A few weeks ago, I seriously considered buying a Kindle.  After much research on the web, I realized the task was futile.  I live in Europe at the moment, so the Whispernet function would be useless here.  As I am Canadian, with no US address nor credit card, purchasing the device and subsequent ebooks would be impossible.  On a desperate whim, I called up a cousin of mine in Massachusetts, and asked if I could use her card and address to order.  She told me there’s a backorder of those anyway, so why not wait till they get stock?

Then a few days ago, my boyfriend showed me an article from Fast Company that promised a newer and cooler Kindle that might be available worldwide this coming December.  So I abandoned my previous wild goose chase and decided to wait.

Which brings me to this.  The US economy is in disarray and worse news keep coming.  But  there is something to be said about the level of innovation that continuously springs out of the country regardless of the wider macro-economic picture.  Think of some of the best inventions and brands around that provide real value to people everywhere.  Most of them are proudly American creations. It might not be apparent to those of you living there, but for us outsiders, we always have to wait!  The latest services, tech toys, ideas, sometimes they take weeks, if not months, to flow out to the rest of the world.

It’s easy to condemn excessive greed, risk-taking and the resulting hubris at a dire and troubling time like this.  But we should not forget that without some degree of speculation, risk-taking, and ambition, we might not have, say, Amazon.  As a side note, I’m not championing the speculation of paper and inflatable “assets” that so many have resorted to in this crisis, but tangible products or services that provide real value.  Now, this is the very Amazon that some ridiculed for years on end, for not turning a profit.  Ten years ago, amidst our general lament over the disappearance of printed pages, which analyst could have possibly said, yep, Amazon the online book retailer is gonna make reading sexy again?

Now back to the present. An article in the New York Times on the crisis of Japan from yesterday really resonated with me.  On the current state of the Japanese economy, the author said:

But what most people don’t recognize is that our crisis is not political, but psychological. After our aggression — and subsequent defeat — in World War II, safety and predictability became society’s goals. Bureaucrats rose to control the details of everyday life. We became a nation with lifetime employment, a corporate system based on stable cross-holdings of shares, and a large middle-class population in which people are equal and alike.

This psychological burden afflict not only Japan, but much of post-war Europe.  Americans, along with the UK and allies, will probably never fully appreciate the permanent psychological damage of hosting (and for some the losing end of) two devastating wars.  The egalitarianism, the exchange of personal freedom for security, are traits ingrained in just as much of European politics and everyday lives as Japan.

The trick is to see through the tranquility of much of Japan and western Europe’s beauty and feel the shaky grounds they are built upon.  The harmonious societies with little social tension (not true) achieved partially with homogeneity, orderliness (achieved through much invasion of personal freedom), and so on.  Poke a little deeper, many problems arise with few solutions offered.  Both regions suffered greatly through the war, thus social equalization became the guiding principle behind much economic policies: high taxation, plushy welfare, and an intervening government.  Both regions are also highly averse to immigration, making economic sustainability difficult given the social welfare promises and a rapidly aging population. That is, unless the Japanese have made a breakthrough in their robotics technology.  Have they? The limited land mass and already densely populated cities also make the idea of immigration and high(er) birth rates unpalatable.  Combine the lack of competitiveness, stagnant and aging populations, cocooned and sheltered by an ever-more-fragile welfare system, to me, this is not sustainable. This is a fruit that has already begun to rot on the inside.

In comparison, the UK and the US are rough at the edges, but the idealogical foundations are solid (and yes, the economic ones need a lot of work at the moment).  We cannot discount the psychological boost of winning wars, of standing on a slightly higher moral ground, long ago as it was.  The lack of blemish alone makes the societies confident in their choices. And despite many flaws, the idea of America and her numerous brethrens still symbolize optimism, ambition, and the risk-taking frontier-mentality that is sorely lacking in certain other parts of the world.

Yes, I am aware of the various questionable and highly controversial military undertakings that the US/UK has jointed initiated and still participate in.  This is a recent event, and will no doubt have historical significance in the near future.  I am also aware of the broken social welfare and health care issues in the US.  Clearly, moderation is the key and the market does not have all the answers.  I am duly reminded of the many flaws of the American system, least of when I tune into CNN and relish the state of its media. But for now …

For what America has abundant of, and sometimes becomes victim of, is freedom.  Free to eat unhealthy food, to buy ugly clothes, to run up credit card debts and sign on to mortgages one cannot afford.  Those are not good, and some call for government regulation to curb perpetrators of fraud, to regulate the food industry, and so on.  Those are good initiatives, no doubt, although the safety net is probably still way narrower than most other developed countries.  To demonstrate that financial catastrophe can be a direct result in the “omission” of government intervention, Iceland serves a nice example that Europeans, even the northern variety, when “free” to act, are by no means immune to greed and stupidity.

That’s when I laugh whenever people call Americans naive.  Americans cannot afford to be naive, because to be naive and stupid in America, you get taken to the cleaner!  In a society where the government does not babysit its citizens, where every choice you make needs to be seriously scrutinized, to be successfully, one needs to sit up and pay attention.  This is a society where higher education is not taken for granted (I’m comparing this to much of western Europe, which I will discuss in detail in a later post), retirement and pension is not taken for granted, health care is not taken for granted (I know this is contentious), and safe investment outcomes are not guaranteed (read Madoff).  Thus, to make it, so to speak, takes a lot of hard work (get educated, find work), persistency and constant striving (to keep, move up, or maneuver around in one’s career), and a healthy level of skepticism and shrewdness (to safeguard your money, to safeguard your health).

I’m not writing this to inflate the American ego, God knows she doesn’t need help in that department.  But I will say this.  As much havoc as the dark side of an entrepreneurial and ambitious America may have unleashed onto the world, we have much more to be thankful for. That is a distinctly American phenomenon, a culture that amplifies all  that make us human – even when the celebrated ambition and optimism give away to greed and fear.  To the rest of the world, America offers a multi-faceted look of our most triumphant and basest selves.  And for that, we should be grateful.

picture source: nightmaregk13

Thanks to the Skilled Investor for including us in its Carnival of Financial Planning for Mar 7.

Really?  Yes.  And I’m not talking about the less stress, better health, more me and my family-time kind of perks.

Let’s rewind.

For months, we have been pounded in the head over and over again on the evils brought on by the recession.  Let’s recount the havoc wreaked.

• Retirees have seen their savings significantly reduced or wiped out, some even going back to work to alleviate the cash problem.

• Baby boomers see their expected retirement date stretched indefinitely into the horizon, investments portfolio reduced, housing worth shattered.

• Gen X are getting squeezed in the workplace in more ways than one, and feels more insecure in the job market.

• Gen Y, having just gotten their feet wet in the workplace, feels betrayed by the many promises dangled in front of them.  Demographers have predicted speedy career advancements as a result of baby boomer exits. So much for that.

There has been considerable faults placed on the baby boomers, in their relative easy paths to success in America since the 1950s.  There were no major war nor catastrophic financial turmoil, jobs were easy to come by, properties were cheap, and the infrastructures were there to service their every need.  Many Gen Y and Gen X blame the “selfish” generation for their over-the-top consumption, excessive debts, degradation of the environment, mis-management of the social security and health care systems that will be defunct as soon as they have benefited from it, and falling asleep at the helm when it comes to financial regulation that plunged the nation, and perhaps the world, into the perilous position that we are in now.

Simplistic and over-dramatic? Indeed it is.  But there is no denying that for the younger generations, the foreseeable future is an uphill battle.  The workplace will only become more competitive, property prices are still steep in many parts of the country, health care and social security is broken, and country is bankrupt. Ouch.

But is this recession really the be-all and end-all that a lot of people make it out to be? Of course not.  Is there a silver lining under all these stories of misery? Of course there is, as there always is, during times of unjustifiable pessimism.

Times are bad, and things are difficult.  But as Warren Buffet said, and I’m paraphrasing him here, that in the last a hundred years, the US has seen a flu epidemic, two world wars, a great depression, a dozen recessions and panics, and by the end of the century, an average American was living seven times as well as they did beginning of the century.

Granted, many people lament that this will be the first generation that will not live as well as their parents.  And surely, we have no reason to expect the past to repeat itself indefinitely into the future.  But perhaps this recession will even out the playing ground just a little bit for the disgruntled X and Ys.

1. Housing will be invariably cheaper than it would otherwise be.  If anything, the recession has “reset” the astronomical rise in property prices in many parts of the US and UK.  With substantially lower prices and tighter lending policies, tighter credit making the rounds means slower rise in housing prices.  That is, housing prices will not rise in a way that is unsupported by an increase in demand or value.  Bubbles of this magnitude will not happen again in the foreseeable future.  Good news for everyone that’s looking to buy or upgrade their housing in the coming decades.

2. This is the golden nugget.  The credit bubble burst has led to massive de-leveraging across the board.  The resulting catastrophe means that many markets are giving back all the advances made this century.  These kind of price resets probably happen once in a generation, if that.  That’s to say, this is a great opportunity to pick out some businesses to hold for the long run – businesses that are sound and well managed, yet due to overall market sentiment, trading very cheaply compared to their intrinsic value.  Even if your previous savings are seriously damaged, for the Gen X and Y, your best earning years are still in front of you.  In the meantime, educate yourself and take advantage of market corrections such as this.

3. If nothing else, let this be a serious educational experience for all of us, especially those who still have our best investing years ahead of us.  Jobs will come back in one form or another, we will consume, the standard of living will again rise, the bear market will give away to the bull, and irrational exuberance will invariably creep its way back into the market.  When that happens, turn off the TV, remember all that you have seen and learned in the last year, and act accordingly.

I will leave you with those words from Benjamin Graham, to be taken with a grain of salt, both in times of relentless pessimism and times of unjustifiable optimism not far off in the future.

Most of the time common stocks are subject to irrational and excessive price fluctuations in both directions as the consequence of the ingrained tendency of most people to speculate or gamble … to give way to hope, fear and greed.

picture source: ~MaraleA