China is repoing our pandas! I mean why can’t they just take all our bankers? I mean we don’t need those. I know that apparently there is a lot “talent” on Wall Street that is in danger of extinction, so maybe we can do an exchange. They can take all our “talented” bankers and investors and we can keep the pandas.

Butterstick is gone. AKA Tai Shan.
Oh….the ridiculousness of it all. Repoing pandas. Sad Panda. Seriously. I mean how did that meeting go with Obama? We don’t have any money so take our pandas?
I become very sad about this whole thing and stayed in. My husband went out and I curled up on the couch with a movie I’ve been meaning to watch for awhile. The Match King was fascinating. I wish they showed this movie to those who got Harvard MBA’s. All those people of “talent” who took the panda away. I had never heard of this film, but I’m wondering why these films are not more popular now. I mean this guy, this character Paul Kroll was based on Ivar Kreuger who created the financial model which has been used by Enron and is the basis for most of the international corporate structure we know today. Okay, I gotta ask, why are we not talking more about the fact that the current financial model being used is being based on a famous fraud?
The Match King gives a version of the life of Ivan Kruegar who makes Ken Lay and Bernie Maddoff look like amateurs. The story in the film is that of a man who makes an empire and a monopoly by giving loans off of future earnings and ultimately kills himself when the counterfeit bonds he uses to make a payment on a loan that was due is exposed by the stock market crash. Sound familiar?
What is also fascinating is the obvious sociopath that the character Paul Kroll is. So here’s a film which obviously tells us what we should have been paying attention to all along. Right there under our noses. (I mean if it was on, knew it existed and could find it.) Well now I’m telling you, find this movie and show it to any “talented” business person you know. Hell, buy it for your boss for Christmas. I’m sure it’s available somewhere on DVD. Here’s another interesting fact that they talked about in the movies. Have you ever heard that expression “Three on a match”? You know the one that says that three people shouldn’t share the same match because the third will have bad luck? Well the character Paul Kroll in the movie makes it up to sell more matches!

So what does this have to do with repoing pandas? Well, if we didn’t have so many Paul Kroll’s or Ivan Krueger’s still wandering around messing things up I think we would have more pandas not none.

So if you love pandas, watch this movie. There. .

The New York Times is reporting the financial distress of the Dubai Sovereign Fund. I gotta say, I’m a little surprised.  About a year ago, I was expecting the financial center of the world to shift from New York to the Middle East or China. I think I’ve been leaning towards China, but I was really expecting the Middle East, especially Dubai to show a bit more longevity.  I’m by no means an economist, but thinking about it now, it makes sense. The growth was too quick. Unsustainable as they like to say. Ok, so what about China? Well…we owe them a serious amount of money.

So they seem to be able to call the shots, right? Well, I guess not? Because somehow and I’m not sure how this all works out…but we are all in the same boat it seems. Somehow…we’re all screwed.

Somehow, we’re all in the movie One Way Passage. Think of An Affair to Remember or Sleepless in Seattle without the happy ending or fabulous reunion. I take that back. This reunion is fantastic.

So a couple meets on a ship and fall in love, but they both are going down. He’s a convict and she’s dying. GREAT STUFF!! After they set up a tradition of glass breaking when they are together and they are torn apart by sickness and prison:

They had agreed to meet again on New Year’s Eve, a month later. At the appointed time and place, a bartender is startled when two glasses on the bar break, then vanish.-Wikipedia

So since the world is it’s own version of One Way Passage there must be a way for us to break the glass. Even if we can’t make it to the party together, we should agree to leave something for the future, even if it is without our presence.

So according to the New York Times is reporting that China is assuming a larger global role. Aparently, Mr. Hu was enjoying his new found ability to push back on American demands. So to cheer up Mr. Obama, here’s a little treat.

The Bitter Tea of General Yen it’s directed by Frank Capra so it’s sure to cheer him up a bit.

Oh, this is a fun one!

Because of the interracial theme of the Chinese bandit and the American missionary woman falling in love, there was a great deal of protest from some groups at the time of the films release. Joseph McBride’s Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success quotes Barbara Stanwyck as saying:

The women’s clubs came out very strongly against it, because the white woman was in love with the yellow man and kissed his hand. So what! I was so shocked [by the reaction]. It never occurred to me, and I don’t think it occurred to Mr. Capra when we were doing it. I accepted it, believed in it, loved it. (McBride, page 281)

Cheer up Mr. Obama! It’s not like Nixon did any better. Kick back and enjoy the show.