What’s in a economic recession? Macroeconomically, it has great implications on the economic output and later stability in the market. To us, let’s be more pragmatic. If you have a stable job, all the best for you. If not, the issue for you is continuing employment.
Let’s look at it from what you can do, to build up your wealth. A recession to the investor is basically a fall in prices in the market. What it means is….SALE TIME! But it’s also time to take stock of how to best implement your investment strategy
My take is this….Everyone has their own favorite vehicle for investment. That does not mean the person can and must only play in that vehicle. There will be times when the vehicle of choice does not make sense. For me, this is a great time to buy stocks, with the market selldown of 20% over the past 4 weeks. Another couple more percentage and it would be time to enter. At the moment, however, the US property market still offers what I am looking for in my investment, perhaps better than what the stock market can give me for the moment. At this moment in time, I can safely say that there are 3 alternatives for me right now. Equities, Commodities and US/ UK properties. The US property market, at the moment, trumps everything else. If and when it recovers, I’ll probably move away from purchases in the market, into something else on sale. I wonder what that will be.
On September 29, 2010, In Uncategorized, By Ukey Hoo
Where is there the biggest property investment opportunities in the world? The obvious answer is where the property market is hot…..but is it? I have realized so far that counter-intuitively, investment in any hot market will only get you to a point where you better know when you MUST sell, failing which you will lose money…maybe lots of money……..
On the other hand, buying in a cold market or better still, when market is in a slump is probably the safest time to purchase, as the investment generally offers more value by selling at a discount to the market value. This said, the few property markets I would look into are US and UK, and the reason is the same for both – a two fold reason.
1. Properties are selling at huge discounts to their peak.
2. Price of the USD and GBP are also low to many currencies.
This means that I can take advantage of both properties price appreciation as well as currency appreciation in the future. That’s a sweet deal to me!
As the markets stabilized and economies getting back on track (hopefully), a growing trend is happening that’s creating a discrepancy between eastern and western economies, something that’s starting to create an opportunity for people with my investing profile.
The more prominent currencies in the world namely USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, CAD, AUD, NZD, CHF are mainly western economies. These are also economies with more established financial systems. Based on my opinion, as these economies grew in the past, their currencies also grew stronger as their competitiveness increased. That was in the 20th century. In the 21st century, as these economies struggle to re-invent themselves, they are also undergoing pressure to depreciate their currencies to stay competitive. As such, you can see western (developed) countries trying to debase their currencies to stay competitive in the current easternizing trend.
On the other hand, eastern economies (See China, India, South Korea, Indonesia and other developing Asian countries) are also trying to re-invent themselves by moving up the value chain in the global market. As their share of the global markets expand, their way of making higher profit comes from an appreciating currency. However, as the bulk of their economies are still pretty low in the value chain (see low-mid end products), by appreciating their currencies, their competitiveness in the global economies are also declining.
This said, economies are debasing their own currencies against other currencies, with asian economies debasing at a lower pace than western economies. In this chase for the lowest value, the people who are in winning positions are governments and holders of hard assets. While investment in asia can reap hug returns, how big are the returns in real terms? By holding investments in Western economies, what kind of returns can be expected?
Needless to say, this is a changing investment world, and the debasing of currencies can only go on for so long before it becomes unsustainable. When will this be, I don’t know, but one thing is for sure, I will continue investing in cash flow vehicles, and forgo short term profits so that I can grab hold of the winner of the incoming new regime, whatever it is and whenever it comes.
The correction over the past month or so might have come to an end, in the midst of World Cup 2010, a historically period of low trading volume. In taking stock of your finances over the past month, has your net worth fallen in tandem with the market, or had it increased? That’s a tell tale sign of whether you are suited for your current investment style.
Over the past month, I had been fortunate to enter into 2 positions while the price was still low. Over the past month, I’ve a close friend who had traded stocks in the United States and made a significant amount of money. I’ve also friends who had lost money.
Each successful investor has his own specialty, and preferred vehicles for investment. Not everybody is suited for trading, and not everybody is suited for value investment.
While investment styles are widely varied, they are divided into 2 basic camps. Long term investment and short term investment. Long term investors generally look at the current pricing, and if its fundamentally attractive to make the purchase, they will consider the purchase. These investors generally have lower risk tolerance, and are adverse to short term fluctuations. For example, I would only buy a market if it’s fundamentally cheap, and the downside potential is limited, while the upside potential is high, which will generally depend on market cycles. I will tend to ignore market fluctuations, or even losses at the onset of investment, unless it breaks my stop loss limit of course.
Short term investors are generally traders, and would tend to ride on the current momentum. During the last month or so, for example, while the market was undergoing a correction, traders have already opened short positions, and maintained them through the worst of the correction, and closed them once its past their comfort zone. With an attempted rally in place from yesterday’s actions, these same people would probably have opened long positions in the market, and will be monitoring for the correct time to close their positions over the next week or so. Short term investors generally are more risk tolerant, and view market fluctuations as a number game only. Emotions seldom come into play to adversely influence their decision powers. They are perfectly willing to open and close a position within a day, and are comfortable having many losses with tight stop loss limits, so that they can make a killing over a few huge gains. They seldom have a single position at any one time, but would take up multiple positions to spread the risk.
Of course, after your style comes the instruments you are interested in, as each instrument interacts with other instruments in different ways, and that’s another topic altogether!
Today, an article published on yahoo was talking on the same issue, showing many instances of Americans who were deeply impacted by the recession, and may never lose their sights on frugality in their lives. This is a sympton that had become predominant in the generation which survived the Great Depression, and was said to be a reason why the economic recovery after that was slow.
Personally, I’ve always been a frugal person. It doesn’t matter to me whether I’m rich or not, I will still live a frugal life, though I do spend more now than I had before, especially in one time expenses like holidays.
I do believe that increase in savings does have an adverse short term impact on global economics, just as saving now will impact your current lifestyle. However, in the long run, the impact is totally opposite of the short run. With proper investment, you would get an increased income and hence potential for expenses in the long run. Similarly, this would allow global economics to build at a sustainable level over the long run, which is why I do believe that this will be a good thing for us, as a global citizen.
Jeannine Aversa and Bernard Condon, AP Business Writers, On Sunday May 2, 2010, 1:42 pm EDT
Even as the economic recovery plods ahead, many American consumers are refusing to come along.
They’re not spending freely — and they have no plans to.
Many of them have steady income. They aren’t saddled by high debts. They don’t fear losing their jobs. Yet despite recent gains, they’ve lost so much household wealth that they’re far more cautious about spending than before the recession.
Their behavior suggests that the Great Recession may have bred a new frugality that will endure well into the recovery. And because consumers fuel about 70 percent of the economy, their tightfisted habits means the rebound could stay unusually sluggish.
That’s the picture that emerges from an Associated Press survey of leading economists and interviews with more than two dozen ordinary Americans. The new AP Economy Survey asked 44 leading economists whether the recession created a “new frugality” among consumers that will outlive the recession. Two-thirds said yes.
They had in mind people like Marjorie Feldman of suburban St. Louis, who retired three years ago as a systems analyst for a utility company. The stock investments in her retirement account have sunk 15 percent from 2007. The value of her home is down 20 percent.
“I had retired assuming I’d make money” off the investments, said Feldman, who’s in her early 60′s. “I just don’t feel as confident in the economy, and I never will again. I won’t spend money the way I used to.”
Feldman’s husband works full time in academia. She has a part time job preparing tax returns at H&R Block. But her prime earning years are behind her.
“I don’t think it will ever get back to where it was before,” she said of her nest egg. “I won’t spend money the way I used to.”
Scott Hoyt, senior director of consumer economics at Moody’s Economy.com, notes that baby boomers, in particular, enjoyed spending sprees for most of their adult lives as their assets steadily grow.
“But the recession changed that,” Hoyt said. “Many have retirement and children’s education looming. All of a sudden, they see their balance sheets decline in a way they’ve never seen before.”
To be sure, many shoppers, especially the wealthy, are buying into the recovery. Partly on the strength of consumer spending, the economy emerged from recession last year and has been growing steadily, if moderately, since. Major retailers logged solid sales in March. Employers have begun to add jobs, including a net increase of 162,000 in March. The stock market has risen 70 percent from its low in March 2009.
Yet many who became penny-pinchers during the recession are in no mood to start shopping again with abandon for clothes, cars and home additions. They’ve discovered the peace of mind that comes with rebuilding savings, shopping more prudently and learning to live with less.
At their nerve-racked peak last year, Americans socked away 6.4 percent of their disposable income. That compared with less than 1 percent hit at one point during the pre-recession boom. The savings rate has since dropped to 3.1 percent. Yet few expect it to approach the near-zero savings rate that would signal high-octane spending has roared back.
Susan Wilson, 55, a freelance PR specialist in Scottsdale, Ariz., says her business is picking up. But her spending isn’t. Wilson still feels burned by the recession, when she lost her home to foreclosure.
“Shame on me,” she said. “I wasn’t paying enough attention to my financial health. That will never happen again.”
Wilson is renting now. She traded in her leased car for a used car she could buy outright. She’s started growing her own vegetables and air-drying her laundry to save money and stay out of debt. She’s looking to buy a home, but not one with an outsize mortgage.
“I’m looking for pretty much the smallest house I can live in,” she said.
Interviews with ordinary Americans suggest a new frugality endures even though consumer spending has risen for five straight months and retail sales for three.
In the AP’s new quarterly survey, a majority of economists agreed that a new frugality will persist even as the recovery gains firmer footing.
“I would call it a ‘mini age of austerity,’” said Sean Snaith, an economics professor at the University of Central Florida.
“Consumers will not run up multiple credit cards to their limits, and when buying a house the objective will not be to get the maximum square footage for which they can afford the payment. A higher savings rate will be in place for several years.”
Jeff Thredgold, an economist at Thredgold Economic Associates, predicts “less impress-my-neighbor-type spending” in coming years.
Count Keith Flowers of Manassas, Va., in that category. He’s decided that the hit he took in the housing slump requires him to continue to rein in spending. He’s cut off his landline phone and has become a regular at discount retailer Costco.
He isn’t worried about losing his job in business development at an information technology company. What’s led him to cut back spending is the sunken value of his condominium. He bought it in 2005 for about $270,000.
“I doubt right now it’s cracking $100,000,” Flowers said.
Rajeev Dhawan, director of Georgia State University’s Economic Forecasting Center, says: “I think the chances of us being big spenders in the next 10 years are pretty low.”
So much household wealth was inflated by the housing boom, Dhawan said, that the real estate bust spooked consumers. States hardest hit by the bust — California, Nevada, Florida and Arizona — together account for about 30 percent of national economic activity, he noted.
Household net worth — the value of assets like homes, checking accounts and investments minus debts like mortgages and credit cards — has risen for three straight quarters. But economists say consumers would need a stronger and prolonged increase in wealth to lead them to ratchet up spending. Net worth would have to rise an additional 21 percent just to get back to its pre-recession peak of $65.9 trillion.
Some economists put their hopes for the economy in the rich, who are spending more freely than the rest of the population. They hold out hope that this will encourage more hiring and stimulate spending by the less wealthy. More spending could increase companies’ revenue, which allow them to boost hiring and pay. And that would lead their employees to spend more.
Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. returned to a first-quarter profit as more travelers vacationed on its ships and spent more money on board. And makers of luxury goods are benefiting from a release of pent-up demand for jewelry, watches and high-end furnishings.
High-end retailers have reported blowout results. Nordstrom’s revenue in stores open at least one year jumped 16.8 percent last month. Saks’ surged 12.7 percent.
McClaren Automotive has announced it will debut a $200,000 sports car in the U.S. next year. And business is picking up faster at high-end hotels than at mid-priced and budget hotels.
Whether spending by the wealthy will cause the less-well-off to spend freely, too, remains unclear. For now, though, many people have embraced a more frugal approach to spending.
Or maybe they’ve just learned to go without.
Jan Iris Smith, 57, and her husband of Cabin John, Md., put off furniture and clothing purchases after the stock market’s collapse in early 2009.
“We were counting on our income from our investments,” said Smith, a psychotherapist whose husband is retired. “We just stopped pretending everything was going to be OK anytime soon.”
Aversa reported from Washington, Condon from New York. AP Business Writers Christopher S. Rugaber in Washington and Christopher Leonard in St. Louis contributed to this report.
This period of economic downturn and possible recovery had given an important lesson to many people, especially those aspiring to be rich. One of the most important use of wealth is to be able to survive extended periods without working income, and this comes from having good cash flow investments using your savings.
The first thing to do, hence is to have savings. In fact, in my personal point of view, having a good cash flow will allow you to live your life the way you want, with or without your job. With a job, you can fill up your time doing things you love. Without a job, you can still fill up your time doing things you love.
However, the lesson learnt from this economic upheaval will probably be something that will be carried by those heavily impacted by this situation, and will be a source of experience to them.
Lets hope that this will be a valuable lesson that will help in their remaining lives!
The following article from The Straits Times shows some examples of people recovering from the economic turmoil, and is taken from this site
Importance of saving hits home
The economy is looking up, but how has life been for Singaporeans who were retrenched during the downturn last year? In February last year, in the midst of the recession following the worldwide financial meltdown, The Sunday Times launched a Need A Job column. We featured 42 people who were looking for full-time employment over the course of 21 weeks. One year on, we revisit three of them to see how they are faring. Jamie Ee Wen Wei reports.
Laid off in 2008, Ms Ophelia Lim now works as a merchandiser for a shoe chain. She lost $20,000 in a business venture with a friend.
It has been a rocky time for Ms Ophelia Lim. She got a job, then was told to go on no-pay leave. So she went into business with a friend, but lost $20,000 when that venture failed. Then, she got ano- ther job but quit after three weeks.
In late 2008, she was laid off from her job as a fashion merchandiser when her company shrank its operations. She had been there for three years and was earning about $3,000 a month.
When she was featured in The Sunday Times in February last year, she had been jobless for three months. Within a month, she was hired as a merchandiser by a fashion house. The job sounded promising. She would help the company develop its business at its factory in China while based in Singapore, and could try her hand at fashion design. Her pay was about $2,500.
But barely one month into the job, her employer told her to go on no-pay leave for six months. She took it as a cue to leave.
‘I think it ran into some financial problems but I didn’t call them to ask. There was no point because I had been working for only a few weeks,’ said Ms Lim, 38.
Then came her lowest point – in September last year. She went into business with a friend and lost $20,000. They had set up a shop selling potato salad and sushi in Bishan. But within three months, the business folded when her partner pulled out suddenly.
‘I was having so many sleepless nights. I didn’t have a job at that time and all the money was just going down the drain.’
She resumed her job search, but did not hear from most of the companies she sent her resume to.
In February this year, she was hired by a firm to sell electronic components. But she quit after three weeks as ‘it was too manly and too technical for me. I couldn’t see myself doing it for long’.
The financial instability meant that her family had to cut back on extras. The divorcee lives with her three sons – aged 16, 11 and 10 – and her mother in a four-room flat in Toh Guan.
They cooked and stayed home during weekends. They also had to forgo celebrating special occasions like birthdays. ‘There’s no extra to buy presents, just a cake,’ she said.
But things are looking up. Last month, she found a job as a merchandiser at shoe chain Chocolate Schu Bar through a newspaper advertisement.
She has taken a 20per cent pay cut from her original fashion merchandising job, but she is not complaining. She says she is in a better state than many of her former colleagues in the fashion merchandising business, who are still jobless or taking low salaries.
‘I’m lucky because the difference is just a few hundred dollars,’ she said of her salary now.
Having survived the recession, Ms Lim, who has A-level qualifications, said the biggest lesson she has learnt is the importance of saving for a rainy day.
‘It really hit me hard,’ she said. ‘My savings ran out within a few months. So now, even though I’m earning less, I make sure I save at least $50 a month.’
I’ve been listening to doom and gloom experts for years, and as such had been heavily putting money when times are fearful, and been more conservative during the heights of booms. It had helped me significantly outpace most of my peers in net worth and earnings thus far, and I really hope, will continue for the foreseeable future.
Some of the most bearish experts I’ve been listening to lately are Jim Rogers, Robert Kiyosaki and Mike Maloney, who are incidentally also great bulls in the commodities market, especially in precious metals.
Its easy for me to subscribe to their thinking, as I employ value investment strategies in my investments, be it in stock markets, currencies or properties. This video by Mike is something I happened to see in another blog, and is taken in Singapore. The situation is slightly different from what he said, but in general it rings true. I’ve been a bear on the Singapore property market since its previous peak in 2008 when I exited the market, and ever since, did not bulge from my position, so in my opinion, his views hold true to a certain extent.
I’ve touched on Martin Luther King before in his “I have a dream” speech, which came from the time when he’s most hopeful and his dreams most passionate. He thought he had plenty of time, plenty of resources to live to see his dreams come to a fruitful bloom.
This speech is his last speech, just before his assassination in Memphis. Being travel weary (you can see from the way he spoke), he had at first declined to give the speech that day, but changed his mind at the last minute. And his words show his passion at its peak, but his hopes way down, as if deep in his heart, he knew something….that he will not survive. Regardless, he states that he’s not worried about anything…..as he knows…..his dreams will come true…if not with him, then without him……
One of the most awesome orators in history, Dr Martin Luther King Jr.
Note that the actual speech starts at 1:42
Thank you very kindly, my friends. As I listened to Ralph Abernathy in his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about. It’s always good to have your closest friend and associate say something good about you. And Ralph is the best friend that I have in the world.
I’m delighted to see each of you here tonight in spite of a storm warning. You reveal that you are determined to go on anyhow. Something is happening in Memphis, something is happening in our world.
As you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of general and panoramic view of the whole human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, “Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?” — I would take my mental flight by Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn’t stop there. I would move on by Greece, and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes assembled around the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality.
But I wouldn’t stop there. I would go on, even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire. And I would see developments around there, through various emperors and leaders. But I wouldn’t stop there. I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance, and get a quick picture of all that the Renaissance did for the cultural and esthetic life of man. But I wouldn’t stop there. I would even go by the way that the man for whom I’m named had his habitat. And I would watch Martin Luther as he tacked his ninety-five theses on the door at the church in Wittenberg.
But I wouldn’t stop there. I would come on up even to 1863, and watch a vacillating president by the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. But I wouldn’t stop there. I would even come up to the early thirties, and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation. And come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but fear itself.
But I wouldn’t stop there. Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, “If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the twentieth century, I will be happy.” Now that’s a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around. That’s a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a away that men, in some strange way, are responding — something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee — the cry is always the same — “We want to be free.”
And another reason that I’m happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we’re going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demand didn’t force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence.
That is where we are today. And also in the human rights revolution, if something isn’t done, and in a hurry, to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed. Now, I’m just happy that God has allowed me to live in this period, to see what is unfolding. And I’m happy that He’s allowed me to be in Memphis.
I can remember, I can remember when Negroes were just going around as Ralph has said, so often, scratching where they didn’t itch, and laughing when they were not tickled. But that day is all over. We mean business now, and we are determined to gain our rightful place in God’s world.
And that’s all this whole thing is about. We aren’t engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying that we are God’s children. And that we don’t have to live like we are forced to live.
Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? It means that we’ve got to stay together. We’ve got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the salves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh’s court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that’s the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let us maintain unity.
Secondly, let us keep the issues where they are. The issue is injustice. The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers. Now, we’ve got to keep attention on that. That’s always the problem with a little violence. You know what happened the other day, and the press dealt only with the window-breaking. I read the articles. They very seldom got around to mentioning the fact that one thousand, three hundred sanitation workers were on strike, and that Memphis is not being fair to them, and that Mayor Loeb is in dire need of a doctor. They didn’t get around to that.
Now we’re going to march again, and we’ve got to march again, in order to put the issue where it is supposed to be. And force everybody to see that there are thirteen hundred of God’s children here suffering, sometimes going hungry, going through dark and dreary nights wondering how this thing is going to come out. That’s the issue. And we’ve got to say to the nation: we know it’s coming out. For when people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory.
We aren’t going to let any mace stop us. We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces; they don’t know what to do, I’ve seen them so often. I remember in Birmingham, Alabama, when we were in that majestic struggle there we would move out of the 16th Street Baptist Church day after day; by the hundreds we would move out. And Bull Connor would tell them to send the dogs forth and they did come; but we just went before the dogs singing, “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me round.” Bull Connor next would say, “Turn the fire hoses on.” And as I said to you the other night, Bull Connor didn’t know history. He knew a kind of physics that somehow didn’t relate to the transphysics that we knew about. And that was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. And we went before the fire hoses; we had known water. If we were Baptist or some other denomination, we had been immersed. If we were Methodist, and some others, we had been sprinkled, but we knew water.
That couldn’t stop us. And we just went on before the dogs and we would look at them; and we’d go on before the water hoses and we would look at it, and we’d just go on singing “Over my head I see freedom in the air.” And then we would be thrown in the paddy wagons, and sometimes we were stacked in there like sardines in a can. And they would throw us in, and old Bull would say, “Take them off,” and they did; and we would just go in the paddy wagon singing, “We Shall Overcome.” And every now and then we’d get in the jail, and we’d see the jailers looking through the windows being moved by our prayers, and being moved by our words and our songs. And there was a power there which Bull Connor couldn’t adjust to; and so we ended up transforming Bull into a steer, and we won our struggle in Birmingham.
Now we’ve got to go on to Memphis just like that. I call upon you to be with us Monday. Now about injunctions: We have an injunction and we’re going into court tomorrow morning to fight this illegal, unconstitutional injunction. All we say to America is, “Be true to what you said on paper.” If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn’t committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of the press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. And so just as I say, we aren’t going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on.
We need all of you. And you know what’s beautiful tome, is to see all of these ministers of the Gospel. It’s a marvelous picture. Who is it that is supposed to articulate the longings and aspirations of the people more than the preacher? Somehow the preacher must be an Amos, and say, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Somehow, the preacher must say with Jesus, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to deal with the problems of the poor.”
And I want to commend the preachers, under the leadership of these noble men: James Lawson, one who has been in this struggle for many years; he’s been to jail for struggling; but he’s still going on, fighting for the rights of his people. Rev. Ralph Jackson, Billy Kiles; I could just go right on down the list, but time will not permit. But I want to thank them all. And I want you to thank them, because so often, preachers aren’t concerned about anything but themselves. And I’m always happy to see a relevant ministry.
It’s all right to talk about “long white robes over yonder,” in all of its symbolism. But ultimately people want some suits and dresses and shoes to wear down here. It’s all right to talk about “streets flowing with milk and honey,” but God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here, and his children who can’t eat three square meals a day. It’s all right to talk about the new Jerusalem, but one day, God’s preachers must talk about the New York, the new Atlanta, the new Philadelphia, the new Los Angeles, the new Memphis, Tennessee. This is what we have to do.
Now the other thing we’ll have to do is this: Always anchor our external direct action with the power of economic withdrawal. Now, we are poor people, individually, we are poor when you compare us with white society in America. We are poor. Never stop and forget that collectively, that means all of us together, collectively we are richer than all the nations in the world, with the exception of nine. Did you ever think about that? After you leave the United States, Soviet Russia, Great Britain, West Germany, France, and I could name the others, the Negro collectively is richer than most nations of the world. We have an annual income of more than thirty billion dollars a year, which is more than all of the exports of the United States, and more than the national budget of Canada. Did you know that? That’s power right there, if we know how to pool it.
We don’t have to argue with anybody. We don’t have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don’t need any bricks and bottles, we don’t need any Molotov cocktails, we just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, “God sent us by here, to say to you that you’re not treating his children right. And we’ve come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda fair treatment, where God’s children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you.”
And so, as a result of this, we are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy—what is the other bread?—Wonder Bread. And what is the other bread company, Jesse? Tell them not to buy Hart’s bread. As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain. We are choosing these companies because they haven’t been fair in their hiring policies; and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of saying, they are going to support the needs and the rights of these men who are on strike. And then they can move on downtown and tell Mayor Loeb to do what is right.
But not only that, we’ve got to strengthen black institutions. I call upon you to take your money out of the banks downtown and deposit your money in Tri-State Bank—we want a “bank-in” movement in Memphis. So go by the savings and loan association. I’m not asking you something we don’t do ourselves at SCLC. Judge Hooks and others will tell you that we have an account here in the savings and loan association from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. We’re just telling you to follow what we’re doing. Put your money there. You have six or seven black insurance companies in Memphis. Take out your insurance there. We want to have an “insurance-in.”
Now these are some practical things we can do. We begin the process of building a greater economic base. And at the same time, we are putting pressure where it really hurts. I ask you to follow through here.
Now, let me say as I move to my conclusion that we’ve got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point, in Memphis. We’ve got to see it through. And when we have our march, you need to be there. Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together.
Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. One day a man came to Jesus; and he wanted to raise some questions about some vital matters in life. At points, he wanted to trick Jesus, and show him that he knew a little more than Jesus knew, and through this, throw him off base. Now that question could have easily ended up in a philosophical and theological debate. But Jesus immediately pulled that question from mid-air, and placed it on a dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho. And he talked about a certain man, who fell among thieves. You remember that a Levite and a priest passed by on the other side. They didn’t stop to help him. And finally a man of another race came by. He got down from his beast, decided not to be compassionate by proxy. But with him, administering first aid, and helped the man in need. Jesus ended up saying, this was the good man, this was the great man, because he had the capacity to project the “I” into the “thou,” and to be concerned about his brother. Now you know, we use our imagination a great deal to try to determine why the priest and the Levite didn’t stop. At times we say they were busy going to church meetings—an ecclesiastical gathering—and they had to get on down to Jerusalem so they wouldn’t be late for their meeting. At other times we would speculate that there was a religious law that “One who was engaged in religious ceremonials was not to touch a human body twenty-four hours before the ceremony.” And every now and then we begin to wonder whether maybe they were not going down to Jerusalem, or down to Jericho, rather to organize a “Jericho Road Improvement Association.” That’s a possibility. Maybe they felt that it was better to deal with the problem from the causal root, rather than to get bogged down with an individual effort.
But I’m going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It’s possible that these men were afraid. You see, the Jericho road is a dangerous road. I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, “I can see why Jesus used this as a setting for his parable.” It’s a winding, meandering road. It’s really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about 1200 miles, or rather 1200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, fifteen or twenty minutes later, you’re about 2200 feet below sea level. That’s a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the “Bloody Pass.” And you know, it’s possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it’s possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the Levite asked was, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”
That’s the question before you tonight. Not, “If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?” The question is not, “If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?” “If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?” That’s the question.
Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation. And I want to thank God, once more, for allowing me to be here with you.
You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, “Are you Martin Luther King?”
And I was looking down writing, and I said yes. And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that’s punctured, you drown in your own blood—that’s the end of you.
It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states, and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I’ve forgotten what those telegrams said. I’d received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I’ve forgotten what the letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I’ll never forget it. It said simply, “Dear Dr. King: I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School.” She said, “While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I’m simply writing you to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze.”
And I want to say tonight, I want to say that I am happy that I didn’t sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream. And taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can’t ride your back unless it is bent. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been down in Selma, Alabama, been in Memphis to see the community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering. I’m so happy that I didn’t sneeze.
And they were telling me, now it doesn’t matter now. It really doesn’t matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us, the pilot said over the public address system, “We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we’ve had the plane protected and guarded all night.”
And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?
Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
Negotiation is a part of life. Not everybody understands this, but we do negotiations everyday! When we negotiate with our loved ones on what to eat tonight, with our colleagues on who’s to do a particular piece of assignment, when we negotiate with our child whether he can skip class for the day, even with ourselves on what we should wear today.
We negotiate when we want a date, where and when we will go for holidays, what we are going to do during the next holidays, and never give a thought to them.
And when we go to what we call the real negotiation, for a new house, for a new car, for a computer, for a new business deal, to ask for a raise, thats when we realize that we are negotiating and suddenly freeze up. Why’s that? Since we negotiate for almost everything else with no though given to it, why do we freeze up during negotiation meeting?
Harv’s blog at http://www.harveker.com/2010/04/a-closed-mouth-never-gets-fed/ discusses about this, and ofers some solutions to it. So far, I’ve attended his course Guerilla Business Intensive twice, and both times, the negotiation skills he taught are the most important points I took back, which is why I wrote this post. There’s no need to be afraid of negotiating so long as the outcome desired is a win for both parties. If one side is to lose, why bother to negotiate in the first place? So when you get to the negotiation table, just be yourself, and look for a win-win for both parties!
Seriously, I didn’t manage to read about it on the newspaper, so its only now that I saw this. And its something that happens everywhere, especially with Alpha type personalities. Somehow, the “catch up with the Jones” syndrome and “I must be better” disease are heavily infectious amongst people.
When was the last time you hear of somebody’s achievement without, in the depth of your heart, asked “how come he’s so lucky”, or “If I was given the same opportunity, I could have done the same…no even better than he had”, instead of wholehearted feeling good for him?
So when you achieve something, why not just give yourself a congratulatory pat on the back, and when others achieve something, also be happy for them wholeheartedly?
After all, negativity will attract more negativity. Be positive, and take your next step positively!
Apr 4, 2010
High price of peer pressure
By Fiona Chan
A friend recently bought an apartment and e-mailed me to tell me the good news.
‘Did I tell you I finally bought a place? It’s in Bukit Timah,’ he said. ‘Have you bought yours yet?’
‘Congratulations,’ I replied. ‘Yup, we bought an apartment just across the road from our old place.’
‘Huh? Why don’t you want to move somewhere else?’ he asked.
‘Well, I really like our location,’ I said. ‘It’s quite close to town and the traffic there is smooth.’
‘I prefer Bukit Timah,’ came the quick response. ‘I think my location is better.’
The rest of the conversation was about how much I had paid for my home, down to the dollar amount per sq ft (‘Mine is cheaper,’ my friend said); what loan I had taken (‘I guess you’re more conservative than I am’); and which contractor I was using for my renovations (‘Send me your quote, I want to see if mine is better’).
By the time I’d finished talking to him, I felt as exhausted as if I had run a marathon – against someone who had decided from the get-go that I had already lost.
Some call it a rat race. To me, it feels more like a shooting competition, only using your friends as targets.
Of course, most of the conversations I have with my friends about Important Life Decisions don’t go like this.
While we sometimes compare cars, homes and diamond rings, invariably we all end up assuring others that they’ve made the best decisions for their own lives. That’s what friends are for, after all.
But every once in a while, one of my peers will interrogate me on my lifestyle in a way that makes me feel like there’s an invisible but giant scoreboard in the sky.
Not only do they want to know everything I’ve bought and how much I paid, but they also want to tell me why their choices were all better than mine.
My new home is 10 minutes from Orchard Road? Theirs is 81/2 minutes away. I can walk to the MRT from my place? They’ll have an MRT station too, you know – in 2020. And a new hospital nearby. And a park connector.
Wait till you have children, one of my friends told me. The comparisons will get 10 times worse: ‘So how’s your kid doing? Mine’s taking Japanese and Arabic classes, got his Grade 8 in piano last month, and has taken up abstract painting.’
Most of the time, these hyper-competitive conversations are as amusing as they are annoying. But having too many of them can make it feel like the natural process of becoming an adult has turned into a dispiriting game of one-upmanship.
To be fair, it’s not hard to understand this behaviour.
For years, my peers and I went through pretty much the same life experiences: We attended the same schools, had the same extracurricular activities, and were mostly offered the same opportunities.
But despite these shared paths in youth, not everyone is finding his first steps in adulthood equally easy.
Some save up for a few years to buy their first flat in Sengkang, and then wait three more years for it to be ready. Others, often with their parents’ help, drive BMWs and think nothing of buying a million-dollar condominium for their first home.
To make things worse, even though my former classmates and I may have done similarly well in school, in many cases our income levels started diverging almost from the moment we started work.
This isn’t necessarily because some of us work harder or are smarter than the rest, but simply because different industries and companies pay differently, and sometimes all it boils down to is being in the right place at the right time.
So it’s little wonder that people in my generation, born and bred on a diet of meritocracy, are finding it hard to swallow any disparity in starting pay and starter assets.
To reassure themselves that they’re still on the right track, they constantly compare themselves with their peers. In the process, sometimes unconsciously, they end up putting everyone else down.
It’s been drilled into us that we should not judge someone by his possessions and just be content with what we have. But in real life, this state of zen is almost impossible to achieve, especially when you’re counting the days to your next pay cheque while your friends have lost count of the designer stuff they own.
Still, life doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. For people my age, it wasn’t so long ago when having a friend with a big house meant only one thing: more room in which all of us could play.
Among my closest friends, one person’s windfall still has a way of becoming everyone’s good fortune. Whoever is earning more or has just received a big bonus will insist on paying for dinner, and those who live in bigger or centrally located houses usually offer to host gatherings.
This can only happen because we’re all open with one another about how much we earn and spend – and that is in turn possible only because we don’t see our friends’ successes as somehow being a reflection on our own failures.
Of course, this harmony may not last after we all have kids. So I’m going to train mine to play the ukulele and become experts in lawn croquet.
That way, the only thing they’ll ever be able to compare with their peers meaningfully is how lousy their parents were.
