Vikings, proper mental
hygiene
and the US financial crisis
By Jon Fernquest
"Don't cut off your nose to spite
your face" is a well-known proverb .
The origins of the proverb lie in the distant past. In the year 867 Viking pirates, while raiding and pillaging in Scotland, attacked a convent:
[The nun] St. Aebbe... assembled all her nuns...and exhorted them to save themselves from falling into the hands of the barbarians, by voluntary disfigurement. She set the example by cutting off her own nose and upper lip. All the nuns did the same...The Vikings broke into the convent and, disgusted by the horrible spectacle presented by the nuns, set fire to the house and burnt them all within it (Source: Dictionary of Saintly Women (1904)).
Not a happy ending.
The more general meaning of the proverb is: "don't disadvantage yourself to do harm to your enemy." People who pursue revenge often damage themselves more than the object of their anger. Overreactions to a problem are often self-destructive. The proverb also provides a warning not to act out of anger. As the Buddhist Pali Tipitaka teaches:
A man conquered by anger is in a mass of darkness.
He takes pleasure in bad deeds as if they were good,
but later, when his anger is gone,
he suffers as if burned with fire.
He is spoiled, blotted out,
like fire enveloped in smoke.
(Source: My Burmese and Pali Lexicography Notes)
A top-ranked New York Times story this week has a similar message about how not to react to a financial crisis:
In 1929, Meyer Mishkin owned a shop in New York that sold silk shirts to workingmen. When the stock market crashed that October, he turned to his son, then a student at City College, and offered a version of this sentiment: It serves those rich scoundrels right.A year later, as Wall Street’s problems were starting to spill into the broader economy, Mr. Mishkin’s store went out of business. He no longer had enough customers. His son had to go to work to support the family, and Mr. Mishkin never held a steady job again.
The moral of the story: don't be more interested in punishing Wall Street than saving the economy.
Don't look now, there's a tsunami behind you...
Retirement savings are about the only thing that has been noticably affected by the Wall Street crisis but this could change:
At the start of the 1930s, despite everything that had happened on Wall Street, the American economy had not yet collapsed. Consumer spending and business investment were down, but not horribly so.In late 1930, however, a rolling series of bank panics began. Investments made by the banks were going bad — or, in some cases, were rumored to be going bad — and nervous customers besieged bank branches to demand their money back. Hundreds of banks eventually closed...By 1932, consumption and investment had both collapsed, and stocks had fallen more than 80 percent from their peak.
These bank failures caused lasting damage to the economy.
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With bank failures, lost knowledge of the economy (not good)
As an economics professor Ben Bernanke, current head of the US central bank (The Fed), developed a theory that as banks failed during in the lead up to the Great Depression, the banking sector lost the accumulated knowledge of bank loan officers that was impossible to replace. When this happened trust "vanished from the banking sector:
Once a bank in a given town shut its doors, all the knowledge accumulated by the bank officers there effectively disappeared. Other banks weren't nearly as willing to lend money to local businesses and residents because the loan officers at those banks didn’t know which borrowers were less reliable than they looked. Credit dried up.If a guy has a good investment opportunity and he can't get the funding, he won't do it...And that's when the economy collapses...That's when the Depression became the Great Depression" ().
Slowly, but surely, this is what is happening right now.
Modern economies grind to a halt when businesses and households can't easily get credit.
If households can't get loans to buy cars, cars sales plummet, car plants will close, and car factory workers will be out on the street without a job, all the businesses they support in the communities they live in will have sales that plummet to zero, like a small snowball growing larger and larger as it rolls down the hill the problem gets very large indeed (snowball effect).
That is why we need to get credit markets working as fast as possible.
(Source: Ney York Times, Lesson From a Crisis: When Trust Vanishes, Worry, DAVID LEONHARDT, September 30, 2008link)
Vocabulary:
spite, do out of
spite - do because you want to hurt someone มีเจตนาร้าย
มีความมุ่งร้าย
mental hygiene
- a clean mind, mental health, how to think about and solve problems in
a healthy and productive manner (See Wikipedia on mental
health and Social
Guidance films) มีสุขภาพจิตดี มีจิตใจสะอาดบริสุทธิ์
Cut off your
nose to spite your face- disadvantaging yourself when you do
harm to your enemy, damaging yourself more than the object of your
anger when you pursue revenge, a self-desctructive overreaction to a
problem (See Wikipedia)
ลงโทษอย่างไม่จำเป็น
a proverb
- a simple popular saying which expresses a truth, based on common
sense or practical experience of humanity (See Wikipedia)
คำพังเพย
raiding
- making a sudden armed attack against a places การโจมตี การจู่โจม
pillaging - steal property using violent methods
ปล้นสะดม
a convent - a place where nuns (like monks but
female) คอนแวนต์
falling into the hands of - being caught by
ถูกจับโดย ตกอยู่ในมือของ
barbarians - people from other countries thought to
be uncivilized and violent คนป่าเถื่อน
voluntary
- do if you want to do it (not forced) ด้วยความเต็มใข
disfigurement - destroying the appearance of
something ทำให้เสียโฉม
a spectacle
- something strange and interesting to look at
ภาพที่หน้าตื่นเต้น
disgusted by the horrible spectacle - made sick
looking at something very bad that happened รู้สึกรังเกียจ
คลื่นไส้เพราะเห็นภาพที่น่าสยดสยอง
the Pali Tipitaka - the religious books of Thervadan
Buddhism as practiced in Thailand, Burma, Laos, and Cambodia (See Wikipedia)
พระไตรปิฎก
scoundrels
- bad guys คนชั่ว
serves them right [Thai: Som Na Naa] - they fot what
they deserved สมน้ำหน้า
serves those rich scoundrels right - the rich bad
guys got what they deserved กรรมตามสนอง
a steady job - a full-time job, usually 8
hours-per-day all-year-round (not only temporary work) งานที่มั่นคง
the moral of the story - the lesson
of the story บทเรียนที่ได้รับ
a bank panic, a
bank run - (See Wikipedia)
rumored - people said informally amongst themselves
that this was true (but not official or sure it was true) ข่าวลือ
besieged bank
branches - attacked banks, trying to get inside to get their
money บุกเข้าไปเอาเงินคืน
bank loan officers - the employees of bank who make
the decisions on who gets a loan (based on their personal knowledge of
the borrower) เจ้าหน้าที่สินเชื่อ
can't get the
funding - can't get money to pay for their business
operations ไม่ได้เงินกู้ เงินลงทุน
grind to a halt - stop very quickly หยุดชะงัีก
plummet - fall quickly by a large amount ร่วง ตกฮวบ
a snowball effect - get's bigger and bigger as it
goes along ผลกระทบที่รุนแรง และใหญ่หลวง