A Trip to Karabakh certainly didn’t help. This Georgian movie is terrible (to put it mildly). Old neighbor’s usage of the Armenian struggle as a vehicle for delivering some muddled messages about its own struggle is a repeat of the same old, showcasing its true character. This reminded me yet again how important it is for Armenians in the diaspora to remain united. For example, having two churches in America and in some countries is absolutely not helpful! I hope there is someone in the world who can give me at least one theological argument or one good reason why the two churches should remain separate. May this song remind all Armenians who stumble upon my insignificant corner on the Internet about all that which we share.

Armenians in Armenia will have no issues partaking in a common culture but there are many issues they cannot raise because of the political mess inherited from being situated in that restless corner of the world for thousands of years. But I know that each family and every individual deep down looks upon an extended family member, a friend in the diaspora as a source of support when all else fails.

Death by Debt by ~jessiechrist

I recently stumbled upon the exact figures of US Debt to the Penny which as of a second ago indicated that public debt outstanding was $11,043,588,980,678.90. The latest monthly report is available here. I was very surprised to see we still had such debt given this prediction to have the debt paid off by now. The FAQ encourages us, the private citizens, to help pay off this debt with the following statement:

“How do you make a contribution to reduce the debt?

Make your check payable to the Bureau of the Public Debt, and in the memo section, notate that it is a Gift to reduce the Debt Held by the Public. Mail your check to:

Attn Dept G
Bureau Of the Public Debt
P. O. Box 2188
Parkersburg, WV 26106-2188″

I must say that this is not an April fools joke because research a bit further shows that people do make gifts to pay off the debt. However, before you make your contribution, please note this news story which indicates that the bailouts and the various expenditures could total $10.8 trillion.

Also please note that although we are all patriotic citizens who want to pay off this debt (and even if the whole world jumps in to help), this FED report says that there’s only about $8.3 trillion around (M3 is no longer published) and that money is created from around $2 trillion (soon to be $3 trillion) of reserves (interestingly we have only about $900 billion cash out there). If you know how the total debt can be paid off with all of the outstanding money, please help me understand this.

I also cannot figure out if the gifts to pay of the debt count as charitable donations for tax deduction purposes.

Americans are very smart people. I believe I have just understood why they choose to spend instead of saving.

Lenin by ~Belotaurus

A sense of worry about the many negative unintended consequences of recent actions has come over me. Perhaps it has something to do with receiving “healthy” doses of government propaganda during my ten years in the Soviet Armenian school system. I can still remember the brain-cleansing we had to undergo about how Comrade Lenin loved children and how Comrade Stalin also loved children and how many cubic tons of iron ore were required to meet the five year plan of the… In the name of the taxpayer much change is being proposed. I thought corporations also pay taxes. Perhaps, it is the collapse of the Soviet Union which taught me so many lessons. Even today, I remember vividly the day when we heard about the massacres in Sumgait in February of 1988. In my memory, this was the event that sparked the collapse of a dark era started by the events of 1917.

It seems that people forget that to grow anything meaningful in a garden, the soil must be rich with humus and at the right acidity. It seems they forget that once something is planted that the ground and the roots should not be disturbed. What business does Congress have in passing a 90% tax on anything? Given things stay roughly the same, I am sure the economy will get better sooner or later. The challenge right now is that nothing is a given.

For people who trade via systems, I have a question. At which point does one decide to:

1. modify the system (and to what degree and based on what)?
2. discard the system (and why)?
3. continue relying on the system (and for how long); if such a system is producing losing trades more recently but has worked fine for a long time (definition of time scales not relevant)?

Perhaps the answer contains clues regarding our recent government actions (and market reactions) where the scale of the system and the magnitude of its impact is great. The problem is further complicated by control over one’s actions but lack of control over [negative] consequences of those actions in human systems.

The second question that does not leave me alone is whether a game of chess (or any other game) can be won if after every few moves, the game rules are modified. Does the player quickly adjust and remain focused on winning the game according to the new rules (“queen can only move three squares at a time” for example) or does the focus shift on guessing what the next set of rule changes may be? After a few sets of changes and corresponding adjustments, does the player begin to suspect the rule maker in “supporting” the other side?

Saltwater Fish Tank by ~yooki42

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner yesterday unveiled thoughts to improve the US economic situation. The market gave its mark to his appearances but I wanted to share a couple of my thoughts from software development perspective.

No significant software is ever created overnight. The first release takes an enormous amount of effort. In competitive situations, information surrounding the release time frames and content are typically very sensitive. The team usually gets formed along the way. Even if an existing high performance team undertakes a new project, it takes some time to gain expertise in new technologies. These times eat into the project schedules. Even if all technologies are well understood, it takes some time to establish the project and get everyone familiar and following the new processes. As the project forms and begins to progress, the “product” starts to take on a very rough shape. Decisions made earlier can be reversed later in the project but always at a cost. There are always numerous inter-dependencies, many reasons for the project to become delayed or derailed. The scope of the original project often changes based on realities so much that initial documents become almost completely irrelevant in later phases. This is unfortunately an oversimplification of the typical process. Though one would expect the second release to be more streamlined, that release also follows a somewhat similar path for a number of reasons one of which is the omission of key features from the first release.

If comparatively a micro-project like the development of software can have so many variables, complexities, and reasons to fail, how can we expect a gargantuan organization like the Treasury or the Federal Reserve to come up with a “perfect” plan to tackle the fundamental forces behind the current recession. My expectation is that the actions that have been taken and the plans being released and to be announced are incorrect, inadequate, and at best lacking. My main hope is for the government to do no harm. The programs and the funds are very large. Much electricity can be generated by diverting rivers but the same waters can also wash a lot of land. Trillions and billions are being discussed as if those funds will spend themselves automatically. It takes a lot of effort to put a million dollars to work in a small business. It takes a number of people a month or two to close on a loan of $100,000. It takes audit departments and independent accountants weeks to review books of companies with a few billion dollars in annual revenue. What type of accounting is required for a trillion dollars? How many small business loans would 10 billion dollars make? How long would those small business owners need to work to turn that money from a loan into salaries, profits, savings, spending?

I hear some hosts and guests on TV and elsewhere talk about their “expectations” as if they could do a statistically significantly better job had they been appointed to the post of the Treasury Secretary or any meaningful post. Think of the economy at any given date as steady state. Now imagine these “plans” as the initiatives individuals push to improve the steady state. I stress the word “initiatives” and “individuals” because that is what I see and most of us fail to implement average size initiatives, let alone ones to change the steady state of the world’s largest economic machine. My point is that these are not simple tasks. I give much credit to our leaders for their courage and pray that their actions do not result in negative unintended consequences. I do not want them to rush with any plans as “haste makes waste” and waste at this scale could really pollute the fish tank and affect the health of us, the little fish.

SEUSSICAL - Wheelock Family Theatre

A few years ago, my wife implemented a weekly program of getting over a dozen books from the library for the nightly reading with our children. Periodically, she gets a Dr. Seuss book or two which are truly enjoyable.

Past Sunday, we went with our son to a musical called the Seussical at the Wheelock Family Theatre which brought together many of his stories into a very nice performance. I have already mentioned about the importance of exposing children to the arts but in this case the musical impacted me more than it impacted my son (I think). The stress relief that comes from a couple hours of moving out of this world into a world of art, music, or performance cannot be underestimated.

As a side effect, I was reminded to view the world as a theater in a constant performance; and under the influence contributed this to Daily Speculations.

I will conclude with a wish for the key actors on the world stage to not be concerned with their ratings and rewards as much and consider the impact of their performance on us, the participating audience. Their powerful performance will always be rewarded by history’s everlasting applause.

The death of culture by ~Gabryellalf

A couple nights ago I had a long discussion with my wife about maintaining the Armenian culture. But first, why is it so important to maintain a culture? What is culture anyway? In this context, culture is “the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another.” Many people, unfortunately, never get to experience another culture to its fullest. Those who do will probably agree that it takes a long time to develop sufficient in-depth appreciation for the language, customs, art, history, poetry, songs, religion, food, character traits, jokes and everything else that makes up a culture. I see culture as the fragrance of a bouquet of flowers. Each society, as a unique bouquet, has its own beautiful culture with intricacies, some with similarities, but to truly understand these we need a fine tuned sense of “smell” (appreciation more appropriately). I believe few people get the wonderful opportunity to experience multiple cultures and even fewer get to meaningfully contribute to more than one. I am not talking about a four week visit to France, or even a one year immersion program. How about a study abroad for five years or living in a different country for a decade? I have lived in the United States for over fifteen years and find myself discovering interesting cultural undertones every day. Perhaps that is due to the wonderful diversity of this culture. Going back to the main question of why maintain a culture, I believe we must because we as individuals are small links in the greater chain that defines a culture and need to maintain to provide those around us and those that come after us the opportunity to appreciate and celebrate that which is beautiful in every society. Armenians have become very small in numbers and not too many non-Armenians actually study the Armenian culture, but I am sure those who do are bound to discover many amazing jewels created during the past few thousand years. Letting the fragrance of this or any beautiful bouquet parish one individual, one family at a time, through indifference or deliberate acts is not too different from ethnocide.

All people of Armenian heritage must celebrate that heritage, maintain and if at all possible contribute to that heritage just as they contribute to any other culture with which they identify. Who is an Armenian? Anyone who celebrates, attempts to understand, helps preserve, contributes to the Armenian culture is an Armenian. Perhaps this definition needs further refinement but for me a person of Italian descent who studies the Armenian culture or contributes to it in some capacity is far more Armenian than a person of Armenian ancestry who ignores his/her roots.

This brings me to the question of identity. As humans we have many roles, job titles, social responsibilities, individual qualities, and personal idiosyncrasies. To understand our cultures, our heritage, our ancestors, our history is to understand ourselves which is perhaps one of the key requirements for self-actualization.

Thank you for sticking with me through this long detour but the discussion I had with my wife revolved around the Armenian language which currently has more than one orthography (see Traditional Armenian and Reformed Armenian). Just as having two systems of weights and measures creates confusion, additional non-value added work, and need for conversions, so does having two different ways of writing create issues when communicating in a language especially across many dialects, proficiency levels, and geographic and other boundaries (ArmSCII vs. UTF-8 for example). The two systems simply make it more difficult to preserve the Armenian culture, teach Armenian, and publish in Armenian. I’m sure there are linguists working on various parts of the language but I very much hope that soon a leadership force will emerge to standardize along a common easy-to-teach standard, teach that standard across the globe, and use the language as the tool to perpetuate the Armenian culture.

Lesson 21 From English Notebook

It was the winter of 1993. Yerevan was covered with a white freezing blanket of snow. It was serene and peaceful outside, no cars, no people, nothing. Just the snow… and the occasional smoke emanating from a makeshift tin exhaust vent built into the kitchen or living room window, a pipe on a wall made black by whatever people had been burning to stay warm. No power, no gas, no phone, no water. It was almost as cold inside as it was outside. My father would joke that the only utility still operational was the sewer system. No school, no work, nothing… just staying alive. The reality was unacceptable, unimaginable, and unforgettable. I had to get out of that frozen hell known as the Fatherland, or the Mother Armenia. I cannot even imagine what my parents must have felt in those days because for me life was easier… reading, writing, talking, laughing and dreaming, and of course, buying the daily bread ration, chopping wood for the stove, and bringing water from the nearby houses to our fifth floor apartment.

Every day for hours, I would do English exercises, copy down chapters of books in English, listen to the the Voice of America and the BBC on our short-wave radio, and dream big dreams. Perhaps learning the language was all I could do because the dream was too far, too impossible. My family was happy but we were not wealthy or well connected. I could see no other way to reach a dream than to do what I could do and hope for the rest.

Months later, in our room where we had the tiny ten inch TV running on a car battery, during the evening news broadcast I heard about a program that was recruiting exchange students for a one-year visit to America. There was no other option. I had to apply. The process was unclear but I had to write an essay and submit for consideration. After writing the best essay I could write in a language I had just barely learned and taking it to the embassy with my friend, all I could do was wait, and continue dreaming. Little did I know that over fifteen hundred others had also submitted their essays. I’m not sure how many had re-written their essay at least a dozen times to make sure the writing and the spelling were perfect and had written over the same text on the final version to make sure every letter was perfectly traced to fix the poor job of the cheap pen.

Days or maybe a week or two later, I heard that the results were back and names would be announced at the embassy. I went there alone as I could not bother my parents or anyone else to come along for a non-event. Everything was rigged in those days. Why would this be any different? Others had attended expensive private English lessons or had gone to English schools. Their parents had money and connections. I had little chance but deep down there was a glimmer of hope that maybe by divine intervention, my name would also come up. So, I went to the embassy alone and discovered a huge noisy crowd. Some time later, a man came out of the embassy, stood on the fence holding onto the wrought iron railing and began to announce names into a loudspeaker. I think mine was the first name announced. All I could do is stand there in complete shock thinking maybe I had wanted to hear my name so much that it was all an illusion. I asked the people next to me if they had heard my name but they were too busy listening for names they cared about and did not know for sure.

I had passed the first gate. The holes of the giant sifter were too small for me to fall through this time, but I knew that at each of the next stages, they would come with an even smaller sifter with bigger holes and would shake the applicant pool some more to see who would remain in the human sifter.

Monopoly by *Aldalambe

“Remember when we play Monopoly, there’s you, me, and the bank? Now imagine if there was another player (let’s say mama) who borrowed from the bank a lot of money to buy a property. So, you and I have some money, but mama has no money because she bought the property, and the bank has no money because it lent the money to mama. Now you come to pass Go, but the bank has no money, should we give the bank money?”

His initial reaction was no we shouldn’t because that’s our money. But then I mentioned to him that if the bank had no money, the game could not go on. It was fascinating to see his face as he internalized our conversation. He suggested some decent solutions one of which was to take some paper and make fake money with it.

This description is unfortunately not too far from reality the way I see things. The only solution that is being suggested is to basically print more money. Sure that may cause the game to continue but I fear that we’ll not only pay more in taxes to cover the massive deficits, but also we’ll pay in cut programs and jeopardized future initiatives, and most importantly in further dilution of our currency and our reputation. I won’t even mention the moral hazard issue and a number of other issues.

I understand that the alternatives are not easy. However, remember that the people who bought the houses and paid the incredible inflated amounts for them, paid these sums to another player(s) in this economy. Where did this money go? To be sure, some of it got invested in Lehman stock (and other instruments including houses with inflated values) and lost its value but certainly not all of it has been lost to depreciation of values. Take a look at this graph about the money supply.

I’m not an economist but in my humble opinion, if we print more money, we’ll simply dilute the value of the dollar in the long run even more (read groceries more expensive and retirement accounts able to buy even less) and we’ll perpetuate the bubbles exacerbating their effects. I have faith in Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke and hope that they have excellent teams at their disposal. However, I believe Congress needs to take its time in crafting a solution to the fundamental issues. This decision is too big to be made in a week because this country is too big to fail.

In the meantime, we’ll just continue playing the Monopoly game on our kitchen tables, since there’s no room for us at the table where the real games are being played in our name…

Battle Over the Market by ~WesternWitch

The recent volatility in the stock markets around the world has put me on an emotional roller-coaster. The governments are doing what they can to prevent a global recession/depression but are they solving any fundamental issues? Absolutely not!

I think of every country as a family. The United States family has an enormous working potential and earns a lot of value for all the good that it creates every day. Every morning it wakes up, goes to work, creates new value, earns a salary and puts that into its “bank account” from which it pays its bills. Because of its hard work, this family has earned a lot and has invested a lot over the years. It is a generous family and provides significant aid to others. It invests in different initiatives to help the kids get better education and to provide decent health-care for most. It even provides some benefits for its senior members. This family also likes to live well and because it has a solid reputation, everyone lends it money. In the recent decades, the lifestyle of this family has required it to accumulate an amazing amount of debt. In the past few months, some of the family members have acted irresponsibly and this family is helping them out. However, since it already has a huge amount of debt, it must borrow more to help them out. This is how I see our current situation (in very simplistic terms). As long as we have major national initiatives with hefty price tags (Iraq war, Social Security, Medicare, MANY MORE….), as long as we spend as much as we spend, and as long as everything we buy is made outside the family, we’re perpetuating the situation.

The main question is how can this family get on a stronger financial foundation with a system that can withstand high levels of shocks and uncertainty in foreign countries?

First, we need to produce innovative new products, services, and technologies to be exported. These must be produced here in America. We need to produce new energy sources cheaply, new medical technologies cheaply, new drugs, new computers, new knowledge, and everything else that we can innovate and sell. We must produce these competitively here in the US! You ask how can we make something cheaper than in Asia/Africa where labor is much cheaper? We do not need to make it cheaper. We need to make it better. Let’s invent even better machines that can do the work. Then let us produce many things China, India, Russia and every other country wants to buy, let us buy less from them and more from our internal producers, let us innovate so we can be the cheapest producer in the world with the highest paid workforce, let us create jobs in research so we can invent the new energy sources, let us get rich as a family!

Second, we need to cut wasteful spending of our governments. This is a long-term issue. Outdated programs should be replaced with new innovative interesting programs that people need. Let’s make it an initiative to run the programs as effectively as possible with objectives and achievement bonuses.

Third, let us create incentives for people to OWN rather than pretend to own. Most people have a mortgage against their homes. Instead of having a tax incentive to have a mortgage (the home mortgage deduction) why not have a tax incentive to not have a mortgage? Instead of giving businesses advantages to go overseas for labor needs, let us reward those who have all-American teams. Instead of taxing people’s estates, let us come up with creative incentives for people to build estates. Let us fund financial education and discipline from middle school to graduate school, so people will not borrow when they cannot repay. Instead of promoting sales of cheap Chinese made products, let us have sales of American made products.

If you agree or disagree with anything I have said, feel free to comment. These are my humble thoughts and I know it would take an act of God for the government to agree. So, I will pray…

Perhaps as humans, we need to feel in control of the future. Maybe we need to feel smart or at least appear smart enough and able to pre-calculate for all kinds of eventualities. In aggregate we want to be seen commanding the events as part of some grand “strategy.” We actually reward the appearance of “strategy.” Imagine the public disappointment if presidents of countries or companies came out one day and admitted that they had no clue what particular entities of importance would do next, or that they were dealing as best as they could with the circumstances dealt to them. Are we really so good that we can have strategies for all levels of abstraction and all possible outcomes? Is the history the result of carefully crafted strategies? Am I the only one who thinks the “emperor has no clothes?”

My past experiences and observations so far indicate that strategy is a great human desire but not much more. Furthermore, the backward view of history and the chain of events appear to indicate a carefully crafted strategy yet looking forward we are unable to apply the same steps and expect the same outcomes. Was Georgia’s move, Russia’s countermove, and the Polish agreement part of one party’s strategy? Which party? I do not know (probably will never know for sure) but I doubt it. I think it is more likely that at any time, we as individuals, as families, as communities, and as countries analyze the circumstances and opportunities and try to make the best choices. In some cases, our choices turn into better future choices for ourselves, in other cases, they create better choices for others who later appear to have had the “better strategy.”

There are countless examples that can be viewed as proofs of perfect strategy. I suggest that the same examples can be seen as examples of one participant or another taking advantage of available opportunities. In the long run, I believe the exploitation of opportunities gives the appearance of strategy. Some people are excellent at seizing the moment and in the long run appear to have planned the outcomes all along like an olympic gymnast who performs flawlessly and wins the gold medal.

Perhaps it really does not matter what strategy means. Maybe we should instead focus on the true meaning and the implementation of the Golden Rule instead.