At 2.46 pm on 11th March, mother earth stretched out lazily, triggering off the worst deep sea earth quake that Japan has experienced in the last 100 years. Measuring 8.9 on the Richter Scale she triggered off a tsunami with waves measuring 33 feet in height and traveling at a speed of 500 miles per hour. She smashed in to the port city Sendai and shut down Japan's largest nuclear power stations' cooling systems. This forced Japan to shut down 7 nuclear power reactors and release nuclear vapour in to the atmosphere. These vapours are causing radiation levels to be 1000 times the normal levels. US Jets are bringing in chemicals to Japan to handle the heightened radiation levels. People living within a radius of 10 kilometers of the Fukushima Nuclear Plant are being evacuated. Japan's Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, was pleading to his people to calm down and was personally visiting the Fukushima Nuclear Plant. Thousands of houses have collapsed, cars, boats and farm equipment have been thrown miles away by these giant waves. Hundreds of fires have been set off. Thousands are dead and 80,000 people are missing. The whole country is in a state of emergency. Clearly, the scale of the disaster was sinking in and only a massive international effort can help Japan now.
Amidst all this chaos, a business television news channel was interviewing a trader as to why the Japanese Yen had gained against the dollar. Clearly, there is a disaster in Japan and its currency is gaining strength instead of weakening. This was not making sense. The trader said that Japanese Insurance Companies were unwinding their assets in the US and purchasing yen so that they could keep money ready to handle the claims that will hit them. A tsunami was being set off in the financial markets of the world.
The trader then said something that made me feel absolutely sick in the stomach (despite being a seasoned banker myself). He said that this strengthening of the yen was a temporary phenomenon and that in the short and medium terms, the yen would weaken dramatically. So, he was going to "short the yen" i.e. short sell the yen. As the trader spoke of shorting the yen, the visuals that were being shown were those of the giant waves swallowing up the port city of Sendai, thousands of cars and boats being tossed around, firemen fighting the fires, chaos all around... lives being lost...and all that this trader could think off was how he could make money out of this disaster.
James Hadley Chase wrote a lovely book called "The Vulture is a Patient Bird". The duty of the vulture is to help clean up the earth off carrion. It is a very patient bird. It preys on the dead. Here, I was watching this trader prey on a country that was reeling under one of the worst natural disasters. And worse, he had a smile..and as they continued to speak, I couldn't help but think, this human vulture preys on the living. It is not patient. To it, the lives of these millions of people on the other side of the earth did not mean anything so long as it got what it wanted. Degeneration of the worst kind?
Gautam Buddha called this Greed. He said greed is one of the reasons for unhappiness in our world. He said this almost 3000 years ago and his words hold true till date. Greed for power, greed for wealth, greed for position, greed for dominance has today resulted in unhappiness right across the world. Look at what is happening in the middle east, in Europe, in many parts of Asia and the US. People are unable to manage their wants and needs. This has triggered off different issues across the world causing untold misery.
I read an interesting article on the 2008 Global Financial Crisis being triggered off because of greed. We don't seem to learn. Somehow this comes through as "who cares?".
Naoto san and the millions of Japanese impacted by this disaster are not worried as to where the Japanese Yen is in the currency market today. As the hearts of millions of others across the world reach out to the families that are in the midst of this disaster, the human vultures continue to prey. I only hope the television channels decide to report from the "heart" rather than from the "head".
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