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opinion - Epoch Times | Print Archive
OPINION Even Soccer Greats Can’t Unravel Messi’s Secret A4 | JUNE 1117, 2015 www.TheEpochTimes.com/Opinion LLUIS GENE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES By Dr. César Chelala After the extraordinary performance of Barcelona against Juventus—where Lionel Messi was again a key player, we now know the real truth about Messi. He not only is the best soccer player of this era, but probably of all time. Although Barcelona fans consider him almost like a god, he has reached a point in which no adjectives are enough to describe him. Is he an extraterrestrial, as many people call him, or a great player, or a genius, or what? Jose Delbo, a noted Argentine artist and a youthful looking 74-yearold man told me recently, comparing him to Cristiano Ronaldo, “Ronaldo is a great player, but Messi is a magician.” How else can one describe Messi’s performance against Bayern Munich, when his dribbling was so fast that he left the German defender Jérôme Boateng stretched over the soccer field before sending the ball over Manuel Neuer’s head, arguably the best goalkeeper in the world, directly inside the net? As Zito Madu wrote admiringly in SB Nation after that game, “This Lionel Messi bad- Barcelona’s Argentinian forward Lionel Messi (in dark uniform) runs with the ball during the UEFA Champions League final football match between Juventus and FC Barcelona at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin on Saturday. boy phase has gone too damn far now. First the tax fraud, then the tattoos, and now the public dismembering of a human being. Evil Messi does not care for silly things like human decency. This is in violation of so many treaties in the Geneva Conventions.” What can one say about Messi’s performance in the King’s Cup in Spain when Barcelona played the final game against Athletic Bilbao and scored one of the best goals of all time? Messi took the ball on the right flank and dribbled by four defenders before scoring with a low shot past Bilbao’s goalkeeper Iago Herrerin. In the meantime, those watching the game were speechless waiting to see what the end of this brilliant action would be. David Konzevik, a famous Argentine economist and a former soccer player thus explains Messis’s goal, “Messi’s goal was more than exciting. One felt that it was a unique moment, like Maradona’s goal to the English. When he started that play, there was more suspense in the soccer field than in a Hitchcock’s film. They were only seconds, but we were all in suspense waiting for the outcome. That does not happen with any other player. We saw the lightning first run and then came the thunder of the goal. Pure genius.” What is Messi’s secret? Johan Cruyff, a soccer legend, explains. “The secret,” he said, “is the speed of his change of pace; Messi changes direction every half meter. When the defense takes a step he has taken two in two different directions. His dominion of the space-time relationship is skillful, always starts first and this allows him not to be caught.” Marcelo Vieira, the great Brazilian player added, “It is a very rare thing. I do not know how to explain it. Messi goes one, two, three. I do not know what he does, how he handles the ball. You do not stop him by kicking him.” When Barcelona beat Juventus 3–1 in the Champions League final game, and although he didn’t score during this game, Messi was again a key player for his team. Perhaps the greatest explanation for Messi’s achieve- ments was provided by the late Uruguayan writer, Eduardo Galeano, author of the book “Soccer in Sun and Shadow,” “I think Messi is unique in the history of mankind, because he is someone able to have a ball in the foot. They always say that Maradona had the ball tied to his foot, but Messi has it inside the foot, and that is scientifically inexplicable. “You see him persecuted by 7, 11, 22 rivals trying to get the ball and there is no way to get it out his foot. Why is this so? Because they are seeking the ball outside Messi’s foot, but the ball is inside him. Now how you can fit a ball inside the foot? It is an incomprehensible phenomenon, but it’s true, he carries the ball inside, not outside his foot,” Galeano concluded. One may try different explanations for his talent but one thing is certain: Messi is one of the greatest soccer players of all time, a true glory to the game. Dr. César Chelala is a New York writer born in Argentina. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Epoch Times. What Happened to the Banks That Failed? By Joao Granja During the financial crisis and its aftermath, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) sold nearly 500 failed banks in the United States. These hurried sales of institutions seized by the agency reverberated throughout local and regional economies and had serious consequences nationally. The FDIC lost $90 billion in the deals, and at the height of the crisis in 2009, the agency’s deposit insurance fund was $21 billion underwater. I have been exploring this extraordinary episode in U.S. banking history with two other researchers, Gregor Matvos and Amit Seru, both of the University of Chicago. We wanted to find out what happened to banks when they were sold, who bought them and why, and what the implications might be for public policy. To do this, we compiled information on all FDIC bank sales from 2007 to 2013 and analyzed the data using probability models and other methods. More broadly, our study focused on understanding the nature and efficiency of allocation outcomes when failed assets are sold. These findings have direct implications for the design of the bank resolution process— how to deal with the death of a financial firm—an issue that is confronting policymakers and real estate loans, commercial and industrial loans, consumer loans, or commercial real estate (CRE) loans. In other words, a failed lender that specialized in residential real estate was most likely acquired by a bank also specializing in residential real estate. Finally, we also found that an important force driving the potential acquirers’ willingness to pay for a failed bank is the increase in market concentration resulting from an acquisition. Potential acquirers whose market concentration increases most with the acquisition of the failed bank should have a higher willingness to pay for a failed bank because they will benefit from cost synergies and reduced competition in local banking markets. Banking remains very much a local business and a people business. researchers both in the United States and the EU. In this study, we tried to understand the costs associated with failed bank sales in the United States. We hope that these facts will help policymakers weigh the costs of selling banks against the costs of supporting them outright during future financial crises. Understanding these tradeoffs should help policymakers reduce the taxpayer costs associated with reorganizing a banking system in distress. Banks Are Locavores Too One of our most striking find- ings was that buyers of failed banks tended to be very local. The FDIC auctions banks to the highest-qualified bidder, and 84 percent of banks the FDIC sold during this period went to buyers from the same state. Our findings are consistent with the idea that despite deregulation and advances in information technology, banking remains very much a local business and a people business. “Soft” information about local real estate and business markets, gleaned from being physically present in these markets, is a key determinant of who is likely to buy a failed bank. Banks that know their communities are likely to acquire the failed banks in those communities. Buyers also tended to be in the same field as the banks they acquired. Some failed banks focus more on consumer lending, others on mortgages, still others on commercial loans. We found that failed banks are significantly more likely to be sold to potential acquirers whose portfolios of loans have a similar composition, whether on the dimension of residential Poorly Capitalized But sometimes, local banks are poorly capitalized, which constrains their ability to bid for a failed bank, we found in our study. In these situations, the FDIC usually winds up selling the failed bank to a less qualified suitor, located farther away. These buyers are, however, less capable of understanding the local business of the failed banks, and they make lower bids. In these cases, the FDIC bears a larger percentage of the costs of the bank’s failure by earning a smaller sale price. The economic magnitude of these effects is substantial. The median capitalization of the local bidders in the sample—in terms of the percentage of their assets considered Tier 1 capital—was 11.7 percent. But when the capitalization of local bidders falls to about 10 percent, the cost to the FDIC increases by 2.3 percentage points of the assets of the failed bank— in other words, the agency sells it for a price that much lower. This lower price would represent an increase of 8 percent in the total losses that hit the deposit insurance fund during the crisis. It is important to note that although selling failed banks was the FDIC’s standard approach in this crisis, it is not the only option available to regulators. A failed bank could be bailed out or it could be liquidated. Today, the number of bank failures in the United States has fallen to a handful annually. During this time of relative calm, regulators would be wise to evaluate carefully the practice of selling failed banks and to consider the merits of other options. Another crisis will come someday. Now is the time to prepare. Joao Granja is assistant professor of Accounting at MIT Sloan School of Management. Previously published by The Conversation (theconversation.com). Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Epoch Times. The New Face of Noplace, USA Big hotel chains are opening fake boutique lines to snare travelers who prefer independently run lodging By Jim Hightower As everyone who travels a lot soon learns, it’s easy to forget where you are. Those big chains uniformly offer all the charm of Noplace, USA. This disorienting sameness has become more dizzying in recent years as the chains have merged and conglomerated. Weary travelers might choose to stay overnight in one of the Residence Inn hotels, or a Courtyard, the TownePlace Suites, or even splurge for a night in a RitzCarlton. In fact, though, you’re in a Marriott—the $14-billion-a- year amalgamation that owns all of the above hotel chains, along with 15 others. Marriott is among the world’s 10 largest hotel operators. Combined, these companies run 113 different chains. Naturally, as uniformity and conglomeration have taken over the industry, a consumer rebellion has erupted. More and more travelers—especially younger ones—are seeking out independent hotels, unique inns, and local B&Bs. They prefer the un-corporate places that have cool names like the Moxy, Canopy, and V?b. But, oh crud, guess what? All three of those are just offshoots of corporate hotel chains that opened in the past year. These intentionally hip brands belong, respectively, to Marriott, Hilton, and Best Western. Known in the industry as “lifestyle hotels,” these fake independent lodgings are the hot new niche for mega-conglomerates trying to nab travelers in search of authenticity. “The big hotel chains are in the business of pretending they aren’t big chains,” said Pauline Frommer, editor of the well-regarded Frommer’s travel guides. “They want you to think they are boutiques.” SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES It sounds sneaky. But do they think that duping customers is a good strategy? Once travelers realize we’re being deceived, we’ll get angry. And that’s bad for business. OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. He’s also editor of the populist newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown. This article previously published on OtherWords.org. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Epoch Times. A Hilton Garden Inn in Chicago in 2013.