overrun

Incessant trembling, death lingers.
Gangrene, syringe and a broken promise
A sense of longing, of time lost
Not even winds will carry his sorrow
aloft he hangs from the sky, overrun and
naked

Loud Out Laughing

Hah. Manchester United lost and I cannot possibly be more ecstatic.

Goddamn arrogant bastards; especially Ronaldo. Ugh...

The fallacy of faith.

I've always been relatively close to Islam, having had the careful, nurturing guidance from two loving parents and countless other enlightened sources. I've had the privilege of going to the Kaaba numerous times as well as Madinah, largely in part because I lived in Riyadh for ten memorable years and our schools were lawfully compelled to give all students vacations during Ramadan. All of this is relevant insofar as it instilled in me a sense of cultural, religious zeal and affinity towards what Islam as a religion defined in its spiritual essence.

Therein lies the problem. Amidst the clamor of spiritual euphoria, one tends to bend both space, time and cognition towards a more palpable concept of faith. That faith is illustrated and realized through the lens of Islam (or any religion you grew up with) without fully understanding the nature and meaning of said faith. We then, as thinking, feeling and emotional entities, wrap ourselves into a belief system that fits well with our own upbringing, values and principles. It is convenient. It is comforting. It is also the truth. It also defines us, our culture, our identity and our whole belief system.

But what exactly is faith? Who chooses it? Who decides what is right or wrong? What manner does our own experience have in defining our faith?

Simply put, if people were born in Christian faith, what is the probability of enlightenment towards Islam that would be commensurate (in fairness) with destiny choosing people born into Muslim families. What's not to say that the situation can be reversed and Christianity (or any religion for that matter) is the enlightened faith and that muslims are the inheritors of bad luck. Which party then decides what faith is right and which is in the wrong?

But this entire approach is illogical. If religious people postulate their religiosity and knowledge of existence on faith, then that knowledge and religiosity itself is ridiculous. Because faith is arbitrary, and that one man's faith in God is synonymous with one's faith in a tooth fairy simply by the act of believing and submitting to faith. You can have faith in everything, and hence claim that anything can exist. Similarly, you can create your own religion by having faith in anything and claiming to its existence (either in your head or otherwise).

Subscription to and participation in some faith or another, is about such things as belonging to the group, being accepted, establishing one's cultural and social and individual identity, meeting emotional and psychological needs--things like that. The propositional claims of any particular faith are just fill-in-the-blank wild cards that the members have been indoctrinated to babble about. They're mytho-poetic constructions that some people, including believers themselves, mistakenly take to be literal propositional claims.

How many of us can claim to think above the confines of what we were born into? How many of us will act upon it? How much will our own biases seek to supplant any quest for other spiritual avenues than the ones were were brought up to believe?

I feel guilty

Well I just finished watching the Australian Open Final (thanks to the unbelievable level of play witnessed in the Wimbledon final) between two rivals that mirror the same intrigue, drama and personality analogous to Sampras/Agassi. I have to say, although Sampras still remains my favorite, I have to grudgingly concede that perhaps these two tremendous athletes provide the best rivarly in the history of tennis. Of course, by history, I mean since 1990 when I started to follow tennis thanks to a terrific Courier vs. Sampras match on clay.

After Sampras announced his retirement from Tennis, I pretty much lost all interest in tennis and banished it into the depths of "uninteresting-but-once-was-an-awesome-sport" like F1, Cricket and the Moto GP. Although I do not intend on following Tennis with the same youthful exuberance as I did in the 90s, I will try my best to try and watch any Nadal/Federer match in earnest if they so match up in future grand slams.

Now here comes the guilty part. Owing to an epic semi-final which pushed Nadal to over five hours, I was fully supporting Nadal, knowing that he would come to the match as an underdog by virtue of fatigue and muscle wear. After seeing the ceremony, I felt so much empathy for a tearful Federer that I felt sick: here is arguably the best tennis player in the history of tennis reduced to tears because he just can't get over his most challenging hurdle : Sampras' 14 slams in addition to beating Nadal, at his prime, in the final of a Grand Slam.

Now normally men are good at controlling their emotions, and with good reason - they need to be brave in situations that explicitly call for strength and restraint. However, just by seeing the poor guy cry like that made me understand just how much commitment these althletes possess and the sheer agony of perhaps losing to mantle of "The Greatest Ever". In fact, when Nadal said that he regarded Federer as a Great Champion, Federer almost starting bawling. Pressure, expectations and standards are so high for Federer that he just let it all out today - even Nadal visibly felt bad for him.

So here is to Federer for beating Nadal in the French final - if they do meet.

Financial Engineering

Well, there is a lot to talk about but little to say. They say greed is a powerful impetus for monetary wealth and excesses, but to say that the financial markets swam in greed is a gross understatement. No, ladies and gents, the financial institutions and their sprawling counterparts in the form of private equity firms, hedge funds and brokerage firms were defined by avarice - and their appetite became more insatiable. How did this calamity being? What set it off? Why does Wall Street excessiveness send seismic shockwaves to the global economy? How can the markets lose upwards of $1o trillion dollars in market capitalization (not inclusive of shadow, implicit costs)? If I told you it was as simple as a homeowner not making their monthly mortgages, you wouldn't believe me. The sad part is, I'm not lying.

For my benefit and yours, I'll break this upto multi-faceted components: Subprime mortgages; easy access to credit with a negative effective interest rate; enhanced competition for structured, highly complex illiquid securites packaged with a plethora of mortgages: collateral debt obligations and other ugly mortgage backed securities; negative equity; HIGHLY and I mean jawdropping highly leveraged financial institutions; and lastly, CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS, the mother of all monsters.

As of now, I don't have the time or energy to write anything more. Will update soon

The Asset Bubble of the Future

So, having spent quality time in Qatar for almost two months, I've fully understood why this region has seen unprecented growth concurrent with record government surpluses and accumulated exchange wealth.

70% of it has to do with hydrocarbons. Really, the GCC has struck it rich owing to an abundant supply (per square foot) of oil and gas that has been gifted to them. Qatar alone has amassed about 20% of the total proven natural gas reserves in the world - such a small country with a meager population that claims its stake to such an enormous amount of wealth clearly suggests how much this area is blessed.

Thanks to rising commodity prices in the international exchange markets on the back of a devaluaing dollar, the GCC countries have increased the production of oil/gas to avail of a record margin they are earning on exporting oil/gas and other byproducts. With oil peaking at $148 a barrel, countries with diminishing returns on their reserves, particularly Saudi and their potent Ghawar field, are not only recording unheard of profitability, but also damaging their reserve capacity permanently due to unsustainable production quotas. Nevertheless, thanks to record surpluses, the GCC countries are agressively establishing and consolidating their sovereign wealth funds - a prudent management of funds from excess reserves which will undoubtedly yield more returns than interest bearing assets booked in their banks. And most of these highly aggressive funds are investing in highly lucrative, albeit risky capital ventures abroad - sometimes saving FI's that are in desperate need of capital owing to CDO's (collateral debt obligations), SI (structured investments) and exposure to the sub-prime mortgage market in the US.

However, with every boom there is a very dangerous undercurrent that develops. It's true when my dad says, ''Bad Loans are only made during good times." With so much money coming into this region vis-a-vis a spurt in global demand for hydrocarbons (read India & China), the GCC is facing a tremendous problem with inflation - particular those countries whose inflation is driven by real estate. Inflation at double digits is not uncommon, but coupled with low interest rates, you create an environment where the real price of borrowing is actually negative (where the lender incurs the price of inflation, not the borrower), and in such an environment not only do you have a burst in liquidity and easy credit, but also you have huge development in the real estate - a market which is especially risky in an untested area in the GCC. This rapid development in all GCC countries, notably Dubai, is indicative of an asset bubble - wherein the appreciating price of the properties negates the impact of inflation - and a significant portion of family wealth is tied to the real estate. With an insane pace of development, if more investment finds itself in the real estate market in conjunction with a huge growth in supply (when properties in development are finally finished), we will perhaps witness the largest asset bubble in history (which will pale Japan's problem in the 80's). Nevertheless, if the global market continues to rely on Middle Eastern commodities, govt. may be able to mitigate the potential fall should such a calamity occur - but it remains to be seen by how much, as a large amount of their contingencies are parked in foreign capital ventures, subsidiaries and illiquid assets. This will make emergency bail-outs and recovery programs more restrained.

What exacerbates the problem of inflation is that every country in the GCC, barring Kuwait, has pegged their currency to the dollar, so whatever the mightly Federal Reserve of the United States decides on their interest rate, the countries here must follow suit - this system gives them no control over times where there is a mis-match in macro-economic indicators, such as now. There is no such thing as monetary policy to control run-away inflation and easy credit. So long as the dollar devalues, the price of perishable and non-perishable goods continues to rise, cost of living goes up as most of the countries import commodities such as food and cement.

Qatar has been growing at a phenomenal rate, as its per capita GDP is the highest in the world (at $70k+) - this indicates wealth and prosperity. But don't be fooled by this misnomer. There is a HUGE, and I mean HUGE, skew to the rich, who not only control 90+% of the wealth in the nation (owing to ties with the ruling Emiir and other powerful govt. posts), but also are accumulated more wealth thanks to extremely low labor costs on the back of appreciating real estate values.

It's sad to see that when I walk back from work, I see laborers in such deplorable conditions - and I bet most of them fast during the sweltering heat and humidity. The other day a dilapidated bus came to pick up a swarm of workers, most of which had such dirty clothes and a stench that carried for yards (I'd say they are beyond the point of caring really). Most of them looked so exhausted and deflated from work, that their eyes carried a distinctive vacant look that you'd sometimes see in prison. In a way it is prison for them, thanks to relentless system of sponsorship, most laborers don't have any rights or reprieve even in conditions that border on inhumanity - and I am willing to venture that they are many instances of inhuman exploitation has occured. Contractors have no problems obtaining huge loans from a prosperous banking sector, but their margins are most appallingly high at the labor cost front, where they can boast making just a year turn-around from their investments - that is how cheap the labor is. It's almost free.

Although from a purely capitalistic and practical standpoint, I can't really fault good business sense - but at a human level I do question their greed and lack of empathy. I just hope that when the economy makes a turn for the worst in the GCC region, that the millions of curses of the laborers don't come back to haunt them - and who will suffer the most? I'd say the middle class who've parked their investments in the real estate sector.

Eh

First, happy Ramadan Kareem for those Muslims out there.

Sooooo, I found something pretty chilling whilst reading Yusuf Ali's translation of the Holy Quran:

Imran (Family of Imran) Chapter

92. By no means shall ye attain righteousness unless ye give (freely) of that which ye love; and whatever ye give, of a truth Allah knoweth it well.

I'm not so sure I have this capacity, yet.