God’s universality did not contradict with God’s locality.
My God is the same one whom Islam prays to. My God is the same thing that you seek in your humanistic reason.
You said that humans bother to keep God.
I think that God is not the being who must be kept by humans. We don’t need to worry how to prove God’s existence, because God is always in presence in all.
It doesn’t matter if we cannot prove God’s being. It is not a big problem although we cannot describe God. God just stays there. As you know from Tao De Jing, naming is not a big deal.
For productivity of our discussion, I think that we need to contemplate on the nature of human language about God more deeply.
In my knowledge, God can be described only in metaphor.
PS. Regarding Anti-War rally, I got much encouragement from my Gillbott friends including my pastor.
To Paul JDSN
December 9, 2002
Amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas--Plato is a friend but truth is a greater friend. (From a passage of Aristotle’s Ethics)
In reply to my inquiry on the nature of the word ‘true’ that you have used in describing your God, you have rather emphasized on the mutant nature than on the definition of the word ‘true’, because God can be described only in metaphor.
I have no problem accepting the mutant nature of your God, since the idea of God formed in one generation by one set of human beings was brutally discarded whenever it became irrelevant and powerless to their lives and swiftly replaced by the more relevant and ‘decaffeinated’ God, as the tribal and maniacal Yahweh has evolved into a universal and benign Jesus.
You implied that ‘truth’ should be remained flexible and mutable as if water can be poured into any shape or size of vessels…that is, as far as humans are concerned, there is no intrinsic difference or contradiction in human nature on the definition of God or truth. Everyone—Jews, Christians, Muslims, or Atheists—could have the same God.
It is another point that I could not possibly disagree with you, if I read you correctly.
Lastly, you said it’s no big deal whether we can prove or disprove God’s existence, because God stays everywhere in our human life, whether you call it God, Allah, Christ, Buddha, Ghost, Truth, or whatever.
The rub here is that every religion holds a dogmatic nature that you must believe in God and immortality, and I could have in no way a faith on God that promises a paradise or hell after my physical death.
Your metaphor on water reminds me of someone who said differently… Life is like water: it takes the shape of the vessel into which it is poured; remove the vessel and it is lost.
Here I take the vessel as our body and life as our mind; mind depend upon a property (a body) and cannot survive the disintegration of body, that is, the mind cannot survive the total destruction of brain structure that surely occurs at death.
Even though we would be born again after our physical death as every religion promises, “we” after our physical death would never be the same “we” before the death, because there would be no continuity in the human body, appearance, behavior, mind, habit or memory.
Our concept of God after the death might not be the same as we have now in this world or we, the human species always be pugnacious and adventurous, might attempt to change our “landlord” in order to make our after-death life more comfortable.
In essence, I think we should not go further in this matter, because it surely is going to be a wild goose chase and there is a danger we might get into the semantic fog of nonsensical discourse.
PS. Who is Tao De Jing?
By the way, I would like to inform you that one of the anti-war activists, father Philip Berrigan was dead on last Friday and his funeral will be held today at St Peter Clabber Church in West Baltimore. I am sure you may know him who spent his 40 years (11 years in prison), as a Catholic priest, of resistance to war and violence since the Vietnam War.
This information never appears in the mainstream media, and you may hear from Radio WBAI New York 99.5 FM at Democracy Now! (9 to 10AM: Mon. through Fri.) Or check www.commondreams.org or www.antiwar.com.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Apocalype Now!
Apocalypse Now!
The political marriage of the Christian fundamentalists and Judeo-Nazis
April 26, 2002
The Author’s note:
*Apocalypse is from Greek, meaning an unveiling of thing which is hidden, and apocalyptic is referring to the final world cataclysm in Christian theology that will destroy the powers of evil and usher in the kingdom of God.
*Dispensationalism is a relatively new belief system, less than 200 years old, of the Christian fundamentalists which holds that the signs of the Second Coming of Christ are clearly spelled out in Scripture and can be identified with current international events as in the Middle East Conflicts.
This theology was developed by John Darby of England and popularized by Cyrus Scofield of America, whose Scofield Reference Bible explained that God has special interest in only people: born-again Christians.
*Judeo-Nazis is referring to the Israeli Jews whose tactics to suppress and persecute the Palestinians are analogous to the Nazis atrocities against the Jews, Gypsies, and other ethnic group during WWII and the epithet was first coined by the late Jewish Israeli professor, Israel Shahak, who survived at the Nazi concentration camp.
In the Middle East conflicts, people generally are confused and mostly misled about the history, fact, and reality by the media pundits, Hollywood moguls, right-wing politicians, and religious fundamentalists who are engaged in mendacious propaganda war in order to achieve their particular objectives.
Among these detractors, the Christian fundamentalists are, the first and foremost, embracing and peddling deadly misinformation and theological falsity in the name of words of God at the church pulpits, from thousands of the mainline Southern Baptist Convention to Pentecostal, Bible and Mega Churches that boast over 50 million congregants in the United States.
One of the clearest remarks what these Christian rights are adopting was manifested by Rev. Jerry Falwell, Rev. Pat Robertson, and US Senator James Inhofe, after the Kamikaze assault on the World Trade Center…Jerry raved and Pat concurred that God was pissed off because Americans are degrading His words on abortion, homosexuality, and tribulation, in which Americans deserve to be harmed.
The Republican Senator from Oklahoma piped in a speech at the Senate: the September 11 attacks were retribution from God in response to US policy toward Israel that restrains Jews from their all-out war against the Palestinian terrorists, and he insisted that Israel is entitled to the West Bank because the Bible said so: Genesis 13: 14-17 made it clear that Israel is the covenant land promised to Jews by God.
In other words, they take the Middle East conflict as a war between the words of God and the powers of evil, the belief system of the Christian Zionism that Jews must live in a re-created Israel in the promised land before Christ can fulfill his Second Coming in Jerusalem.
For them, Israel is the center stage of the Tribulation and the Armageddon that must be secured in preparation for the Second Coming, and the establishment of Israel in 1948 was a clear fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
In reading and accepting the Bible literally, they believe in dispensationalism in which the Rapture is a key factor in understanding this relatively new dogma…born-again Christians are to be wafted up into Heaven just before Armageddon without suffering one moment through the instant Rapture.
Up until 1600s when the Bible was translated into the vernacular, the Catholic Church traditionally had no concept of a Chosen People or the return of Jews to Palestine.
After the Reformation when the Old Testament became a historical reference to the Christians, many Christian ministers turned to messianism and millennialism that provide a theological scenario, like a movie script, that will be manifested by the tribal God in a series of time sequences or “dispensation” for the chosen few born-agains to be saved through the Rapture and against the multitude to be perished by “Big Bang”.
Therefore, these evangelical fundamentalists believe that Israeli Jews have to establish a state as a precursor of End Game scenario and they become the active supporters of Judeo-Nazis who entertain the dream of “Eretz Yisrael” (the land of a Greater Israel) that stretches from Sinai peninsular to Lebanon, and part of Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
For the militant Jews, like Jabotinsky, Begin, Shamir, Netanyahu, and Ariel Sharon, who enjoy an idea that the way to stop killing is to kill, Jerry and Pat are a godsend to them, though there are tensions between them over the fundamentalist insistence that Jews should be proselytized if they were saved before the Second Coming: most Jewish leaders are willing to forgive anything as far as they hear a good word about Israel, and it is natural for Zionist Revisionists to accept the Christian rights. (Please vide Sojourner’s articles on the Middle East for further references)
As far as the Holy Land is concerned, they are nationalistic, chauvinistic, and militaristic bedfellows that are jealously happy to exclude other multitude of Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists, Atheists, and even Christians who are not born again from their theological shellgame, the Armageddon.
For the evangelical fundamentalists, the militant Judeo-Nazis are doing a God’s business that builds a Jewish Temple on top of Al Aqsa Mosque before He sends Christ back to earth…
When Ariel Sharon marched to the Dome of Rock in Haram al-Sharif and started up the second Intifada with no apparent reason except provoking Islamic anger, he was playing a key role, hastening and promoting the wishes of the Christian fundamentalists who are anxiously and eagerly awaiting the Armageddon.
Effi Eitam, a repentant Jew (the same as a born-again Christian) and former IDF General, who recently joined the Sharon Government, minced no words on the Israeli willingness to extend their fight against Iran and Iraq unless these two wicked nations are neutralized by the West sooner or later.
Arabs are as much the malignant cancer in the body of the Israeli state for the Zionist revisionists, as Muslims are to be burned at the Armageddon in their End Game for the Christian fundamentalists.
Therefore, it is not surprising to see them to be hand in glove for securing the “Eretz Yisrael”: although they are not in the same boat over the issue of the End Game: the Jews want the secure and expanded land while the Christian fundamentalists want to place all Jews gathering at one place for the salvation of Christianity through the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
The Jews take the Armageddon a bull because there is no mention of it in the Old Testament, and who wants to believe that the final cataclysm occurs in their own backyard resulting in their own massacre?
For both of two crazies, religion and politics are two sides of a single coin that can spill over each other and coexist in a symbiotic habitat: the Christian crazies need the Jews as a logistical element for their eschatological time-table and the Judeo-Nazis take advantage of the Christian cult on the Holy Land for the establishment of the Jew-only nation.
Each would be impoverished without the other, and both crazies are in a full court press in the destruction of planet earth.
The political marriage of the Christian fundamentalists and Judeo-Nazis
April 26, 2002
The Author’s note:
*Apocalypse is from Greek, meaning an unveiling of thing which is hidden, and apocalyptic is referring to the final world cataclysm in Christian theology that will destroy the powers of evil and usher in the kingdom of God.
*Dispensationalism is a relatively new belief system, less than 200 years old, of the Christian fundamentalists which holds that the signs of the Second Coming of Christ are clearly spelled out in Scripture and can be identified with current international events as in the Middle East Conflicts.
This theology was developed by John Darby of England and popularized by Cyrus Scofield of America, whose Scofield Reference Bible explained that God has special interest in only people: born-again Christians.
*Judeo-Nazis is referring to the Israeli Jews whose tactics to suppress and persecute the Palestinians are analogous to the Nazis atrocities against the Jews, Gypsies, and other ethnic group during WWII and the epithet was first coined by the late Jewish Israeli professor, Israel Shahak, who survived at the Nazi concentration camp.
In the Middle East conflicts, people generally are confused and mostly misled about the history, fact, and reality by the media pundits, Hollywood moguls, right-wing politicians, and religious fundamentalists who are engaged in mendacious propaganda war in order to achieve their particular objectives.
Among these detractors, the Christian fundamentalists are, the first and foremost, embracing and peddling deadly misinformation and theological falsity in the name of words of God at the church pulpits, from thousands of the mainline Southern Baptist Convention to Pentecostal, Bible and Mega Churches that boast over 50 million congregants in the United States.
One of the clearest remarks what these Christian rights are adopting was manifested by Rev. Jerry Falwell, Rev. Pat Robertson, and US Senator James Inhofe, after the Kamikaze assault on the World Trade Center…Jerry raved and Pat concurred that God was pissed off because Americans are degrading His words on abortion, homosexuality, and tribulation, in which Americans deserve to be harmed.
The Republican Senator from Oklahoma piped in a speech at the Senate: the September 11 attacks were retribution from God in response to US policy toward Israel that restrains Jews from their all-out war against the Palestinian terrorists, and he insisted that Israel is entitled to the West Bank because the Bible said so: Genesis 13: 14-17 made it clear that Israel is the covenant land promised to Jews by God.
In other words, they take the Middle East conflict as a war between the words of God and the powers of evil, the belief system of the Christian Zionism that Jews must live in a re-created Israel in the promised land before Christ can fulfill his Second Coming in Jerusalem.
For them, Israel is the center stage of the Tribulation and the Armageddon that must be secured in preparation for the Second Coming, and the establishment of Israel in 1948 was a clear fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
In reading and accepting the Bible literally, they believe in dispensationalism in which the Rapture is a key factor in understanding this relatively new dogma…born-again Christians are to be wafted up into Heaven just before Armageddon without suffering one moment through the instant Rapture.
Up until 1600s when the Bible was translated into the vernacular, the Catholic Church traditionally had no concept of a Chosen People or the return of Jews to Palestine.
After the Reformation when the Old Testament became a historical reference to the Christians, many Christian ministers turned to messianism and millennialism that provide a theological scenario, like a movie script, that will be manifested by the tribal God in a series of time sequences or “dispensation” for the chosen few born-agains to be saved through the Rapture and against the multitude to be perished by “Big Bang”.
Therefore, these evangelical fundamentalists believe that Israeli Jews have to establish a state as a precursor of End Game scenario and they become the active supporters of Judeo-Nazis who entertain the dream of “Eretz Yisrael” (the land of a Greater Israel) that stretches from Sinai peninsular to Lebanon, and part of Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
For the militant Jews, like Jabotinsky, Begin, Shamir, Netanyahu, and Ariel Sharon, who enjoy an idea that the way to stop killing is to kill, Jerry and Pat are a godsend to them, though there are tensions between them over the fundamentalist insistence that Jews should be proselytized if they were saved before the Second Coming: most Jewish leaders are willing to forgive anything as far as they hear a good word about Israel, and it is natural for Zionist Revisionists to accept the Christian rights. (Please vide Sojourner’s articles on the Middle East for further references)
As far as the Holy Land is concerned, they are nationalistic, chauvinistic, and militaristic bedfellows that are jealously happy to exclude other multitude of Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists, Atheists, and even Christians who are not born again from their theological shellgame, the Armageddon.
For the evangelical fundamentalists, the militant Judeo-Nazis are doing a God’s business that builds a Jewish Temple on top of Al Aqsa Mosque before He sends Christ back to earth…
When Ariel Sharon marched to the Dome of Rock in Haram al-Sharif and started up the second Intifada with no apparent reason except provoking Islamic anger, he was playing a key role, hastening and promoting the wishes of the Christian fundamentalists who are anxiously and eagerly awaiting the Armageddon.
Effi Eitam, a repentant Jew (the same as a born-again Christian) and former IDF General, who recently joined the Sharon Government, minced no words on the Israeli willingness to extend their fight against Iran and Iraq unless these two wicked nations are neutralized by the West sooner or later.
Arabs are as much the malignant cancer in the body of the Israeli state for the Zionist revisionists, as Muslims are to be burned at the Armageddon in their End Game for the Christian fundamentalists.
Therefore, it is not surprising to see them to be hand in glove for securing the “Eretz Yisrael”: although they are not in the same boat over the issue of the End Game: the Jews want the secure and expanded land while the Christian fundamentalists want to place all Jews gathering at one place for the salvation of Christianity through the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
The Jews take the Armageddon a bull because there is no mention of it in the Old Testament, and who wants to believe that the final cataclysm occurs in their own backyard resulting in their own massacre?
For both of two crazies, religion and politics are two sides of a single coin that can spill over each other and coexist in a symbiotic habitat: the Christian crazies need the Jews as a logistical element for their eschatological time-table and the Judeo-Nazis take advantage of the Christian cult on the Holy Land for the establishment of the Jew-only nation.
Each would be impoverished without the other, and both crazies are in a full court press in the destruction of planet earth.
A wrongheaded jeremiad
A wrongheaded jeremiad
August 5, 2005
First of all, your lamentation that we are in a war of religion between Christians and Muslims is a misconception that is the view put forth by a gaggle of neocon Israel-firsters who support the Jewish occupation of the Palestinian land and the fascistic group of Christian fundamentalists who are on a warpath to proselytize the whole world.
Instead, the war we are in is rather a series of the hegemonic, neo-colonial, and imperialistic endeavors all over the world, not just Iraq, Afghanistan, or other Muslim countries, by the New Rome, the Empire of the USA.
These secular and religious ideologues occupy every nook and corner of the Bush Administration and disseminate the Bush’s claim that the Islamic terrorists want to destroy the Christian civilization because Muslims are envious of our freedom and values.
In other words, they strongly propose the concept that the suicide attacks in New York City, Madrid and London were committed by the barbaric Muslims against the civilized society, Christendom…
Therefore, they claim that we have to go over there, Iraq and Afghanistan, to fight, so we don’t have to fight them here, England and USA.
Of course, religion plays a role in most of human activities including war, when both engaging parties have different religious faith as we see the Christian occupiers and Muslim occupied in Iraq.
However, as we had witnessed among the recent suicide attacks against the Western countries, not all attacks are motivated by their religious belief, but mostly for the interest of nationalism…religion is far less of a factor than politics, like the foreign policy occupying other countries with a massive military forces.
In your dirge, you are perplexed and felt sorrow over the terrorist attacks in London and Egypt why the Muslims vent on the revengeful atrocities against the civilians.
I wonder aloud why you do not feel the equal sorrow or are not perplexed over the coalition soldiers, your Christian bedfellows, who bomb, kill, torture, and maim the innocent Iraqi and Afghan children, women and old men.
Have you ever thought about why terrorists chose New York City, London, and Madrid instead of Switzerland, Luxemburg, and Monaco?
Why should Muslims react any differently to the killing and maiming of their family, friends, and countrymen than Christians do when the same thing happens to their family, friends, and countrymen?
The bottom line is that Bush planned the war before the 911 terrorist attacks and the religion of Islam has essentially got nothing to do with terrorism…that Islam is exploited by Muslim terrorists as Christianity by fascistic evangelical fundamentalists, so that both the terrorism and the war are propped up for broad public support in the Arab world and the Western countries.
Since the collapse of Soviet communism, Uncle Sam has been on a full court press locating a new enemy that scares the American hoi polloi in order to sustain the “Western values”, and the war we are in is not to export a “democracy” to the Arab world but to bring the recalcitrant Abdullah under the yoke of US imperialism.
Secondly, let me briefly comment about your blog on “the Islamic culture”…which appears to be a pseudo-historic mumbo-jumbo that attempts to determine Islam “a daughter of Christianity.”
You alleged that the Muslims believe Jesus Christ a messiah, “Iusa”, and in emphasizing your argument, you cleverly quoted the Financial Times article about the “Christmas Card from the Hezbollah”….
I am cocksure that you do not know the linguistic history that Greek name “Jesus” was not the original name of the savior, a man from Galilee…in other words, the name Jesus did not exist and would not have been spelled with the letter “J”, until about six hundred years ago.
There was no J in any language prior to the fourteenth century in England.
For example, James was spelled Iames, and Jesus was spelled Iesous,
In the ancient Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, there was no J either, so Jesus was named Yeshua, which is feminine singular when transliterated in Greek, and church solved the problem by dropping ua to u, so becoming a male gender Yeshu that you, Koreans, call.
Story does not stop here, the fact of matter is that Latin Iesus which was derived from Greek Iesous was in turn derived from the Egyptian “Iusa”…“Jesus” has Egyptian roots.
It is true that both Christianity and Islam are offshoots of Judaism, in which Christians and Muslims borrowed major dogma from the Hebrew Scriptures. (The Old Testament is a kind of misnomer)
In this perspective, Christianity and Islam are a Siamese twin mothered by Jews whose relationship with Egyptian culture bred the fundamentals of the Judaism.
Only difference is that Christianity is 600 years older than Islam
Finally, a little pansee on the fundamentalist religion whether it is Christianity or Islam…when religious fanatics begin to read their canons, the Bible or Koran, literally and to quote it “proof text” rather than symbolically, allegorically, and metaphorically, there will be no inter-faith understanding between two religions.
And our sleazy politicians know how to take advantage on it and to call the shots.
August 5, 2005
First of all, your lamentation that we are in a war of religion between Christians and Muslims is a misconception that is the view put forth by a gaggle of neocon Israel-firsters who support the Jewish occupation of the Palestinian land and the fascistic group of Christian fundamentalists who are on a warpath to proselytize the whole world.
Instead, the war we are in is rather a series of the hegemonic, neo-colonial, and imperialistic endeavors all over the world, not just Iraq, Afghanistan, or other Muslim countries, by the New Rome, the Empire of the USA.
These secular and religious ideologues occupy every nook and corner of the Bush Administration and disseminate the Bush’s claim that the Islamic terrorists want to destroy the Christian civilization because Muslims are envious of our freedom and values.
In other words, they strongly propose the concept that the suicide attacks in New York City, Madrid and London were committed by the barbaric Muslims against the civilized society, Christendom…
Therefore, they claim that we have to go over there, Iraq and Afghanistan, to fight, so we don’t have to fight them here, England and USA.
Of course, religion plays a role in most of human activities including war, when both engaging parties have different religious faith as we see the Christian occupiers and Muslim occupied in Iraq.
However, as we had witnessed among the recent suicide attacks against the Western countries, not all attacks are motivated by their religious belief, but mostly for the interest of nationalism…religion is far less of a factor than politics, like the foreign policy occupying other countries with a massive military forces.
In your dirge, you are perplexed and felt sorrow over the terrorist attacks in London and Egypt why the Muslims vent on the revengeful atrocities against the civilians.
I wonder aloud why you do not feel the equal sorrow or are not perplexed over the coalition soldiers, your Christian bedfellows, who bomb, kill, torture, and maim the innocent Iraqi and Afghan children, women and old men.
Have you ever thought about why terrorists chose New York City, London, and Madrid instead of Switzerland, Luxemburg, and Monaco?
Why should Muslims react any differently to the killing and maiming of their family, friends, and countrymen than Christians do when the same thing happens to their family, friends, and countrymen?
The bottom line is that Bush planned the war before the 911 terrorist attacks and the religion of Islam has essentially got nothing to do with terrorism…that Islam is exploited by Muslim terrorists as Christianity by fascistic evangelical fundamentalists, so that both the terrorism and the war are propped up for broad public support in the Arab world and the Western countries.
Since the collapse of Soviet communism, Uncle Sam has been on a full court press locating a new enemy that scares the American hoi polloi in order to sustain the “Western values”, and the war we are in is not to export a “democracy” to the Arab world but to bring the recalcitrant Abdullah under the yoke of US imperialism.
Secondly, let me briefly comment about your blog on “the Islamic culture”…which appears to be a pseudo-historic mumbo-jumbo that attempts to determine Islam “a daughter of Christianity.”
You alleged that the Muslims believe Jesus Christ a messiah, “Iusa”, and in emphasizing your argument, you cleverly quoted the Financial Times article about the “Christmas Card from the Hezbollah”….
I am cocksure that you do not know the linguistic history that Greek name “Jesus” was not the original name of the savior, a man from Galilee…in other words, the name Jesus did not exist and would not have been spelled with the letter “J”, until about six hundred years ago.
There was no J in any language prior to the fourteenth century in England.
For example, James was spelled Iames, and Jesus was spelled Iesous,
In the ancient Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, there was no J either, so Jesus was named Yeshua, which is feminine singular when transliterated in Greek, and church solved the problem by dropping ua to u, so becoming a male gender Yeshu that you, Koreans, call.
Story does not stop here, the fact of matter is that Latin Iesus which was derived from Greek Iesous was in turn derived from the Egyptian “Iusa”…“Jesus” has Egyptian roots.
It is true that both Christianity and Islam are offshoots of Judaism, in which Christians and Muslims borrowed major dogma from the Hebrew Scriptures. (The Old Testament is a kind of misnomer)
In this perspective, Christianity and Islam are a Siamese twin mothered by Jews whose relationship with Egyptian culture bred the fundamentals of the Judaism.
Only difference is that Christianity is 600 years older than Islam
Finally, a little pansee on the fundamentalist religion whether it is Christianity or Islam…when religious fanatics begin to read their canons, the Bible or Koran, literally and to quote it “proof text” rather than symbolically, allegorically, and metaphorically, there will be no inter-faith understanding between two religions.
And our sleazy politicians know how to take advantage on it and to call the shots.
Whose economy is it, anyway?
Whose economy is it, anyway?
January 29, 2002
“What do I care about the law? Hain’t I got the power?” Cornelius Van Derbilt
“We the Corporations of The United States, in order to make more money, establish our profits with campaign contributions and lobbying, insure a revolving door of greedy executives, provide pink slips for our employees and steal their retirement, promote theft from our shareholders, and secure the hatred of the people of the world through economic exploitation, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Corporations of the United States.” Tom Turnipseed.
In the opening days of the new year, the Wall Street appears to be jubilant and smiling in the expectation of recovery from the last year’s Nasdaq bubble-burst, and a majority of talking heads in the corporate media positively forecasts that economy is finally bottomed out and is heading for another good year in the stock investment from the second quarter.
The economists and financial analysts agree that the stimulus packages by the government is a sure path to recovery, in which the hard-hit industries like airlines, travel, insurance, and military industries would reap billions over the next few years and rich investors would toss more money into the stock market when King George persuades the Congress to cut taxes for riches.
Strangely, it does not ring the same bell for Joe Six-packs who were piled with the credit card debt, bill payments, and pink slips in their hand…and the statistics said otherwise: the unemployment jumps from the rate of 5.6 percent to 5.8 percent, the consumer debts reaches up record-high $7.5 trillion, and the “working” homeless people swell nationwide 13 percent over last year.
A survey by the US Conference of Mayors indicated that request for emergency shelter in major cities around the country increased sharply from New York City to New Orleans.
In New York City, the number of people in shelters reached over 30,000 including 12,500 children, an increase of 50 percent in three years, and there are an untold number in cold and windy street.
In Minneapolis, where in average night 5,000 people sought the shelter, the lottery draws determine who will get a warm meal, a hot shower, a chance to do a laundry, and a place lay down a tired body, and odds are as bad as winning a jackpot at the State lottery.
Among the homeless, many are employed in steady job but they can not afford to rent an apartment.
One of the ironies after the September 11 is that the charitable donations to help out the disadvantaged people have dropped considerably due to the outpouring of donation for the victim’s family in the September disaster: when you lay in blankets on a frozen stairs at church building, the city cops kick you off from their beat to somewhere under the bridge, and when you die in a posh twin tower, your family got a shower of money from the Government and even The Salvation Army kicks in to pay your household bills.
The homeless people are not counted as worth as a bloody Mullah in Afghanistan whose head is prized for millions of dollars, as if poor are not counted as rich benefactors in economic recovery.
They live in a hand-to-mouth fashion, hardly go on a binge on Sak’s or Bloomingdale’s, or few have a bank account rather cashing their check at the supermarket.
They are not faring at all in the economic stimulus program except panhandling for changes and gaping in awe at the ticker tape in the Time Square—people become irrelevant, voiceless, and unworthy in their own environment. That is, you do not exist in your own community!
According to the Census report, the poorest one-fifth of household in 2000 earned only 3.6 percent of the national income, while top one-fifth got 49 percent and three-fifth of middle shared 46 percent.
Conversely, the economy is surely in the hands of corporate juggernauts like Enron, Chase, Citigroup, Morgan, Goldman Sachs, GE, American Airline, and Military Industrial Complex like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing, which treat the US Treasury as one of their branches.
These corporations were given a full person entity by the Supreme Court, with full Constitutional protections of the right to speak and to act in every sphere—giving campaign contributions, lobbyings, and participating in the political campaigns: they are as much human as people, but act more like inhumane, top-to-down, despotic, greedy, amoral, corrupt, selfish, heartless, and careless tools.
When King George put up billions for the stimulus package in the military contracts, loans and grants to these corporations, the billions plus interest are due to be paid with taxes, which means the sweat and labor of average Joes—that is, the final payers of the bills are real people, not the corporate entity masqueraded in human figure.
Take the Enron case into perspective: among so many politicians, corporate lawyers, and financial auditors and regulators, few claimed their neutrality in the investigation of criminal activities in the largest corporate bankruptcy case of Houston-based energy giant that operates around the globe from India to Brazil.
In Congress, there are at least five committees that are on the trail for the Enron debacle, but the two-third of the members leaves shamefully the oily fingerprints on the list of Enron’s political contribution.
King George himself tried to distance himself from the CEO of Enron, “the Kenny Boy”, telling a lie that he did not know the CEO until 1994 and the Enron was a supporter of his political enemy, former Texas Governor Ann Richards, not George during his Texas Governor era.
The Bush Administration has so many pooh bahs whose incestuous relationship with Enron corrupts the notion of an unbiased investigation: Vice President Dick Cheney, Attorney General, Mullah John Ashcroft, White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsay, Secretary of Army Thomas White, U.S Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, Bush confidante Karl Rove, and more.
The head of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Harvey Pitt, who would have a final say on the stock manipulation and audit irregularities on the Enron and Arthur Andersen, was an attorney for the same audit firm Andersen, making him a sympathetic cop rather than a thorough investigator.
The Democrats are not exception: during the Clinton Administration, the Enron have made a $3 billion contract with Indian government through the good office of Bill Clinton who received millions of dollars of political contribution from the Company.
In corporate America of deregulation and laissez-faire ideology, when Joe blow writes a bad check or steals a loaf of bread, whose destiny surely heads for the minimum six month in jail, while a corporate juggernaut like Enron, Exxon, or GE, cheats consumers, government, or their employees, they got a slap on the wrist and most of the monetary damages are covered by insurance and limited liability for shareholders.
In other word, the company under the protection of limited liability is not responsible as much as a person while it enjoys full constitutional rights—giving campaign contributions, lobbying, and promoting their products—as many as an individual person is entitled to.
Because of these limited liability with an unlimited number of powerful friends, the corporate people become more audacious, arrogant and ruthless thugs, destroying an environment, shortchanging the powerless consumers, usurping desperate debtors, and finagling an exorbitant profit.
It is no more about We the People, but We the Corporation that manifest how people got trampled under the yoke of wealthy bosses.
Historically, the United States have been the paradise of freebooting capitalists, a pack of Robber Barons like Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Drew, Morgan, etc., who demanded always a free hand in the market, promising that in making them super-rich they would build up the country for the benefit of all the people.
Accordingly, the economy dances in tune with the corporate over-lords who are happy to see many people unemployed, because lay-off makes primarily to increase the value of CEO stock bonuses and becomes a major strategy to cut the cost of running the business.
These CEOs behave as if they were hailed from other planet to exploit and colonize the earth and retired to the remote Milky Way with their lovely wives, sons and daughters, leaving people behind holding the bags of rotten garbage.
Contrary to the popular nursery-rhyme opinion that the consumer confidence and spending are the major driving forces of the economy, people do not have a voice at the US economy and the corporate overlords hold the stock market in their sway in the massive accumulation of obscene wealth for one percent of the total population.
Now the Bush Administration embark on the privatization of the Social Security under the banner of “New Economy” that provides trillion dollars of new capitals into the sleazy hands of financial corporations and stupendous windfalls, commissions, and fees for the brokerage firms.
It is an ultimate coronation of the Wall Street that people put the whole trust on the financial institutions and Alan Greenspan for their old age income and disabilities…if market fails and economy goes blooey, people stand at the corner of the Wall Street with hat in hand and beg for changes from the bankers, brokers, and financial managers who used to gamble with their money.
People have no seat at the table in Wall Street where a cabal of corporate overlords enriches themselves with people’s pension funds and government-insured deposits.
It is an insidious corruption of democracy in the form of fascistic corporatism that was born through the collusion of state and corporate power.
January 29, 2002
“What do I care about the law? Hain’t I got the power?” Cornelius Van Derbilt
“We the Corporations of The United States, in order to make more money, establish our profits with campaign contributions and lobbying, insure a revolving door of greedy executives, provide pink slips for our employees and steal their retirement, promote theft from our shareholders, and secure the hatred of the people of the world through economic exploitation, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Corporations of the United States.” Tom Turnipseed.
In the opening days of the new year, the Wall Street appears to be jubilant and smiling in the expectation of recovery from the last year’s Nasdaq bubble-burst, and a majority of talking heads in the corporate media positively forecasts that economy is finally bottomed out and is heading for another good year in the stock investment from the second quarter.
The economists and financial analysts agree that the stimulus packages by the government is a sure path to recovery, in which the hard-hit industries like airlines, travel, insurance, and military industries would reap billions over the next few years and rich investors would toss more money into the stock market when King George persuades the Congress to cut taxes for riches.
Strangely, it does not ring the same bell for Joe Six-packs who were piled with the credit card debt, bill payments, and pink slips in their hand…and the statistics said otherwise: the unemployment jumps from the rate of 5.6 percent to 5.8 percent, the consumer debts reaches up record-high $7.5 trillion, and the “working” homeless people swell nationwide 13 percent over last year.
A survey by the US Conference of Mayors indicated that request for emergency shelter in major cities around the country increased sharply from New York City to New Orleans.
In New York City, the number of people in shelters reached over 30,000 including 12,500 children, an increase of 50 percent in three years, and there are an untold number in cold and windy street.
In Minneapolis, where in average night 5,000 people sought the shelter, the lottery draws determine who will get a warm meal, a hot shower, a chance to do a laundry, and a place lay down a tired body, and odds are as bad as winning a jackpot at the State lottery.
Among the homeless, many are employed in steady job but they can not afford to rent an apartment.
One of the ironies after the September 11 is that the charitable donations to help out the disadvantaged people have dropped considerably due to the outpouring of donation for the victim’s family in the September disaster: when you lay in blankets on a frozen stairs at church building, the city cops kick you off from their beat to somewhere under the bridge, and when you die in a posh twin tower, your family got a shower of money from the Government and even The Salvation Army kicks in to pay your household bills.
The homeless people are not counted as worth as a bloody Mullah in Afghanistan whose head is prized for millions of dollars, as if poor are not counted as rich benefactors in economic recovery.
They live in a hand-to-mouth fashion, hardly go on a binge on Sak’s or Bloomingdale’s, or few have a bank account rather cashing their check at the supermarket.
They are not faring at all in the economic stimulus program except panhandling for changes and gaping in awe at the ticker tape in the Time Square—people become irrelevant, voiceless, and unworthy in their own environment. That is, you do not exist in your own community!
According to the Census report, the poorest one-fifth of household in 2000 earned only 3.6 percent of the national income, while top one-fifth got 49 percent and three-fifth of middle shared 46 percent.
Conversely, the economy is surely in the hands of corporate juggernauts like Enron, Chase, Citigroup, Morgan, Goldman Sachs, GE, American Airline, and Military Industrial Complex like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing, which treat the US Treasury as one of their branches.
These corporations were given a full person entity by the Supreme Court, with full Constitutional protections of the right to speak and to act in every sphere—giving campaign contributions, lobbyings, and participating in the political campaigns: they are as much human as people, but act more like inhumane, top-to-down, despotic, greedy, amoral, corrupt, selfish, heartless, and careless tools.
When King George put up billions for the stimulus package in the military contracts, loans and grants to these corporations, the billions plus interest are due to be paid with taxes, which means the sweat and labor of average Joes—that is, the final payers of the bills are real people, not the corporate entity masqueraded in human figure.
Take the Enron case into perspective: among so many politicians, corporate lawyers, and financial auditors and regulators, few claimed their neutrality in the investigation of criminal activities in the largest corporate bankruptcy case of Houston-based energy giant that operates around the globe from India to Brazil.
In Congress, there are at least five committees that are on the trail for the Enron debacle, but the two-third of the members leaves shamefully the oily fingerprints on the list of Enron’s political contribution.
King George himself tried to distance himself from the CEO of Enron, “the Kenny Boy”, telling a lie that he did not know the CEO until 1994 and the Enron was a supporter of his political enemy, former Texas Governor Ann Richards, not George during his Texas Governor era.
The Bush Administration has so many pooh bahs whose incestuous relationship with Enron corrupts the notion of an unbiased investigation: Vice President Dick Cheney, Attorney General, Mullah John Ashcroft, White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsay, Secretary of Army Thomas White, U.S Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, Bush confidante Karl Rove, and more.
The head of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Harvey Pitt, who would have a final say on the stock manipulation and audit irregularities on the Enron and Arthur Andersen, was an attorney for the same audit firm Andersen, making him a sympathetic cop rather than a thorough investigator.
The Democrats are not exception: during the Clinton Administration, the Enron have made a $3 billion contract with Indian government through the good office of Bill Clinton who received millions of dollars of political contribution from the Company.
In corporate America of deregulation and laissez-faire ideology, when Joe blow writes a bad check or steals a loaf of bread, whose destiny surely heads for the minimum six month in jail, while a corporate juggernaut like Enron, Exxon, or GE, cheats consumers, government, or their employees, they got a slap on the wrist and most of the monetary damages are covered by insurance and limited liability for shareholders.
In other word, the company under the protection of limited liability is not responsible as much as a person while it enjoys full constitutional rights—giving campaign contributions, lobbying, and promoting their products—as many as an individual person is entitled to.
Because of these limited liability with an unlimited number of powerful friends, the corporate people become more audacious, arrogant and ruthless thugs, destroying an environment, shortchanging the powerless consumers, usurping desperate debtors, and finagling an exorbitant profit.
It is no more about We the People, but We the Corporation that manifest how people got trampled under the yoke of wealthy bosses.
Historically, the United States have been the paradise of freebooting capitalists, a pack of Robber Barons like Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Drew, Morgan, etc., who demanded always a free hand in the market, promising that in making them super-rich they would build up the country for the benefit of all the people.
Accordingly, the economy dances in tune with the corporate over-lords who are happy to see many people unemployed, because lay-off makes primarily to increase the value of CEO stock bonuses and becomes a major strategy to cut the cost of running the business.
These CEOs behave as if they were hailed from other planet to exploit and colonize the earth and retired to the remote Milky Way with their lovely wives, sons and daughters, leaving people behind holding the bags of rotten garbage.
Contrary to the popular nursery-rhyme opinion that the consumer confidence and spending are the major driving forces of the economy, people do not have a voice at the US economy and the corporate overlords hold the stock market in their sway in the massive accumulation of obscene wealth for one percent of the total population.
Now the Bush Administration embark on the privatization of the Social Security under the banner of “New Economy” that provides trillion dollars of new capitals into the sleazy hands of financial corporations and stupendous windfalls, commissions, and fees for the brokerage firms.
It is an ultimate coronation of the Wall Street that people put the whole trust on the financial institutions and Alan Greenspan for their old age income and disabilities…if market fails and economy goes blooey, people stand at the corner of the Wall Street with hat in hand and beg for changes from the bankers, brokers, and financial managers who used to gamble with their money.
People have no seat at the table in Wall Street where a cabal of corporate overlords enriches themselves with people’s pension funds and government-insured deposits.
It is an insidious corruption of democracy in the form of fascistic corporatism that was born through the collusion of state and corporate power.
The Wall Street: www.RobberBarons.com
The Wall Street: www.RobberBarons.com
July 17, 2002
Author’s note:
Robber baron was originated historically from referring to a noble who robbed travelers passing through his lands, and later in 1880 the embattled farmers of Kansas, in their anti-monopoly pamphlet, first applied the term to the masters of the US railway systems.
The nomenclature was widely used in late 19th Century to describe the ruthlessly powerful capitalists or industrialists, such as Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, J P Morgan, Astor, Mellon, et al of railway, steel, oil, and banking industries, who have become obscenely wealthy by exploiting natural resources, corrupting politicians, or employing other unethical means.
There has been a cacophony of outrage, anger, and frustration nationwide over the Risorgimento of modern-day robber barons in the “global free market system” that the CEOs of Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, Xerox, Global Crossing, Merck, Imclone, et al, have enriched themselves through the crafty accounting chicaneries and sleazy stock option shenanigans in collusion with their watch dog, Arthur Andersen (Accounting firm) and they have become bold enough to violate the fiduciary obligations to the millions of investors, the pensioners, their shareholders and employees
As the rot in the Wall Street has been structural and systemic in lying, cheating, and stealing on a grand scale, a majority of politicians has become the cheerleader of the corporate fraud through legislative deregulation and deliberate acquiescence, and some of them were deeply involved in the same financial malfeasance as they pass through the revolving doors of the corporate directorship.
Facing wave after wave of revelations of corporate fraud, George W feigned to be shocked and urged the Wall Street to go transparent and forthcoming in their financial activities, while he brushed aside his spurious involvement in the past financial transaction as an old story and it is without merit to discuss about his VP, Dick Cheney, being sued by the Judicial Watch for fraud.
A modicum of historical perspective about the Merchants’ Exchange Building at Wall and William Street in late 19th Century explains there has not been much difference in characters between then and now New York Stock Exchange…then was a huge whispering gallery, vibrant with a thousand rumors, machination, fears, and passions as the unfathomable place as the sea impending a huge hurricane, where the honest people were termed as a pack of fools and the bookkeeping was nothing more than a confounded fraud.
In a word, the Wall Street was inundated with the unsavory pack of greedy, exploitative, and deceptive speculators, upstarts, and shysters.
When you excel others in your daring, subtle, and shrewd trades and make others stripped of everything they had, you become a legend of the Stock Market.
One devoutly religious stockbroker used to fleece his fellow brokers and investors with his proverbial “handkerchief trick” and then attended the prayer meeting when his conscience bothers him.
Commodore Vanderbilt bragged: “What do I care about the law? Hain’t I got the power?”
J Pierpont Morgan, a 24-year-old buccaneering brat, derided the common people: “Wars are for the rich to profit from and for the poor to die in”, and later he became a Jesus Christ of the Wall Street surrounded with his Twelve Disciples, a pack of avaricious bankers.
The robber barons always demanded the laissez fair market, a freebooting, unlimited and untaxed access to the natural resources, promising that their exploitation of the national wealth and resources would build up the country for the benefit of all the people, and they bought and cultivated the best politicians money can buy, whose power firmly helped them to become the wealthiest behemoth.
Therefore, when the market collapses due to the excessive speculations, deception and monopoly of the unbridled robber barons, the government, Democratic or Republican, duly chips in for the rescue operations of these rascals that the public eventually shoulder the cost through taxation, legislation, and other bailout schemes at the expenses of welfare, healthcare, and pension benefits.
Have the exploitative, speculative and deceptive cultures of the Wall Street ever changed, redressed, or punished since then?
Nope! Not at all, and you don’t have to do anything, because that’s what the market is all about!
No one should intervene the gyration of the market fluctuation, and let the built-in corrective factors kick in when something goes blooey, and the government should not stick its regulatory measures up in the entrepreneur’s ass until as serious bankruptcy as S and L scandal required the corrupt pols to bail out the sleazy moneylenders with the billions of taxpayer’s money.
Capitalism has gained the momentum and flourished based on the economic inequality that somebody has to pay the price, as one’s gain is other’s loss as one percent of US population owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.
George W, whose government is full of former CEOs, from himself and Vice President to the Secretaries of Defense, Army, Treasury, Commerce and Labor, cried foul of the corporate dishonesty and hypocrisy at the Wall Street rally, and announced the establishment of the task force to reign his corporate buddies.
However, his gestures appeared not to surprise anyone, including the market itself, and various indices slid to the steep bottom, and people wonder why bad boys like the CEO of Enron still cozy up in their luxurious mansion after more than eight months since thousands of his employees were thrown out in the street.
A red-necked Washington Post columnist wrote in his op-ed: “Crime is generally an occupation of the poor.”
Yes, it is true as if the FBI collect only the data of street crimes and do not compile an annual report on corporate crime and violence…you steal a loaf of bread three times, then you end up in prison for 25 years, while the corporate such as Merrill Lynch makes a deal with the politician to pay up a penny after admitting to steal billions of dollars from the people.
Such powerful and rich are these financial scoundrels that only recessions catch what the auditors intentionally miss…if there were no slump in the market, they would dare to keep up the larceny and then slip away to the Caribbean Islands after unloading their worthless stocks on people’s lap, and George W. would loyally to put the lipstick on the pigs at the Wall Street, as the economist, M. Keynes once likened the stock markets to a beauty contest.
In such a contest, the contestants have to dress themselves up, hide their wart on their noses and concoct their resumes from the judges and audiences.
To the capitalists and industrialists conscience, there was nothing illegal or unethical, like a used car salesman, trying to dump a jalopy to a bozo who fumbles with his “dumb money”.
In the logic of free market, allowing investors to outwit others is the system at work, and it is almost impossible and unconscionable to criminalize the corporate greed unless you want to destroy the system itself.
Considering the nature of capitalism, the robber barons are never likely to disappear from the Wall Street into the Franciscan monastery, because with no incentives to steal, exploit, swindle, and get rich, life in the Wall Street is as boring as living in a heaven with Jesus Christ.
July 17, 2002
Author’s note:
Robber baron was originated historically from referring to a noble who robbed travelers passing through his lands, and later in 1880 the embattled farmers of Kansas, in their anti-monopoly pamphlet, first applied the term to the masters of the US railway systems.
The nomenclature was widely used in late 19th Century to describe the ruthlessly powerful capitalists or industrialists, such as Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, J P Morgan, Astor, Mellon, et al of railway, steel, oil, and banking industries, who have become obscenely wealthy by exploiting natural resources, corrupting politicians, or employing other unethical means.
There has been a cacophony of outrage, anger, and frustration nationwide over the Risorgimento of modern-day robber barons in the “global free market system” that the CEOs of Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, Xerox, Global Crossing, Merck, Imclone, et al, have enriched themselves through the crafty accounting chicaneries and sleazy stock option shenanigans in collusion with their watch dog, Arthur Andersen (Accounting firm) and they have become bold enough to violate the fiduciary obligations to the millions of investors, the pensioners, their shareholders and employees
As the rot in the Wall Street has been structural and systemic in lying, cheating, and stealing on a grand scale, a majority of politicians has become the cheerleader of the corporate fraud through legislative deregulation and deliberate acquiescence, and some of them were deeply involved in the same financial malfeasance as they pass through the revolving doors of the corporate directorship.
Facing wave after wave of revelations of corporate fraud, George W feigned to be shocked and urged the Wall Street to go transparent and forthcoming in their financial activities, while he brushed aside his spurious involvement in the past financial transaction as an old story and it is without merit to discuss about his VP, Dick Cheney, being sued by the Judicial Watch for fraud.
A modicum of historical perspective about the Merchants’ Exchange Building at Wall and William Street in late 19th Century explains there has not been much difference in characters between then and now New York Stock Exchange…then was a huge whispering gallery, vibrant with a thousand rumors, machination, fears, and passions as the unfathomable place as the sea impending a huge hurricane, where the honest people were termed as a pack of fools and the bookkeeping was nothing more than a confounded fraud.
In a word, the Wall Street was inundated with the unsavory pack of greedy, exploitative, and deceptive speculators, upstarts, and shysters.
When you excel others in your daring, subtle, and shrewd trades and make others stripped of everything they had, you become a legend of the Stock Market.
One devoutly religious stockbroker used to fleece his fellow brokers and investors with his proverbial “handkerchief trick” and then attended the prayer meeting when his conscience bothers him.
Commodore Vanderbilt bragged: “What do I care about the law? Hain’t I got the power?”
J Pierpont Morgan, a 24-year-old buccaneering brat, derided the common people: “Wars are for the rich to profit from and for the poor to die in”, and later he became a Jesus Christ of the Wall Street surrounded with his Twelve Disciples, a pack of avaricious bankers.
The robber barons always demanded the laissez fair market, a freebooting, unlimited and untaxed access to the natural resources, promising that their exploitation of the national wealth and resources would build up the country for the benefit of all the people, and they bought and cultivated the best politicians money can buy, whose power firmly helped them to become the wealthiest behemoth.
Therefore, when the market collapses due to the excessive speculations, deception and monopoly of the unbridled robber barons, the government, Democratic or Republican, duly chips in for the rescue operations of these rascals that the public eventually shoulder the cost through taxation, legislation, and other bailout schemes at the expenses of welfare, healthcare, and pension benefits.
Have the exploitative, speculative and deceptive cultures of the Wall Street ever changed, redressed, or punished since then?
Nope! Not at all, and you don’t have to do anything, because that’s what the market is all about!
No one should intervene the gyration of the market fluctuation, and let the built-in corrective factors kick in when something goes blooey, and the government should not stick its regulatory measures up in the entrepreneur’s ass until as serious bankruptcy as S and L scandal required the corrupt pols to bail out the sleazy moneylenders with the billions of taxpayer’s money.
Capitalism has gained the momentum and flourished based on the economic inequality that somebody has to pay the price, as one’s gain is other’s loss as one percent of US population owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.
George W, whose government is full of former CEOs, from himself and Vice President to the Secretaries of Defense, Army, Treasury, Commerce and Labor, cried foul of the corporate dishonesty and hypocrisy at the Wall Street rally, and announced the establishment of the task force to reign his corporate buddies.
However, his gestures appeared not to surprise anyone, including the market itself, and various indices slid to the steep bottom, and people wonder why bad boys like the CEO of Enron still cozy up in their luxurious mansion after more than eight months since thousands of his employees were thrown out in the street.
A red-necked Washington Post columnist wrote in his op-ed: “Crime is generally an occupation of the poor.”
Yes, it is true as if the FBI collect only the data of street crimes and do not compile an annual report on corporate crime and violence…you steal a loaf of bread three times, then you end up in prison for 25 years, while the corporate such as Merrill Lynch makes a deal with the politician to pay up a penny after admitting to steal billions of dollars from the people.
Such powerful and rich are these financial scoundrels that only recessions catch what the auditors intentionally miss…if there were no slump in the market, they would dare to keep up the larceny and then slip away to the Caribbean Islands after unloading their worthless stocks on people’s lap, and George W. would loyally to put the lipstick on the pigs at the Wall Street, as the economist, M. Keynes once likened the stock markets to a beauty contest.
In such a contest, the contestants have to dress themselves up, hide their wart on their noses and concoct their resumes from the judges and audiences.
To the capitalists and industrialists conscience, there was nothing illegal or unethical, like a used car salesman, trying to dump a jalopy to a bozo who fumbles with his “dumb money”.
In the logic of free market, allowing investors to outwit others is the system at work, and it is almost impossible and unconscionable to criminalize the corporate greed unless you want to destroy the system itself.
Considering the nature of capitalism, the robber barons are never likely to disappear from the Wall Street into the Franciscan monastery, because with no incentives to steal, exploit, swindle, and get rich, life in the Wall Street is as boring as living in a heaven with Jesus Christ.
Who will pay the debts?
Who Will Pay the Debts?
May 22, 2000
1.The unsavory economic policies and the pitfalls of the privatization
Despite the numerous and vigorous denials from DJ Kim’s financial mandarins, dark cloud has been on the South Korean economic horizon since the Daewoo bankruptcy last year.
DJ government has contrived to hide the most troublesome data of the economic performance from the public in order to avoid the political defeat in April election, and after the election he has taken the South Koreans a wild goose chase to the summit talk that appears to be a mere courtesy call of kowtowing to the Great Leader, without any detailed framework for the agenda.
Take for example, DJ’s mandarin from the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) had recently announced that a total of W101.9 trillion in public funds has been pumped into the financial sector for bailouts since 1997, contrary to what they said in January that they has spent W76.7 trillion worth of taxpayer’s money, a whopping discrepancy of over W24 trillion in four months.
In addition, they have not been frank enough to admit that they have almost completely depleted the state money to cover additional W30 trillion, saying only that they would not seek any more public funds requiring the parliamentary approval.
The trouble is the Standard & Poor, the global credit rating agency, has estimated that DJ needs an additional W120 trillion, not W30 trillion that his boys claim, to complete its restructuring in the financial sector.
One would have no trouble to find that DJ has been up to no good for the financial con game to cheat his people…his basic financial rescue plans have been robbing Peter to pay Paul or raising money from the state-owned stocks sales and issuing recklessly the state-bonds in the world financial market.
There are two major state-run corporations to deal with the restructuring, the Korea Deposit Insurance Corp (KDIC) and the Korea Asset Management Corp (KAMCO).
The KDIC has almost depleted their money in the rescue operation of Korea First Bank, Seoul Bank, Hanvit, and Peace Banks providing a total of 20.3 trillion won, and they only expect to recover 7 trillion won from their investment in banks within this year while holding currently W 1.3 trillion in reserve that can not be used because it is designated as a contingency fund in the event of bankruptcy at the financial institution.
The KAMCO accounts were flooded with nonperforming loans of banks, investment trust companies and other financial brokerages, and they can only raise about 8 trillion won this year through the fire sales or auctions of their nonperforming loans in the market.
What DJ has been hawk-eyeing for since his inauguration is that he, like former Russian president Yeltzin, wants to sell off, under the guise of the globalization, all available national assets and resources to the transnational corporation in the Wall Street, whether it is vital and necessary for the well beings of his people or is profitable to maintain as national corporation.
The Korea Electric Power Corp (KEPCO) is one of the lucrative companies that are vital in major industrial sector to keep under the umbrella of the Korean ownership. When the government has encountered the strong opposition against the privatization, his boys employed a sneaky alternative measure by splitting the corporation in several companies and using the company stocks as collateral to issue exchange bonds.
The Korea Tobacco and Ginseng Corp is another victim of DJ ‘s recklessness in the privatization of the national assets.
It is highly inconceivable that South Koreans would ever realize that they would shiver, if defaulting in the bill payment, in cold with no power to cook rice and no DJ Kim around to protest against, because their power is switched off by the cigar-chomping robber barons in the Wall Street off 10,000 miles away.
2. The unhealthy financial sectors
The investment trust companies that were taken over by the government require an infusion of 5 trillion won in taxpayer’s money in restructuring that is key to sustain the stability of the domestic stock market, and DJ has no choice but to bailout pumping 3 trillion won with taxpayers money until the end of June (they hastily abandoned the initial plan to bailout two state-run investment companies with three installment payments because it may trigger another time bomb if it fails to do so immediately.)
Another Investment Company of Hyundai Group recently had liquidity crisis that was pulled out of the water before drowning by the government.
There have been close inter-relationship of banks, investment companies and Chaebols that constitutes the backbone of the South Korean economy, and recent turmoil at the investment companies has undermined the confidence of the institutional investors in the stock market because it reveals that the weak financial profiles of the Chaebols have not been addressed adequately in the reduction of debt-to-equity ratio.
Despite of the government’s announcement that the top Chaebols had achieved their goal of lowering debt-to-equity ratio below 200 percent, the reduction appears to be misleading because it was achieved by increasing capital rather than decreasing the debts.
Since the some capital increases originated from their own subsidiaries or highly leveraged other conglomerates and the debts levels have remained high in international standards, the debt-to-equity ratio of 167 percent that the financial mandarins boasted would not have much significant meaning in the analysis of the economic health charts.
As the banks are reluctant to contribute in the reduction of debt-to-equity ratio scheme, the investment trust companies have purchased the bonds issued by the Chaebols to make up the shrinking bank lending, shifting the risk from the bank to the investment trust companies.
The irony is that the risks, whether it is shifted from one financial institution to another, does not disappear overnight, because they are closely intertwined each other like parasites thrive on weakened species as the banks invest in beneficiary certificates issued by investment trust companies and the Chaebols are still the essential customers for the banks.
However, the most dangerous and crucial factor that may determine the health of the South Korean economy depends on how the government finalizes and closes the deal in Daewoo Corp bankruptcy, of which principal of its debts amount to W80 trillion or $80 billion (one should not forget the amount of debts exceed over the entire South Korean government budget)
The workout plan has hit the glitch when the creditors of Daewoo Motor and minor shareholders have started filing legal actions to impound Daewoo’s assets, and many financial institutions are heavily exposed to the Daewoo debts with minimal recovery chance.
To add another blow to the government’s assertion that the economy is sound and healthy, a textile conglomerate ranking as the nation’s 27th largest Chaebol fell into the insolvency, even though the financial mandarin has given a clean bill of health on this company two weeks ago.
It has clear implication that many other mid-sized Chaebols are in danger of facing cash flows and the government agency (FSC) has covered up on the result of its investigation into the mid-sized Chaebols in terms of debt-to-equity ratio, which triggers the suspicion that many corporations may have not satisfactorily achieved the restructuring program.
However, it is illogical to expect that the conglomerates are capable of achieving the workout programs without additional infusion of fresh capitals that may be absorbed by the local financial institutions that do not want to expose to the possibility of fresh insolvency, because the lending institutions have W80 trillion of nonperforming loan, 15 percent of total credits.
3.The gloomy financial prospects.
There are many factors that determine the future growth and health of the economy.
a. The short-term external debts with maturity of one year have reached $43.4 billion, 30.3 percent of the total in March that was the trigger point of the financial crisis in 1997.
b. The oil price is rising from last year that adds $1 billion in energy imports per year in one dollar per barrel increase and there is zero chance the price would come down in near future.
c. The trade surplus during the first quarter of this year plummeted to one tenth of last year’s $8 billion, and the government has revised the trade surplus target of this year from $12 billion to $10 billion instead the financial analyst projects $8 billion.
d. The labor disputes have intensified in every sector of export businesses where the workers demand 15 percent wage increase and 40-hour workweek.
e. The interest-rate hike and tech-stock index plunges in the US has triggered the massive outflows of the foreign capitals by the American institutional investors. The governor of South Korean Central Bank had exhibited his stupidity saying that the interest hike in the US doesn’t affect any significant impact in economy ignoring simple fact that it costs more to borrow money from the US banks.
f. The foreign capitals will abandon the Seoul bourse in full swing when China joins the WTO and opens their market.***
***“The China factor” would have the most important ramification in the globalization of the world economy in near future: the intense efforts by Clinton Administration to upgrade the Chinese status to the permanently favored trade partner have dirty little secrets that the world needs China desperately for the expansion of the overheated global market as the stock markets gradually have signaled its fatigue and weariness, and Uncle Sam has been barely managing to keep the global engine running by assuming enormous trade deficit ($40 billion), in which South Korea benefited.
In preparation with the opening of Chinese market, Uncle Sam has to raise fresh capitals without causing inflation that they have already been floating the trial balloon: the privatization of the Social Security Funds or the releasing of certain portion of the funds to the contributors who can speculate on the stock market.***
One of the most worrisome phenomena is the growing gap between the rich and poor. The World Bank last year estimated that 19 percent of urbanites in South Korea are living under the poverty line in 1998. This percentage is more than double the 9 percent in 1997.
When we assume that some 70 percent of the Korean population are living in cities, the statistics indicate that the number of the urban poor increased from about 3 million to 6 million in one year. (The Bank defines someone as living in poverty if one has less than $4 to live on per day.)
While DJ government announced loudly the unemployment rates has been in decrease, only less than half percent of the employed are regular and full time workers and most of workers who have found jobs are temporary workers.
There is strong indication that the labor movements would spread out nationwide in conjunction with the beginning of the summit talk that promises nothing but the pie in the sky.
4. The Socialization of the Debts
Last year, DJ Kim has spit out an improbable braggadocio declaring that his government promises to bring the full employment in 2003 and balanced budget in 2004, while the state-run Korea Development Institute, quite contrarily, has projected that the national debt is expected to reach from 118.8trillion won in 2000 (22.7 percent of GDP) to 154.7 trillion at the end of 2002 (24.9 percent of GDP).
It would be the financial miracle that may warrant for the Nobel Prize if he could achieve the intended target. (One should note his term expires early 2003)
With some knowledge of economics, a sophomore in the college knows that there is no such things like the full-employment in the capitalistic society and it is highly unattainable and undesirable getting rid of deficit in the national budget.
I gather that DJ simply has tried to hoodwink his people – the Supreme Commander of US occupational forces in South Korea in the 80s has made fun of Koreans as a bunch of lemmings, when he saw no one objects Gen. Chun’s robbery of the presidency – who have the tendency to follow their leader with blinkers on.
The South Koreans, like lemmings, had responded immediately without question queuing up a long line to donate their precious gold bullion and US dollar bills in order to save the country from the shameful bankruptcy, even though they have got nothing to do with the debts of few conglomerates.
DJ knows very well that his lemmings are taught not to realize the debts are being socialized through the various policies of his government and they will obediently line up to pay the debts when they are called upon.
When one traces the debts of the South Korea, it turns out that the borrowers were around hundreds of thousands among 42 million people, like generals and his cohorts, some bureaucrats, and fatty businessmen around the military dictatorship.
When the financial crisis broke out, the borrowers were not held responsible for it and rather become richer with higher interest rates, but average Joe-six-packs have to endure the shock-therapy of the International Monetary Funds.
In fact it is hopeless task to pay off the debts that they did not borrow, since the debts have been socialized and metastasized in whole body of the society.
Who will eventually have to pay the debts off? DJ Kim? Conglomerates? Generals? People?
By design, DJ Kim becomes a poster boy for globalization, Conglomerates more richer, Generals more powerful, and finally People sitting ducks for the ravenous Wall Street financiers.
May 22, 2000
1.The unsavory economic policies and the pitfalls of the privatization
Despite the numerous and vigorous denials from DJ Kim’s financial mandarins, dark cloud has been on the South Korean economic horizon since the Daewoo bankruptcy last year.
DJ government has contrived to hide the most troublesome data of the economic performance from the public in order to avoid the political defeat in April election, and after the election he has taken the South Koreans a wild goose chase to the summit talk that appears to be a mere courtesy call of kowtowing to the Great Leader, without any detailed framework for the agenda.
Take for example, DJ’s mandarin from the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) had recently announced that a total of W101.9 trillion in public funds has been pumped into the financial sector for bailouts since 1997, contrary to what they said in January that they has spent W76.7 trillion worth of taxpayer’s money, a whopping discrepancy of over W24 trillion in four months.
In addition, they have not been frank enough to admit that they have almost completely depleted the state money to cover additional W30 trillion, saying only that they would not seek any more public funds requiring the parliamentary approval.
The trouble is the Standard & Poor, the global credit rating agency, has estimated that DJ needs an additional W120 trillion, not W30 trillion that his boys claim, to complete its restructuring in the financial sector.
One would have no trouble to find that DJ has been up to no good for the financial con game to cheat his people…his basic financial rescue plans have been robbing Peter to pay Paul or raising money from the state-owned stocks sales and issuing recklessly the state-bonds in the world financial market.
There are two major state-run corporations to deal with the restructuring, the Korea Deposit Insurance Corp (KDIC) and the Korea Asset Management Corp (KAMCO).
The KDIC has almost depleted their money in the rescue operation of Korea First Bank, Seoul Bank, Hanvit, and Peace Banks providing a total of 20.3 trillion won, and they only expect to recover 7 trillion won from their investment in banks within this year while holding currently W 1.3 trillion in reserve that can not be used because it is designated as a contingency fund in the event of bankruptcy at the financial institution.
The KAMCO accounts were flooded with nonperforming loans of banks, investment trust companies and other financial brokerages, and they can only raise about 8 trillion won this year through the fire sales or auctions of their nonperforming loans in the market.
What DJ has been hawk-eyeing for since his inauguration is that he, like former Russian president Yeltzin, wants to sell off, under the guise of the globalization, all available national assets and resources to the transnational corporation in the Wall Street, whether it is vital and necessary for the well beings of his people or is profitable to maintain as national corporation.
The Korea Electric Power Corp (KEPCO) is one of the lucrative companies that are vital in major industrial sector to keep under the umbrella of the Korean ownership. When the government has encountered the strong opposition against the privatization, his boys employed a sneaky alternative measure by splitting the corporation in several companies and using the company stocks as collateral to issue exchange bonds.
The Korea Tobacco and Ginseng Corp is another victim of DJ ‘s recklessness in the privatization of the national assets.
It is highly inconceivable that South Koreans would ever realize that they would shiver, if defaulting in the bill payment, in cold with no power to cook rice and no DJ Kim around to protest against, because their power is switched off by the cigar-chomping robber barons in the Wall Street off 10,000 miles away.
2. The unhealthy financial sectors
The investment trust companies that were taken over by the government require an infusion of 5 trillion won in taxpayer’s money in restructuring that is key to sustain the stability of the domestic stock market, and DJ has no choice but to bailout pumping 3 trillion won with taxpayers money until the end of June (they hastily abandoned the initial plan to bailout two state-run investment companies with three installment payments because it may trigger another time bomb if it fails to do so immediately.)
Another Investment Company of Hyundai Group recently had liquidity crisis that was pulled out of the water before drowning by the government.
There have been close inter-relationship of banks, investment companies and Chaebols that constitutes the backbone of the South Korean economy, and recent turmoil at the investment companies has undermined the confidence of the institutional investors in the stock market because it reveals that the weak financial profiles of the Chaebols have not been addressed adequately in the reduction of debt-to-equity ratio.
Despite of the government’s announcement that the top Chaebols had achieved their goal of lowering debt-to-equity ratio below 200 percent, the reduction appears to be misleading because it was achieved by increasing capital rather than decreasing the debts.
Since the some capital increases originated from their own subsidiaries or highly leveraged other conglomerates and the debts levels have remained high in international standards, the debt-to-equity ratio of 167 percent that the financial mandarins boasted would not have much significant meaning in the analysis of the economic health charts.
As the banks are reluctant to contribute in the reduction of debt-to-equity ratio scheme, the investment trust companies have purchased the bonds issued by the Chaebols to make up the shrinking bank lending, shifting the risk from the bank to the investment trust companies.
The irony is that the risks, whether it is shifted from one financial institution to another, does not disappear overnight, because they are closely intertwined each other like parasites thrive on weakened species as the banks invest in beneficiary certificates issued by investment trust companies and the Chaebols are still the essential customers for the banks.
However, the most dangerous and crucial factor that may determine the health of the South Korean economy depends on how the government finalizes and closes the deal in Daewoo Corp bankruptcy, of which principal of its debts amount to W80 trillion or $80 billion (one should not forget the amount of debts exceed over the entire South Korean government budget)
The workout plan has hit the glitch when the creditors of Daewoo Motor and minor shareholders have started filing legal actions to impound Daewoo’s assets, and many financial institutions are heavily exposed to the Daewoo debts with minimal recovery chance.
To add another blow to the government’s assertion that the economy is sound and healthy, a textile conglomerate ranking as the nation’s 27th largest Chaebol fell into the insolvency, even though the financial mandarin has given a clean bill of health on this company two weeks ago.
It has clear implication that many other mid-sized Chaebols are in danger of facing cash flows and the government agency (FSC) has covered up on the result of its investigation into the mid-sized Chaebols in terms of debt-to-equity ratio, which triggers the suspicion that many corporations may have not satisfactorily achieved the restructuring program.
However, it is illogical to expect that the conglomerates are capable of achieving the workout programs without additional infusion of fresh capitals that may be absorbed by the local financial institutions that do not want to expose to the possibility of fresh insolvency, because the lending institutions have W80 trillion of nonperforming loan, 15 percent of total credits.
3.The gloomy financial prospects.
There are many factors that determine the future growth and health of the economy.
a. The short-term external debts with maturity of one year have reached $43.4 billion, 30.3 percent of the total in March that was the trigger point of the financial crisis in 1997.
b. The oil price is rising from last year that adds $1 billion in energy imports per year in one dollar per barrel increase and there is zero chance the price would come down in near future.
c. The trade surplus during the first quarter of this year plummeted to one tenth of last year’s $8 billion, and the government has revised the trade surplus target of this year from $12 billion to $10 billion instead the financial analyst projects $8 billion.
d. The labor disputes have intensified in every sector of export businesses where the workers demand 15 percent wage increase and 40-hour workweek.
e. The interest-rate hike and tech-stock index plunges in the US has triggered the massive outflows of the foreign capitals by the American institutional investors. The governor of South Korean Central Bank had exhibited his stupidity saying that the interest hike in the US doesn’t affect any significant impact in economy ignoring simple fact that it costs more to borrow money from the US banks.
f. The foreign capitals will abandon the Seoul bourse in full swing when China joins the WTO and opens their market.***
***“The China factor” would have the most important ramification in the globalization of the world economy in near future: the intense efforts by Clinton Administration to upgrade the Chinese status to the permanently favored trade partner have dirty little secrets that the world needs China desperately for the expansion of the overheated global market as the stock markets gradually have signaled its fatigue and weariness, and Uncle Sam has been barely managing to keep the global engine running by assuming enormous trade deficit ($40 billion), in which South Korea benefited.
In preparation with the opening of Chinese market, Uncle Sam has to raise fresh capitals without causing inflation that they have already been floating the trial balloon: the privatization of the Social Security Funds or the releasing of certain portion of the funds to the contributors who can speculate on the stock market.***
One of the most worrisome phenomena is the growing gap between the rich and poor. The World Bank last year estimated that 19 percent of urbanites in South Korea are living under the poverty line in 1998. This percentage is more than double the 9 percent in 1997.
When we assume that some 70 percent of the Korean population are living in cities, the statistics indicate that the number of the urban poor increased from about 3 million to 6 million in one year. (The Bank defines someone as living in poverty if one has less than $4 to live on per day.)
While DJ government announced loudly the unemployment rates has been in decrease, only less than half percent of the employed are regular and full time workers and most of workers who have found jobs are temporary workers.
There is strong indication that the labor movements would spread out nationwide in conjunction with the beginning of the summit talk that promises nothing but the pie in the sky.
4. The Socialization of the Debts
Last year, DJ Kim has spit out an improbable braggadocio declaring that his government promises to bring the full employment in 2003 and balanced budget in 2004, while the state-run Korea Development Institute, quite contrarily, has projected that the national debt is expected to reach from 118.8trillion won in 2000 (22.7 percent of GDP) to 154.7 trillion at the end of 2002 (24.9 percent of GDP).
It would be the financial miracle that may warrant for the Nobel Prize if he could achieve the intended target. (One should note his term expires early 2003)
With some knowledge of economics, a sophomore in the college knows that there is no such things like the full-employment in the capitalistic society and it is highly unattainable and undesirable getting rid of deficit in the national budget.
I gather that DJ simply has tried to hoodwink his people – the Supreme Commander of US occupational forces in South Korea in the 80s has made fun of Koreans as a bunch of lemmings, when he saw no one objects Gen. Chun’s robbery of the presidency – who have the tendency to follow their leader with blinkers on.
The South Koreans, like lemmings, had responded immediately without question queuing up a long line to donate their precious gold bullion and US dollar bills in order to save the country from the shameful bankruptcy, even though they have got nothing to do with the debts of few conglomerates.
DJ knows very well that his lemmings are taught not to realize the debts are being socialized through the various policies of his government and they will obediently line up to pay the debts when they are called upon.
When one traces the debts of the South Korea, it turns out that the borrowers were around hundreds of thousands among 42 million people, like generals and his cohorts, some bureaucrats, and fatty businessmen around the military dictatorship.
When the financial crisis broke out, the borrowers were not held responsible for it and rather become richer with higher interest rates, but average Joe-six-packs have to endure the shock-therapy of the International Monetary Funds.
In fact it is hopeless task to pay off the debts that they did not borrow, since the debts have been socialized and metastasized in whole body of the society.
Who will eventually have to pay the debts off? DJ Kim? Conglomerates? Generals? People?
By design, DJ Kim becomes a poster boy for globalization, Conglomerates more richer, Generals more powerful, and finally People sitting ducks for the ravenous Wall Street financiers.
The Penitence of a Wall Street Robber Baron: George Soros
The “Penitence” of a Wall Street Robber Baron: George Soros
May 6, 2000
“Markets basically are amoral, whereas society does need some kind of morality—a distinction between right and wrong. And by allowing market values to become all-important, we actually narrow the space for moral judgement and undermine public morality.
This has actually happened, and globalization has increased this aberration, because it has actually reduced the power of individual states to determine their destiny.”
“If I ruled the world, I would establish an international regulatory agency to rein in speculative excesses and provide financing during economic crisis.”
One may erroneously assume that the above statements would be an expression from the head of the socialist country or at least the left-leaning scholar who adamantly believe that unfettered capitalism should be regulated to conform with the social justice and equality.
Quite surprisingly, it has come from the mouth of George Soros, who has been reigning his hedge fund empire, Quantum Fund, for two decades beginning in 1969.
Hedge funds—largely unregulated investment pools open only to wealthy investors and big institutions—aim to provide consistently outsized returns on stocks, bonds, currencies or other securities while limiting losses from market downturn. Since the funds hold such a vast volume of capitals under its control, the collapse of the company would touch off a global financial panic that even the US government has orchestrated bailout of one of the big and near-broken a Connecticut-based Long-Term Capital Management to stem the global financial meltdown.
Wall Street is populated by some of the most cynical and greedy bastards on earth, and George Soros has been one of them since his move to New York in late 1950 as a Hungarian Jew who had avoided the fate of many Jews by posing as the godson of a Hungarian official overseeing the confiscation of Jewish properties.
He has become a house hold name as a currency speculator when his Quantum and related funds, largely using piles of borrowed money, have made more than $1 billion in a few weeks by betting against the British pound and eventually broken the back of the central Bank of England.
In 1997, Soros’ funds were shorting Thailand’s currency, the baht, and Malaysia’s, the ringgit, betting that the value of both currencies would drop and his attack has resulted in Asian financial crises.
“The Jews robbed the Palestinians of everything, but in Malaysia they could not do so, hence they do this—depress the ringgit,” said Mahathir Mohamad, the Prime Minister of Malaysia.
And newly elected DJ Kim was so frightened with the power of Soros that he has invited the notorious speculator to his palace and begged for leaving the South Korean currency alone.
Soros was revered such in the global financial market that the Brazilian president has hired one of his fund managers as the head of the Central Bank in order to salvage the downturn value of its currency.
However, his manifold roles in world market appeared to be in trouble when his funds jumped into the Russian market in 1997 where politically powerful Mafia, known as oligarchs were having the field days to rob the national wealth in the privatization of Russian industries.
He has established $1 billion partnership with one of the Russian Mafia in the telecommunication firm, and during the Russian economic meltdown in the summer of 1998, he personally contacted with Robert Rubin, the American Treasury Secretary and members of Yeltsin’s administration in his failed attempts to rescue Russia from bankruptcy and eventually ended up losing $2 billion.
In recent years, his prediction that the Euro would rise and the yen would fall against US dollar was miserably wrong and his Quantum Funds have lost billions in its currency speculation.
In addition, during recent collapse in tech-stocks, the Funds lost again one fifth of its value, wiping out $3 billion from the fund’s net assets, which stand at $8.2 billion.
Last Friday, George Soros has announced that he would withdraw from large scale and high risk hedge fund investing and reorganize his Quantum Fund into a group of smaller funds based on lower risk strategies, accepting the resignation of two top money managers
Soros announcement follows hard on the heels of the closure of the second largest hedge fund company, Tiger Management LLC, which had investment returns averaging 32 percent a year during last decades, experienced a drop in asset values of $16 billion in the last year, much of which was due to the fall in technology stocks.
Explaining the reasons for his withdrawal, Soros mumbled: Maybe I don’t understand the market or maybe in some ways I think the music has stopped—only most people are still dancing. When markets are extremely risky, we will be more conservative, have less exposure to the market and accept lower returns.
One of his resigned managers mused: I never thought the NASDAQ would drop 35 percent in 15 days. This business is a bit like a drug. When you are doing well, it’s hard to quit.
In recent Tokyo conference, a leading member of the US Federal Reserve Board has given one of the clearest indications yet that alarm bells are starting to ring in American financial circles over the impact of the stock market bubble on the U.S. trade deficit and the growing indebtedness of the U.S. economy.
The latest statistics show that the current account deficit reached an all-time high of $339 billion last year a more than 50 percent increase over 1998, and this growing trade gap is being funded by the inflow of funds from the rest of the world, sending the US deeper into debt.
Net obligation to foreign creditors were 18 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at the end of 1998 and are now estimated to be more than 20 percent of GDP. In 1997 they amounted to 13 percent of GDP and stood at zero a decade ago. (In South Korea, the ratio of imports and exports against GDP reaches 60-80% at times. In 1995, it was 57% for Korea, much higher than that of Japan 15%)
The Feds said that the U.S. cannot indefinitely be the engine of growth for the world economy without running the very risk of economic and financial difficulties that could well weigh on many of the world’s economies.
Capitalism is essentially an amoral system based on exploitation, and George Soros and other financial mavens have been on a high alert that the global capitalist system would be coming apart at the seams.
The system was based on the belief that markets, if left to their own devices, would tend to return to an equilibrium position, which has been false and instead of acting like a pendulum, the financial markets have recently acting more like a wrecking ball knocking over one economy after another.
Markets can not be perfectly efficient or rational because investors are working on the swings and vagaries of human behaviors such as herd mentality, that people who communicate regularly think similarly, the myth of fully independent judgement, or amazing human capacity to simultaneously hold conflicting beliefs with no apparent discomfort, etc.
Now once-feared financial guru has brought together his fear about the operations of the international financial markets saying: “We live in a global economy, but the political organization of our global society is woefully inadequate. Without the control, the global economy is liable to break down. The development of a global economy has not been matched by the development of a global society. The basic unit for political and social life remains the state-nation that has no control of global financial markets.”
It is extremely bizarre to see Soros who has made a fortune speculating and now turn around to advocate regulating the financial markets. It is as if he has suddenly found the absurdity of capitalism and wants to metamorphose from a Robber Baron into a Ralph Nader of the Wall Street.
May 6, 2000
“Markets basically are amoral, whereas society does need some kind of morality—a distinction between right and wrong. And by allowing market values to become all-important, we actually narrow the space for moral judgement and undermine public morality.
This has actually happened, and globalization has increased this aberration, because it has actually reduced the power of individual states to determine their destiny.”
“If I ruled the world, I would establish an international regulatory agency to rein in speculative excesses and provide financing during economic crisis.”
One may erroneously assume that the above statements would be an expression from the head of the socialist country or at least the left-leaning scholar who adamantly believe that unfettered capitalism should be regulated to conform with the social justice and equality.
Quite surprisingly, it has come from the mouth of George Soros, who has been reigning his hedge fund empire, Quantum Fund, for two decades beginning in 1969.
Hedge funds—largely unregulated investment pools open only to wealthy investors and big institutions—aim to provide consistently outsized returns on stocks, bonds, currencies or other securities while limiting losses from market downturn. Since the funds hold such a vast volume of capitals under its control, the collapse of the company would touch off a global financial panic that even the US government has orchestrated bailout of one of the big and near-broken a Connecticut-based Long-Term Capital Management to stem the global financial meltdown.
Wall Street is populated by some of the most cynical and greedy bastards on earth, and George Soros has been one of them since his move to New York in late 1950 as a Hungarian Jew who had avoided the fate of many Jews by posing as the godson of a Hungarian official overseeing the confiscation of Jewish properties.
He has become a house hold name as a currency speculator when his Quantum and related funds, largely using piles of borrowed money, have made more than $1 billion in a few weeks by betting against the British pound and eventually broken the back of the central Bank of England.
In 1997, Soros’ funds were shorting Thailand’s currency, the baht, and Malaysia’s, the ringgit, betting that the value of both currencies would drop and his attack has resulted in Asian financial crises.
“The Jews robbed the Palestinians of everything, but in Malaysia they could not do so, hence they do this—depress the ringgit,” said Mahathir Mohamad, the Prime Minister of Malaysia.
And newly elected DJ Kim was so frightened with the power of Soros that he has invited the notorious speculator to his palace and begged for leaving the South Korean currency alone.
Soros was revered such in the global financial market that the Brazilian president has hired one of his fund managers as the head of the Central Bank in order to salvage the downturn value of its currency.
However, his manifold roles in world market appeared to be in trouble when his funds jumped into the Russian market in 1997 where politically powerful Mafia, known as oligarchs were having the field days to rob the national wealth in the privatization of Russian industries.
He has established $1 billion partnership with one of the Russian Mafia in the telecommunication firm, and during the Russian economic meltdown in the summer of 1998, he personally contacted with Robert Rubin, the American Treasury Secretary and members of Yeltsin’s administration in his failed attempts to rescue Russia from bankruptcy and eventually ended up losing $2 billion.
In recent years, his prediction that the Euro would rise and the yen would fall against US dollar was miserably wrong and his Quantum Funds have lost billions in its currency speculation.
In addition, during recent collapse in tech-stocks, the Funds lost again one fifth of its value, wiping out $3 billion from the fund’s net assets, which stand at $8.2 billion.
Last Friday, George Soros has announced that he would withdraw from large scale and high risk hedge fund investing and reorganize his Quantum Fund into a group of smaller funds based on lower risk strategies, accepting the resignation of two top money managers
Soros announcement follows hard on the heels of the closure of the second largest hedge fund company, Tiger Management LLC, which had investment returns averaging 32 percent a year during last decades, experienced a drop in asset values of $16 billion in the last year, much of which was due to the fall in technology stocks.
Explaining the reasons for his withdrawal, Soros mumbled: Maybe I don’t understand the market or maybe in some ways I think the music has stopped—only most people are still dancing. When markets are extremely risky, we will be more conservative, have less exposure to the market and accept lower returns.
One of his resigned managers mused: I never thought the NASDAQ would drop 35 percent in 15 days. This business is a bit like a drug. When you are doing well, it’s hard to quit.
In recent Tokyo conference, a leading member of the US Federal Reserve Board has given one of the clearest indications yet that alarm bells are starting to ring in American financial circles over the impact of the stock market bubble on the U.S. trade deficit and the growing indebtedness of the U.S. economy.
The latest statistics show that the current account deficit reached an all-time high of $339 billion last year a more than 50 percent increase over 1998, and this growing trade gap is being funded by the inflow of funds from the rest of the world, sending the US deeper into debt.
Net obligation to foreign creditors were 18 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at the end of 1998 and are now estimated to be more than 20 percent of GDP. In 1997 they amounted to 13 percent of GDP and stood at zero a decade ago. (In South Korea, the ratio of imports and exports against GDP reaches 60-80% at times. In 1995, it was 57% for Korea, much higher than that of Japan 15%)
The Feds said that the U.S. cannot indefinitely be the engine of growth for the world economy without running the very risk of economic and financial difficulties that could well weigh on many of the world’s economies.
Capitalism is essentially an amoral system based on exploitation, and George Soros and other financial mavens have been on a high alert that the global capitalist system would be coming apart at the seams.
The system was based on the belief that markets, if left to their own devices, would tend to return to an equilibrium position, which has been false and instead of acting like a pendulum, the financial markets have recently acting more like a wrecking ball knocking over one economy after another.
Markets can not be perfectly efficient or rational because investors are working on the swings and vagaries of human behaviors such as herd mentality, that people who communicate regularly think similarly, the myth of fully independent judgement, or amazing human capacity to simultaneously hold conflicting beliefs with no apparent discomfort, etc.
Now once-feared financial guru has brought together his fear about the operations of the international financial markets saying: “We live in a global economy, but the political organization of our global society is woefully inadequate. Without the control, the global economy is liable to break down. The development of a global economy has not been matched by the development of a global society. The basic unit for political and social life remains the state-nation that has no control of global financial markets.”
It is extremely bizarre to see Soros who has made a fortune speculating and now turn around to advocate regulating the financial markets. It is as if he has suddenly found the absurdity of capitalism and wants to metamorphose from a Robber Baron into a Ralph Nader of the Wall Street.
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