6 posts tagged “current affairs”

or yearning to be a stay-at-home mom, or whatever is the current correct expression. According to a recent survey, majority of female university students in Japan expressed their 'most desirable future' is to be a housewife. That's right, not working, not being independent, they want to discard the whole thing. About 25% said they would want to work for a while, get get married and 'settle down' (thus ending up as a housewife/stay-at-home mum). Only 25% said they would want to keep working and maintain their professional career.

According to Yomiuri Shinbun, one of the major newpapers in Japan, one of the main people responsible for the massacre of Srebrenica shot back; it says he submitted this document to the international tribunal in The Hague, which he says was given to him by the U.S. government, giving him immunity in exchange for his withdrawal from public life, issued by then Clinton administration.

So Iran is evil and messing with Iraqi border, huh?

Let me ask you something; have they ever tried un-manning the US-Mexico border, and start blaming the Mexican government for messing with the U.S. border??? That would be pretty stupid, wouldn't it? (^o^)

You shouldn't have promised low-rank Iraqi soliders to be under the payroll of new Iraqi army after Saddam regime collapsed, then changed your mind and let everyone walk. They could have been patrolling that border right now instead of pissed at your "betrayal" (that's how it will look from their point of view don't you think) and probably executing / helping with / turning the other way from all those attacks.

Securitization.
The banks which lend money to homeowners, they securitize such loan asset into a certain type of commercial paper (i.e. bond) which they would sell to other financial institutions and hedge funds. This way, the banks don't have to wait for decades to fully get their money back (and take the risk of the new homeowners getting fired or sick and fail to pay them back down the line). The loan payment you shell out goes to these investors, some of whom in tern will pledge such commercial paper to borrow or put leverage on even more money, which they invest in something else (they also could be anywhere, such as in EU or in Japan). So if this whole basis goes, whole bunch of investment schemes would go FUBAR in no time (don't know what FUBAR is? Watch Saving Private Ryan. It's not German).
Believe it or not, in today's world, the rich don't know what to do with all the money they gathered (partly, as you may have noticed, by exploiting honest and hardworking folks such as Ivysgrandkid in my 'hood). They need more stuff to invest in to make more money, and financial institutions with clients like them have to come up with these schemes to make them happy and sometimes, people start to forget just how volatile the basis their whole world is built on.

...Also note that (as I understand) in America, the banks have agents who gather around customers and even do the screening and credit evaluation for them (in exchange for a fee of course). In other words, banks don't have to work hard to get new loan applications, and they have been cashing in on almost intant payment on such loans from third party investors through securitization. Pretty much no risk at the entrance, and the same thing at the exit- as long as the real estate price keeps going up. The breeding ground for moral hazard anyone?

Come on, liberals; aren't we supposed to be smarter than those conservatives?

All the unrest at G-8 is getting so old and predictable. They can do what they do at those conferences anywhere anytime, regardless of how much unrest they cause on the street (they don't even have to do it in actual location- there are teleconference and even online conference options). It may have had "shock value" back at Seattle, but no more. There has to be a smarter way to appeal to the mass public, without giving the impression that the liberals are not responsible and they actually are capable of coming up with alternatives to what those conferences represent.

The head of one of the warring Yakuza families (I've blogged about all-out Yakuza warfare almost took place in Tokyo in two posts somewhere in the backlog) "killed himself" with a pistol (doesn't say what kind). I'm not sure if this is how they "paid the price" for the disturbance in their world... At first I thought it was a well-disguised hit (happens all the time) but since I read no more of these troubles, I guess everyone can go back to normal business of protection rackets and so forth...