----- Original Message ----- From: <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, January 09, 2009 9:26 AM Subject: Re: A clue to understand USA
JM： Perhaps I misunderstood. Based on the subject line, I thought you were trying to make a point about understanding the US. I am still not certain what your post's argument is, and still have no idea what the link is to financial issues. MM： My point is summarized in the first sentence: "While it is considered by people who live there as a champion of freedom, possibly because it is essentially a society of immigrants who have to be opportunistic to live, it has a tendency of being vulturous." Immigrants basically have to be opportunistic, aggressive and vulturous to survive in the new chose land. Jewish immigrants in the new nation called Israel which was artificially constructed on the land vacated by force (who were the ones who voluntarily gave up lands, if there were any?). US is very much similar to Israel in that sense. That's why I said: "So it seeks similar nations to befriend with," which followed the referenced sentence. If you are a recent immigrant in US, you have to prove that you can do better than others in order to survive. That makes the society vibrant, efficient and interesting but also very combative to each other. Financial engineering was devised by those who wished to earn money quickly without sweating, simultaneously vulturizing on equally greedy kinds. In subprime lending, they attracted poor borrowers with baits and earn money by reselling unhealthy deals, rotten from the start to other similarly greedy opportunists before rotten fruits fall from the tree. As an anecdote: I had a friend - sort of - a third generation Irish immigrant and a graduate of Boston U., who borrowed money from a bank to buy a nice, large home in an excellent neighborhood on Long Island. Not too long after, he was late in mortgage payment. He said to me, "Don't worry, the bank doesn't like to forfeight it. They will comeback to me and will offer a better mortgage payment plan rather than to forfeight the house and resale it, because by the time they succeed in reselling it, they would have spent much more money than agreeing to a lower interest with me and let me pay them only the interest for some time." He survived a while, but he was let go by his employer. I don't know what happened to him thereafter, although I know he doesn't live there anymore. He was a devout Catholic and I remember him wearing a black smear on his forehead in the office on a certain day of the year. Minoru --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Persons posting messages to not_honyaku assume all responsibility for their messages. The list owner does not review messages, and accepts no responsibility for the content of messages posted. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
