Confidence in the Direction

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live a life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

- Henry David Thoreau

放一颗心

曲名：放一颗心
歌手：杜德伟

别怕我爱的太多
爱你我很快乐
你尽管放心接受
这样温柔和我
我不怕任何结果
珍惜这一刻
就算是有一天
你突然想走

你并不需要担心太多
怕你不够了解我
只要记住无爱不痴
无爱不狂
就够

爱从来不怕付出太多
也从不保留
为了你我什么都做
看着你是种享受
拥有你更是感动

*放一颗心留在你的身边
每次离去陪你入眠
你千万记住
有我在耳边说爱你

别怕我爱的太多
爱你我很快乐
你要乖乖的
等着我回来

你尽管放心接受
这样温柔的我

The Day is Done

The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.
I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me
That my soul cannot resist:
A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.
Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.
Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.
For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor;
And to-night I long for rest.
Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;
Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.
Such songs have power to quiet.
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.
Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.
And the night shall be filled with music
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Potential Vs Reality

A kid comes home from school with a writing assignment. He asks his father for help. "Dad, can you tell me the difference between potential & reality?"

His father looks up, thoughtfully, & then says, "I'll demonstrate. Go ask your mother if she would sleep with Robert Redford for a million dollars. Then go ask your sister if she would sleep with Brad Pitt for a million dollars. Then come back & tell me what you've learned."

The kid is puzzled, but decides to ask his mother. "Mom, if someone gave you a million dollars, would you sleep with Robert Redford?"

Don't tell your father, but, yes, I would."

He then goes to his sister's room. "Sis, if someone gave you a million dollars, would you sleep with Brad Pitt?"

She replies, "Omigod! Definitely!"

The kid goes back to his father. "Dad, I think I've figured it out. Potentially, we are sitting on two million bucks, but in reality, we are living with two sluts."

A Lesson for Managers

A junior manager, a senior manager & their boss are on their way to a meeting. On their way through a park, they come across a wonder lamp.They rub the lamp & a ghost appears.

The ghost says, "Normally, one is granted three wishes but as you are three, I will allow one wish each"

So the eager senior manager shouted, "I want the first wish. I want to be in the Bahamas, on a fast boat & have no worries." Pfufffff, & he was gone.

Now the junior manager could not keep quiet & shouted "I want to be in Florida with beautiful girls, plenty of food & cocktails." Pfufffff, & he was also gone.

The boss calmly said, "I want these two idiots back in the office after lunch at 12.35pm."

Moral of the story: ALWAYS ALLOW THE BOSSES TO SPEAK FIRST!

Dance - Enjoy Each Step

When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor. It's to enjoy each step along the way.

- Wayne Dyer

Bear Stearns' Funds in Trouble!

Stock markets across the world had an attack of the jitters last week, led by the US. On Friday, the Dow Jones lost more than 100 points, to close down at 13,360. One of the key worries is the condition of two hedge funds ran by investment bank Bear Stearns.

The funds both invested in securities related to the US subprime mortgage market - the elephant in the global economy’s living room that all the participants are desperately trying to ignore in the hope that it will just go away. So what exactly is the problem, & could this be the start of something bigger?

Two of Bear Stearns’ hedge funds - the High-Grade Structured Credit Fund & the High-Grade Structured Credit Enhanced Leverage Fund - are experiencing problems. In essence, the funds made some bad bets on the US housing market, & now they’ve run into trouble. Other banks that had loaned the funds money to make those bets now want it back, but they don’t have it.

The troubles emerged when Bear Stearns stopped investors in the second fund (the ‘enhanced leverage’ one) from pulling money out - which is, as Bloomberg put it, “the first sign of an impending collapse.” So naturally, “the investment banks who had lent money to the Bear Stearns hedge funds said – ‘We want our money back. And if we can’t get our money back right away, we may seize collateral & sell it,'”.

Some of the banks reached deals with Bear Stearns, but others - including Merrill Lynch - began selling assets, or are at least considering doing so. Bear Stearns seems to have saved the first fund for the moment, by putting up $3.2bn of its own money to bail it out, but it looks like the second will be wound down.

The idea the funds might collapse certainly has some analysts worried. The demise of two Bear Stearns managed Leveraged Mortgage Funds could be the tipping point of a broader fallout from subprime mortgage credit deterioration that would lead to cascading de-leveraging & ultimately end with higher rates to new mortgage borrowers.

So how would this happen? Well, derivatives are complicated beasts, but like most things in finance, the basic concepts aren’t that difficult to get your head around. The big problem with the Bear Stearns funds is that a lot of the assets they have are of dubious quality & are illiquid - in other words, they don’t change hands very often. That means that no one is entirely sure of how much those assets are actually worth. And that situation is made worse by the fact that in the wake of the subprime mortgage collapse, they are probably worth much less than they were when everyone in America still believed that house prices could only go up.

The problem is not what we see happening but what we don’t see! We don’t know the price of these assets. We don’t know which banks are exposed to this sector. These conditions are classic conditions for financial crises across history.

If Bear Stearns has to sell off its assets, it will probably reveal that they are worth much less than anyone had thought. And that means that anyone else who has invested in similar assets could see huge writedowns on their value – it could also lead to a sharp rise in the number of people trying to rush out of the market.

In any case, even if the two funds go down without much of a wider impact, it shows that the problems caused by the troubled US housing market are a long way from being over. Many analysts & authority figures are keen to point to a bottom in the market, or suggest that the impact will be restricted to a very small portion of the population - the poor, basically, who should never have been able to get hold of these home loans in the first place.

But house prices in the US are already falling, while lending standards are tightening. That has an impact on everybody. With the savings rate well into negative territory, where it has been for a long time, US consumers (not just the 'poor’ ones) have been relying on being able to borrow money against the ever-increasing value of their homes for a long time, particularly as wage growth hasn‘t been enough to provide much of a boost to the average person’s standard of living.

Now they can’t do that anymore. So if you can’t borrow more money, then you either have to cut back on your spending, or you have to earn more. And one of the easiest ways to earn more is to demand more from your employer. And why shouldn’t employees ask for more? After all, we’re always hearing about how the global economy is in a ‘sweet spot’ & that times have never been so good & that corporate profits are at record levels compared to employees’ wages - why shouldn’t the workers demand a bigger slice of that?

Of course, the problem with that is that higher wage demands tend to drive up inflation. That puts pressure on interest rates to rise too, & that makes debt servicing even harder. As the US economic 'miracles’ have been built on cheap debt, its absence is likely to kick the legs from under them.

Yesterday the Bank for International Settlements (the BIS, or the ‘central banker’s central bank’ as it’s also known) warned of the consequences as borrowing becomes more expensive. “Given the key role that a benign credit environment has been playing in boosting the performance of the financial sector over the past years, a turn in the credit cycle represents a significant risk to its outlook.”

So Bear Stearns may live to fight another day - but the more testing times for the global economy are just beginning.