I've been preoccupied with reading headlines throughout the day, just to get a better feel for what the situation is like in Japan. And I'm not the only one. Every day we're waking up, just hoping for better news… a glimmer of hope that the nuclear situation won't deteriorate, a plight that would really add insult to injury on a people that has been handling this catastrophic devastation with a collective civility and perseverance.
Meanwhile, work has been humming along with what my industry does best - exploiting macro and micro mispricing to make people money. Many of the publications and correspondences coming through preface with some sort of 'heart-felt' condolence (talk about sending condolences to the clearly well, office drones … the wrong people?) Yet they all cut to the chase, beating on types of industries that will actually benefit from catastrophe - reconstruction, reconstruction, reconstruction.
As with Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl, Katrina, and even San Francisco, communities are resilient, and cities, entire nations will eventually recover - at the cost of individual, generational, suffering and grief.
It's depressing to hear that a Singaporean national put her country to shame by contributing SGD $1,000,000 to the relief efforts, TWICE of what her country gave. I hope that number changes, but it's so sad that a country with one of the fastest growing economies could help so little.
I wanted to encourage you to keep your eyes peeled for ways that we can all help. With a plethora of non-profit organizations and individuals fund-raising for disaster relief, there seems to be a little ambivalence to where we put our money (and I've yet to do any sort of bonafide research on this). And as with all disasters, there are people out there eager to monopolize on good will. There must be non-monetary ways of helping. I bet that if we all put our minds together, we could come up with a lot more than cutting Red Cross a check to relieve our consciences (not that that isn’t a good idea).
