For human relationships, everything is based on trust. When that is gone, nothing else matters, even when faced with facts and logic. I will come back to that again later.
What a week this was, on the American political front. The dam is breaking on the Trump induced White House stonewalling of information. The deafening silence of the GOP party was finally broken by a lone voice, a conservative by the name of Amash.
Amash had fired off his first tweets last week and broke ranks with his party. He provided his views on the Mueller report that was based on his personal understanding after studying it for a while. He followed up with another longer tweet this week amidst condemnation by the Tweeter-in-chief (“Loser!”) and fellow Republicans.
Amash then had a town hall meeting earlier this week in his county where he provided his views and did a Q&A session. I watched the video on youtube with interest. He was very calm and professional throughout. I was amazed that some attendees were just hearing this alternate view for the first time. They had only been listening to the Fox news echo chamber till now and had never heard about the arguments from the other side before. Note to self: I must watch Fox news periodically to understand the opposing views better in the future, however hard it will be.
Then within 24 hours, another big bomb was dropped as Mueller decided to give an 8 minutes impromptu speech to the world. He reiterated his report findings and stressed a few points he wanted to convey. He is still trying his best to stay politically neutral and confirms that he will resign from his post immediately. It was another crazy 24 hours as both sides try to spin the speech to suit their end games. Trump weighed in to emphasize the false narrative that he is innocent beyond doubt again.
The White House’s moves to turn down Congress’ requests for further information is also slowly being overturned. More evidence is leaking out. Pelosi wants a tight case before she will use the “I” word. It looks like they will move to the next step of holding an Impeachment Enquiry, to see if they have a case to proceed to the next logical step of impeachment. This would be a smart way to develop a strong, ironclad case.
Trump then lashes out to divert attention from himself by hitting Mexico with tariffs, trying to link that with the demand to slow down illegal immigrants flowing into America. Are they even connected?? These people are fleeing violence from their own countries. The irony of it all is that almost 50% of all guns causing the crimes in their countries are illegally obtained from the lax gun laws in America!! They should address the core issue of the problem while the NRA is opposing to further gun control. Having new tariffs would just cripple Mexico and hurt US consumers instead. It will not reduce immigrant flow.
Meanwhile, China is slowly but surely fighting back too. It will draw up a blacklist of names and treat them like how the US had treated Huawei. Its retaliatory tariffs against US goods has also kicked in today. The threat of restricting rare earth exports to America is also being shelled out as China provides 80% of its needs.
In all human relationships, trust is most important. Trump is breaking down these long term relationships with constant unpredictable and maniacal lashing outs. It is impossible to negotiate with someone when all trust is lost. How can one negotiate in good faith if the other side just wants an “I win, you lose” endgame?
The same goes for personal relationships too. I met up with a friend this week who is going through the initial steps of a divorce. When one side discovers what had happened behind her back and loses all trust, then perhaps there is no point to continue on this marriage charade. Regrets are too late as the other side uncovers and realised about multiple occasions where this trust had been breached. I cannot imagine the pain being suffered now by both sides.
Work-wise, I had a number of calls this week with potential lenders to the microfinance firm I am providing consultancy services to in Myanmar. We have a 07 Jun deadline to aim for submission of lenders’ proposals to make use of a subsidy program called LIFT which will take over the FX hedging risk. I hope that we can successfully target half of the 10 names we spoke to.
I attended an aptitude test last night for the Data Analytics program run by IBF which I wrote about in my previous blog. As expected, I was the oldest guy in the room of about 60. My chances are getting slimmer… The 50 MCQ questions were not easy and most of the people there probably know way more statistics that I do. But at least I tried.
Going for my next half marathon tonight. The Sundown run is one of my favourites as it begins just before midnight, running into the night. It is a different running experience, as it is much quieter and cooler than doing it in the day time. Humidity can be much higher and it can get worse at night. It is always a nice feeling for me when I reach the finishing line in the dead of the night though to cheering loud music.
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