By Jeannine Aversa, AP Economics Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Federal Reserve announced Tuesday a radical plan to buy massive amounts of short-term debt in a dramatic effort to break through a credit clog that is imperiling the economy.
Invoking Depression-era emergency powers, the Fed will buy commercial paper, a short-term financing mechanism that many companies rely on to finance their day-to-day operations, such as purchasing supplies or making payrolls.
In more normal times, about $100 billion of these short-term IOUs were outstanding at any given time, sold by companies to buyers that included money market mutual funds, pension funds and other investors. But this market has virtually dried up as investors have become too jittery to buy paper for longer than overnight or a couple days.
That has made it increasingly difficult and expensive for companies to raise money to fund their operations. Commercial paper is a way of borrowing money for short periods, typically ranging from overnight to less than a week.
The unstable situation has left many companies vulnerable. The notion under the plan is for the government to provide a "backstop" that would give companies a new place to get cash, the Fed said. The action makes the Fed a crucial source of credit for nonfinancial businesses in addition to commercial banks and investment firms.
The Fed's action initially helped lift investors' spirits, although concerns about the economy dampened their enthusiasm. The Dow Jones industrials -- which gained about 145 points just after the open -- fell nearly 63 points in midday trading. Monday, a huge selloff put the Dow below 10,000 for the first time in four years.
Concerns about the credit markets pushed investors into longer-term Treasury bonds, considered a secure place to park money in times of turmoil. The rush to safety drove yields lower, though.
Credit markets themselves eased slightly, however, after the Fed's move raised hopes it would quickly relieve the short-term funding problems plaguing some companies.
European stocks posted modest gains on hopes that central banks around the globe would coordinate on rate cuts. Share prices in Britain and in Germany, Europe's largest economy, rose. Iceland, however, is facing the prospect of bankruptcy, according to the Prime Minister Geir H. Haarde, after its banks went on a buying spree across Europe, accumulating massive debts in the process.
The Fed said it is creating a new entity to buy three-month unsecured and asset-backed commercial paper directly from eligible companies. It hopes to have the program up and running soon, Fed officials said.
Fed officials said they'll buy as much of the debt as necessary to get the market functioning again. They refused to say how much that might be, but they noted that around $1.3 trillion worth of commercial paper would qualify.
"The commercial paper market has been under considerable strain in recent weeks as money market mutual funds and other investors" have become increasingly reluctant to buy commercial paper, especially longer-dated maturities. As the market for commercial paper shrank, the Fed said rates on the longer-term debt "increased significantly," making it more expensive for companies to borrow.
The Treasury Department, which worked with the Fed on the program, said the action is "necessary to prevent substantial disruptions to the financial markets and the economy."
The Treasury will provide money to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to support the new program, the Fed said. Fed officials would not say how much but believed it would be substantial. The money would not come from the $700 billion financial bailout President Bush signed into law on Friday.
If a company's commercial paper is not backed by assets or other forms of security acceptable to the Fed, the company could pay an upfront fee, the central bank said. The amount of such a fee has not yet been determined.
The Fed said it hoped its effort would jolt the commercial paper market back to life.
"This facility should encourage investors to once again engage in term lending in the commercial paper market," the Fed said. That should eventually spur financial companies to lend to each other and to their customers, including consumers, the Fed said.
The Fed said it planned to stop buying commercial paper on April 30, 2009, unless the Federal Reserve board agrees to extend the program. The Fed created a separate entity to pool and hold the commercial paper it buys. The Fed said this should allow the central bank to more easily manage the program and better control risk.
There was $1.61 trillion in outstanding commercial paper, seasonally adjusted, on the market as of last Wednesday, according to the most recent data from the Fed. That was down from $1.70 trillion in the previous week. Since the summer of 2007, the market has shrunk from more than $2.2 trillion.
Pressure also is growing on the Fed to reverse course and order a deep reduction in its key interest rate, now at 2 percent. Such a move would be aimed at reviving the moribund economy by encouraging consumers and businesses to boost their spending. Many predict the Fed will act on or before its next meeting on Oct. 28-29. And, some believe it could be part of a broader coordinated move with central banks in other countries.
The White House said President Bush spoke Tuesday with leaders of Britain, France and Italy about measures the United States is taking and the importance of countries working together.
The finance ministers of the G-7 -- the U.S., France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and Canada -- will meet in Washington at the end of this week and the White House says Bush is open to the idea of a leaders' summit on the economy, as suggested by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke may offer clues on the Fed's next move when he speaks Tuesday afternoon on the economic outlook and developments in financial markets.
President Bush also was set to talk about the government's bailout effort, which lets the government buy rotten mortgages and other bad debts from banks and other financial institutions. By getting these bad debts off bank's balance sheets, they might be in a better position to raise capital and more willing to lend to each other and to customers.
As the number of failed banks has gone up sharply this year, Sheila Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., wants to boost fees to financial institutions to replenish the insurance fund that backs the nation's deposits. The increase would double the average paid by U.S. banks and thrifts next year.
The Fed pledged Monday to take "additional measures as necessary" to battle the worst credit crisis in decades.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has tapped a former Goldman Sachs executive to be director of the government's bailout program. Neel Kashkari, who has worked with Paulson at the department since July 2006, was chosen Monday as the interim head of the government's unprecedented effort to unclog the credit markets.
Kashkari, who was a vice president in Goldman's San Francisco office before joining the department, is one of four former executives from the firm now working feverishly to resolve the financial crisis.
The lending lockup is a key reason why the U.S. economy is faltering. Unable to borrow money freely or forced to pay a high cost to borrow, employers are cutting jobs and reducing capital investments. Consumers have retrenched.
Associated Press writers Madlen Read and Tim Paradis in New York and Ben Feller in Washington contributed to this report.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Sunday, September 14, 2008
No Deal Reached Yet to Decide Lehman's Fate
By CARRICK MOLLENKAMP, DEBORAH SOLOMON, AARON LUCCHETTI, SERENA NG and SUSANNE CRAIG
The outlines of plans to determine the fate of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. emerged today even as it became increasingly clear that a clean sale of the entire firm to a big bank would be too difficult to execute.
A sense of optimism that a rescue could be arranged today dimmed as a growing sense of gloom descended on Wall Street. Executives from top banks in the U.S. and Europe huddled with federal regulators in an attempt to come up with plans to either buy pieces of Lehman or prepare for an orderly winding down of the firm in a manner that would minimize the collateral damage for the ailing global financial system.
After 6 p.m., the formal meeting ended for the day with no resolution, though some participants stayed behind to continue talking. "Senior representatives of major financial institutions reconvened on Saturday with U.S. officials at the New York Fed. Discussions are expected to continue tomorrow," said a spokeswoman for the Federal Reserve.
At about 8 p.m., New York Fed President Timothy Geithner was still at the bank's headquarters. Officials from the New York Fed and various banks were expected to continue working through the night.
Under one plan, either Barclays PLC or Bank of America Corp. would buy Lehman's "good assets", such as its equities business, people familiar with the matter say. Lehman's more toxic, real-estate assets would be ring-fenced into a "bad" bank that would contain about $85 billion in souring assets. Other Wall Street firms would try to inject some capital into the bad bank to keep it afloat for a period of time so that a flood of bad assets don't deluge the market, damaging the value of similar assets held by other banks and insurers. The banks are also looking for the government to somehow financially backstop the bad bank.
The problem, though, is getting enough banks to back that plan. While teams of bankers are working through structures, it's clear that only a handful of banks are in a position to provide enough funding. Many banks are inclined to preserve capital ahead of third-quarter and year-end cash preservation moves. Also, banks aren't keen to see a big rival such as Barclays or Bank of America walk away with valuable assets by only paying a pittance.
As of Saturday afternoon, Barclays, the U.K.'s third-largest bank in terms of market value, appeared to have more interest in pulling off a deal for Lehman's good assets. At about 3 p.m. on Saturday, Barclays President Robert E. Diamond Jr. was seen entering the New York Fed's employee entrance on Maiden Lane, carrying a briefcase.
Bank of America, an obvious buyer, appeared to be cooling toward a deal, people familiar with the matter. Of course, some of this could be the posturing that happens in any auction. Neither Barclays nor Bank of America wants to buy all of Lehman without some government assistance, and so far the government has been reluctant to do so.
Both Bank of America and Barclays remain fixated on the disposal of the bad real estate assets, and are less focused on evaluating Lehman's investment bank, said one person involved in the due diligence process. Things were moving so quickly Saturday that there was little time to do extensive employee interviewing that typically happens in company auctions. "It's all triage," said this person.
The real fear in the discussions, this person added, was that the fire-sale prices, or "marks" of Lehman's real estate book could set off a cascade of problems for other Wall Street firms. If those marks were made against other banks' portfolios, it could eventually force those firms to raise more capital, too. For firms' considering funding the bad bank, the calculation has thus become the price of that contribution against the price of a widescale markdown.
There could be further effects to such an event, with the banks calling in loans from hedge funds and other clients, in turn setting off more forced selling that further depresses asset and securities prices.
"Unless something is settled, it's going to be a bloodbath Monday," said this person.
In a meeting at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in lower Manhattan, some participants also were discussing insurer American International Group Inc. and thrift-holding company Washington Mutual Inc. While those two financial firms aren't the focus of the emergency meeting, participants also are weighing the potential implications of their problems.
One person leaving the building said at least 100 people were gathered inside trying to settle the fate of Lehman, which has been staggered by its exposure to soured real-estate-related assets. By 5:15 pm, some Wall Street executives started to leave the New York Fed one at a time, getting in their cars inside a garage so they can't have their photos snapped.
Outside the Fed's downtown headquarters, a fleet of black towncars waited for bankers who were inside. At one point, the towncars blocked the narrow streets around the building, causing a traffic jam that had to be broken up by the Fed's uniformed guards. Meanwhile, bankers and Fed staffers milled around outside, smoking cigarettes and talking on their cell phones about subjects like counterparty risk.
"Everybody is hoping there will be a Wall Street solution to deal with Lehman's toxic assets," said one senior executive at a major bank. "It is a cheaper alternative than having everything unravel."
With it unclear whether the gap between the federal government and potential buyers can be bridged, a second group at the New York Fed is focusing on the possibility that there might be no alternative to liquidating Lehman and winding down its operations in an orderly fashion.
On Saturday afternoon, the credit-trading heads of major investment banks gathered at the meeting to discuss how to deal with their exposures to Lehman in the intertwined credit-default-swap market. The lack of a central clearinghouse in this market means that dealers, hedge funds and others are directly facing each other in insurance-like contracts that are tied to trillions of dollars in debt instruments.
Credit derivative traders at some firms were asked to come to work over the weekend to help quantify their exposures to Lehman and compile lists of outstanding contracts they have with the investment bank.
One person familiar with the matter said large dealers contemplated showing each other all of their credit default swap trades with Lehman. Disclosing their positions may enable dealers to find ways to offset their positions with each other wherever possible. Later in the day, some traders were told that Lehman -- with the help of Federal Reserve officials -- will try to figure out which of its counterparties have CDS trades that can be offset. Those counterparties would be informed of the offsetting positions, following which they can unwind their respective swaps with Lehman and concurrently enter into new swap contracts with each other. For example, if one dealer has bought a swap from Lehman and Lehman sold a similar swap to another bank, the two banks could agree to face each other directly.
Such moves could help prevent individual firms from scrambling to find new counterparties to rehedge their positions with when the markets reopen on Monday, potentially unleashing turmoil across the credit markets. They could also help facilitate an orderly wind-down of Lehman's derivative positions, if that becomes necessary. Still, sorting out the firm's CDS positions promises to be a difficult and time-consuming task, because many of the contracts have different terms and maturity dates.
It is not known how much in CDS contracts Lehman has. In a survey last year by Fitch Ratings, Lehman was listed among the 10 largest CDS counterparties by number of trades and the amount of debt to which the contracts were tied.
Wall Street traders poured into their offices Saturday for emergency meetings to consider the actions they would take if Lehman is forced into liquidation. They broke into teams to evaluate their positions and exposure to Lehman in everything from energy trades to equity derivatives to credit,
One trader said conditions in the credit default swap market and the short-term repo markets are more stable today than they were in March, when Bear Stearns nearly collapsed, but still, "if they go into liquidation," it is going to be a bad situation on Monday.
A disorderly unwind of Lehman's derivatives trades is only one worry. Another worry is that if Lehman collapses, its distressed assets -- such as commercial real estate -- could suddenly hit Wall Street for sale, forcing prices even lower and potentially forcing other dealers to mark down once again the value of their own holdings.
Lehman has hired law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP to prepare a potential bankruptcy filing, according to a person familiar with the situation. The New York-based Weil has a leading bankruptcy practice and advised Drexel Burnham Lambert on its 1990 bankruptcy filing.
In a Lehman bankruptcy, the firm's brokerage units would have to enter a Chapter 7 liquidation, in which a court-appointed trustee would take over, liquidate the firm's assets and get Lehman customers back their money. In general, securities that a customer holds at a brokerage firm are legally the investor's property and aren't exposed to the claims of the firm's creditors.
In trying to hold firm to their no-bailout stance even while pressing for a deal, federal officials could try to pit Bank of America and Barclays against each other. But that leverage can work only if both banks stay in the discussions.
Bank of America and Barclays know each other very well, having considered a merger several years ago. More recently, Bank of America agreed to pay $21 billion for ABN Amro Holding NV's LaSalle Bank of Chicago in 2007. That deal came at a time when Barclays was trying to buy ABN and fend off a European consortium bid. Bank of America's purchase was seen at the time as helping that Barclays bid, which ultimately failed.
At Barclays, a big question will be whether CEO John Varley and his No. 2, Mr. Diamond, both agree on buying all or part of Lehman. Mr. Diamond is eager to expand Barclays's U.S. investment bank operations. But the unit, called Barclays Capital, is also responsible for write-downs the bank has recorded.
After 5 p.m., bank executives began leaving the meeting, some getting into cars inside a garage where they couldn't be photographed. Those seen leaving included Merrill Lynch & Co. Chairman and Executive John Thain and Citigroup Inc. CEO Vikram Pandit. Bank of New York Mellon Corp. Chairman and CEO Robert Kelly declined to comment.
While some executives had left the Fed meeting, those of other firms, including three carfuls of Barclays executives, remained at the Fed office past 6 p.m.
At least 20 New York Fed staffers left from another exit. They refused to say if they were done for the night.
The outlines of plans to determine the fate of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. emerged today even as it became increasingly clear that a clean sale of the entire firm to a big bank would be too difficult to execute.
A sense of optimism that a rescue could be arranged today dimmed as a growing sense of gloom descended on Wall Street. Executives from top banks in the U.S. and Europe huddled with federal regulators in an attempt to come up with plans to either buy pieces of Lehman or prepare for an orderly winding down of the firm in a manner that would minimize the collateral damage for the ailing global financial system.
After 6 p.m., the formal meeting ended for the day with no resolution, though some participants stayed behind to continue talking. "Senior representatives of major financial institutions reconvened on Saturday with U.S. officials at the New York Fed. Discussions are expected to continue tomorrow," said a spokeswoman for the Federal Reserve.
At about 8 p.m., New York Fed President Timothy Geithner was still at the bank's headquarters. Officials from the New York Fed and various banks were expected to continue working through the night.
Under one plan, either Barclays PLC or Bank of America Corp. would buy Lehman's "good assets", such as its equities business, people familiar with the matter say. Lehman's more toxic, real-estate assets would be ring-fenced into a "bad" bank that would contain about $85 billion in souring assets. Other Wall Street firms would try to inject some capital into the bad bank to keep it afloat for a period of time so that a flood of bad assets don't deluge the market, damaging the value of similar assets held by other banks and insurers. The banks are also looking for the government to somehow financially backstop the bad bank.
The problem, though, is getting enough banks to back that plan. While teams of bankers are working through structures, it's clear that only a handful of banks are in a position to provide enough funding. Many banks are inclined to preserve capital ahead of third-quarter and year-end cash preservation moves. Also, banks aren't keen to see a big rival such as Barclays or Bank of America walk away with valuable assets by only paying a pittance.
As of Saturday afternoon, Barclays, the U.K.'s third-largest bank in terms of market value, appeared to have more interest in pulling off a deal for Lehman's good assets. At about 3 p.m. on Saturday, Barclays President Robert E. Diamond Jr. was seen entering the New York Fed's employee entrance on Maiden Lane, carrying a briefcase.
Bank of America, an obvious buyer, appeared to be cooling toward a deal, people familiar with the matter. Of course, some of this could be the posturing that happens in any auction. Neither Barclays nor Bank of America wants to buy all of Lehman without some government assistance, and so far the government has been reluctant to do so.
Both Bank of America and Barclays remain fixated on the disposal of the bad real estate assets, and are less focused on evaluating Lehman's investment bank, said one person involved in the due diligence process. Things were moving so quickly Saturday that there was little time to do extensive employee interviewing that typically happens in company auctions. "It's all triage," said this person.
The real fear in the discussions, this person added, was that the fire-sale prices, or "marks" of Lehman's real estate book could set off a cascade of problems for other Wall Street firms. If those marks were made against other banks' portfolios, it could eventually force those firms to raise more capital, too. For firms' considering funding the bad bank, the calculation has thus become the price of that contribution against the price of a widescale markdown.
There could be further effects to such an event, with the banks calling in loans from hedge funds and other clients, in turn setting off more forced selling that further depresses asset and securities prices.
"Unless something is settled, it's going to be a bloodbath Monday," said this person.
In a meeting at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in lower Manhattan, some participants also were discussing insurer American International Group Inc. and thrift-holding company Washington Mutual Inc. While those two financial firms aren't the focus of the emergency meeting, participants also are weighing the potential implications of their problems.
One person leaving the building said at least 100 people were gathered inside trying to settle the fate of Lehman, which has been staggered by its exposure to soured real-estate-related assets. By 5:15 pm, some Wall Street executives started to leave the New York Fed one at a time, getting in their cars inside a garage so they can't have their photos snapped.
Outside the Fed's downtown headquarters, a fleet of black towncars waited for bankers who were inside. At one point, the towncars blocked the narrow streets around the building, causing a traffic jam that had to be broken up by the Fed's uniformed guards. Meanwhile, bankers and Fed staffers milled around outside, smoking cigarettes and talking on their cell phones about subjects like counterparty risk.
"Everybody is hoping there will be a Wall Street solution to deal with Lehman's toxic assets," said one senior executive at a major bank. "It is a cheaper alternative than having everything unravel."
With it unclear whether the gap between the federal government and potential buyers can be bridged, a second group at the New York Fed is focusing on the possibility that there might be no alternative to liquidating Lehman and winding down its operations in an orderly fashion.
On Saturday afternoon, the credit-trading heads of major investment banks gathered at the meeting to discuss how to deal with their exposures to Lehman in the intertwined credit-default-swap market. The lack of a central clearinghouse in this market means that dealers, hedge funds and others are directly facing each other in insurance-like contracts that are tied to trillions of dollars in debt instruments.
Credit derivative traders at some firms were asked to come to work over the weekend to help quantify their exposures to Lehman and compile lists of outstanding contracts they have with the investment bank.
One person familiar with the matter said large dealers contemplated showing each other all of their credit default swap trades with Lehman. Disclosing their positions may enable dealers to find ways to offset their positions with each other wherever possible. Later in the day, some traders were told that Lehman -- with the help of Federal Reserve officials -- will try to figure out which of its counterparties have CDS trades that can be offset. Those counterparties would be informed of the offsetting positions, following which they can unwind their respective swaps with Lehman and concurrently enter into new swap contracts with each other. For example, if one dealer has bought a swap from Lehman and Lehman sold a similar swap to another bank, the two banks could agree to face each other directly.
Such moves could help prevent individual firms from scrambling to find new counterparties to rehedge their positions with when the markets reopen on Monday, potentially unleashing turmoil across the credit markets. They could also help facilitate an orderly wind-down of Lehman's derivative positions, if that becomes necessary. Still, sorting out the firm's CDS positions promises to be a difficult and time-consuming task, because many of the contracts have different terms and maturity dates.
It is not known how much in CDS contracts Lehman has. In a survey last year by Fitch Ratings, Lehman was listed among the 10 largest CDS counterparties by number of trades and the amount of debt to which the contracts were tied.
Wall Street traders poured into their offices Saturday for emergency meetings to consider the actions they would take if Lehman is forced into liquidation. They broke into teams to evaluate their positions and exposure to Lehman in everything from energy trades to equity derivatives to credit,
One trader said conditions in the credit default swap market and the short-term repo markets are more stable today than they were in March, when Bear Stearns nearly collapsed, but still, "if they go into liquidation," it is going to be a bad situation on Monday.
A disorderly unwind of Lehman's derivatives trades is only one worry. Another worry is that if Lehman collapses, its distressed assets -- such as commercial real estate -- could suddenly hit Wall Street for sale, forcing prices even lower and potentially forcing other dealers to mark down once again the value of their own holdings.
Lehman has hired law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP to prepare a potential bankruptcy filing, according to a person familiar with the situation. The New York-based Weil has a leading bankruptcy practice and advised Drexel Burnham Lambert on its 1990 bankruptcy filing.
In a Lehman bankruptcy, the firm's brokerage units would have to enter a Chapter 7 liquidation, in which a court-appointed trustee would take over, liquidate the firm's assets and get Lehman customers back their money. In general, securities that a customer holds at a brokerage firm are legally the investor's property and aren't exposed to the claims of the firm's creditors.
In trying to hold firm to their no-bailout stance even while pressing for a deal, federal officials could try to pit Bank of America and Barclays against each other. But that leverage can work only if both banks stay in the discussions.
Bank of America and Barclays know each other very well, having considered a merger several years ago. More recently, Bank of America agreed to pay $21 billion for ABN Amro Holding NV's LaSalle Bank of Chicago in 2007. That deal came at a time when Barclays was trying to buy ABN and fend off a European consortium bid. Bank of America's purchase was seen at the time as helping that Barclays bid, which ultimately failed.
At Barclays, a big question will be whether CEO John Varley and his No. 2, Mr. Diamond, both agree on buying all or part of Lehman. Mr. Diamond is eager to expand Barclays's U.S. investment bank operations. But the unit, called Barclays Capital, is also responsible for write-downs the bank has recorded.
After 5 p.m., bank executives began leaving the meeting, some getting into cars inside a garage where they couldn't be photographed. Those seen leaving included Merrill Lynch & Co. Chairman and Executive John Thain and Citigroup Inc. CEO Vikram Pandit. Bank of New York Mellon Corp. Chairman and CEO Robert Kelly declined to comment.
While some executives had left the Fed meeting, those of other firms, including three carfuls of Barclays executives, remained at the Fed office past 6 p.m.
At least 20 New York Fed staffers left from another exit. They refused to say if they were done for the night.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
How J.P. Morgan steered clear of the credit crunch
By Shawn Tully, Sept 15 issue of Fortune
NEW YORK (Fortune) -- It was the second week of October 2006. William King, then J.P. Morgan's chief of securitized products, was vacationing in Rwanda. One evening CEO Jamie Dimon tracked him down to fire a red alert. "Billy, I really want you to watch out for subprime!" Dimon's voice crackled over King's hotel phone. "We need to sell a lot of our positions. I've seen it before. This stuff could go up in smoke!"
That call marked the beginning of a remarkable strategic shift that helped J.P. Morgan (JPM, Fortune 500) sidestep the worst of a historic credit crisis. J.P. Morgan mostly exited the business of securitizing subprime mortgages when it was booming. With the notable exception of Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500), J.P. Morgan's main competitors - including Citigroup (C, Fortune 500), UBS (UBS), and Merrill Lynch (MER, Fortune 500) - ignored the danger signs and piled into those products in a feeding frenzy. (This is an excerpt from a story that ran in the Sept. 15 issue of Fortune. For more on Dimon and the team of talented lieutenants who helped J.P. Morgan dodge the credit crisis, read the full story)
Make no mistake: J.P. Morgan is also suffering from the credit crunch. While it largely dodged the subprime bullet, J.P. Morgan stumbled in two other areas: funding dubious deals in the LBO frenzy and jumping into the jumbo mortgage market when other banks were getting out. The third quarter is already looking tough. The company has announced that it is taking $1.5 billion in mortgage and leveraged-loan write-downs, and another $600 million to account for the decline in the value of its Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac preferred stock.
Still, J.P. Morgan is weathering the crisis far better than its rivals. From July 2007, when the cyclone began, through the second quarter of this year, J.P. Morgan took just $5 billion in losses on high-risk CDOs and leveraged loans, compared with $33 billion at Citi, $26 billion at Merrill Lynch, and $9 billion at Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500). And in this market, losing less means winning big. Before the crisis J.P. Morgan was a middle-of-the-pack performer; today it leads in nearly every category, starting with its stock. Since early 2007, its share price has dropped 24%, to $37 (as of Aug. 27), vs. declines of 44% for Bank of America and 68% for Citigroup. Last year its market cap was far below those of Citi and BofA. Today J.P. Morgan stands in a virtual tie with BofA for first place among U.S. banks, and it towers over Citi.
That is largely thanks to J.P. Morgan's decision to shun subprime CDOs - vehicles that sell bonds backed by pools of subprime mortgage-backed securities. J.P. Morgan has long ranked among the biggest buyers of auto and credit card loans, which it turned into asset-backed securities. But even in 2005, J.P. Morgan remained a small player in the hottest business on Wall Street, securitizing mortgages. Dimon wanted to build a far bigger franchise, chiefly by securitizing the loans made by the bank itself through its Chase Home Lending division. By 2006, J.P. Morgan was growing substantially in securitizing mortgages and dabbling in subprime CDOs, a business that was generating billions in fees for other Wall Street firms.
But Dimon soon began to see reasons to pull back. One red flag came from the mortgage servicing business, the branch that sends out statements, handles escrow, and collects payments on $800 billion in home loans, its own and others'. During a regular monthly business review for the retail bank in October 2006, the chief of servicing said that late payments on subprime loans were rising at an alarming rate. The data showed that loans originated by competitors like First Franklin and American Home were performing three times worse than J.P. Morgan's subprime mortgages. "We concluded that underwriting standards were deteriorating across the industry," says Dimon.
Steve Black and Bill Winters, co-heads of the investment bank, were discovering more reasons to be cautious. CDOs issue a range of bonds, from supposedly safe AAA-rated ones with relatively low yields to lower-rated ones with higher yields. Winters and Black saw that hedge funds, insurance companies, and other customers were clamoring for the high-yielding CDO paper and were less interested in the other stuff. That meant banks like Merrill and Citi were forced to hold billions of dollars of the AAA paper on their books. What's wrong with that? Doesn't an AAA rating mean the securities are safe? Not necessarily.
In 2006, AAA-rated CDO bonds yielded only two percentage points more than supersafe Treasury bills. So the market seemed to be saying that the bonds were solid. But Black and Winters concluded otherwise. Their yardstick was credit default swaps - insurance against bond failures. By late 2006 the cost of default swaps on subprime CDOs had jumped sharply. Winters and Black saw that once they bought credit default swaps to hedge the AAA CDO paper J.P. Morgan would have to hold, the fees from creating CDOs would vanish. "We saw no profit, and lots of risk, in holding subprime paper on our balance sheet," says Winters. The combined weight of that data triggered Dimon's call to King in Africa. "It was Jamie who saw all the pieces," says Winters.
In late 2006, J.P. Morgan started slashing its holdings of subprime debt. It sold more than $12 billion in subprime mortgages that it had originated. Its trading desks dumped the loans on their books and mostly stopped making markets in subprime paper for customers. J.P. Morgan's corporate treasury under Ina Drew even starting hedging, betting that credit spreads would widen. Over the next year those hedges reportedly yielded gains of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Dimon's stance was radical: He was skirting the biggest growth business on Wall Street. J.P. Morgan sank from third to sixth in fixed-income underwriting from 2005 to 2007, and the main reason was its refusal to play in subprime CDOs, which its rivals were gorging on. "We'd get the quarterly reports from our competitors and see that they'd added $100 billion to their balance sheets," says Dimon. "And they were hardly adding any capital, so it looked like their investments were almost risk-free." But in the end, of course, the decision to shun subprime made Dimon a hero.
NEW YORK (Fortune) -- It was the second week of October 2006. William King, then J.P. Morgan's chief of securitized products, was vacationing in Rwanda. One evening CEO Jamie Dimon tracked him down to fire a red alert. "Billy, I really want you to watch out for subprime!" Dimon's voice crackled over King's hotel phone. "We need to sell a lot of our positions. I've seen it before. This stuff could go up in smoke!"
That call marked the beginning of a remarkable strategic shift that helped J.P. Morgan (JPM, Fortune 500) sidestep the worst of a historic credit crisis. J.P. Morgan mostly exited the business of securitizing subprime mortgages when it was booming. With the notable exception of Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500), J.P. Morgan's main competitors - including Citigroup (C, Fortune 500), UBS (UBS), and Merrill Lynch (MER, Fortune 500) - ignored the danger signs and piled into those products in a feeding frenzy. (This is an excerpt from a story that ran in the Sept. 15 issue of Fortune. For more on Dimon and the team of talented lieutenants who helped J.P. Morgan dodge the credit crisis, read the full story)
Make no mistake: J.P. Morgan is also suffering from the credit crunch. While it largely dodged the subprime bullet, J.P. Morgan stumbled in two other areas: funding dubious deals in the LBO frenzy and jumping into the jumbo mortgage market when other banks were getting out. The third quarter is already looking tough. The company has announced that it is taking $1.5 billion in mortgage and leveraged-loan write-downs, and another $600 million to account for the decline in the value of its Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac preferred stock.
Still, J.P. Morgan is weathering the crisis far better than its rivals. From July 2007, when the cyclone began, through the second quarter of this year, J.P. Morgan took just $5 billion in losses on high-risk CDOs and leveraged loans, compared with $33 billion at Citi, $26 billion at Merrill Lynch, and $9 billion at Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500). And in this market, losing less means winning big. Before the crisis J.P. Morgan was a middle-of-the-pack performer; today it leads in nearly every category, starting with its stock. Since early 2007, its share price has dropped 24%, to $37 (as of Aug. 27), vs. declines of 44% for Bank of America and 68% for Citigroup. Last year its market cap was far below those of Citi and BofA. Today J.P. Morgan stands in a virtual tie with BofA for first place among U.S. banks, and it towers over Citi.
That is largely thanks to J.P. Morgan's decision to shun subprime CDOs - vehicles that sell bonds backed by pools of subprime mortgage-backed securities. J.P. Morgan has long ranked among the biggest buyers of auto and credit card loans, which it turned into asset-backed securities. But even in 2005, J.P. Morgan remained a small player in the hottest business on Wall Street, securitizing mortgages. Dimon wanted to build a far bigger franchise, chiefly by securitizing the loans made by the bank itself through its Chase Home Lending division. By 2006, J.P. Morgan was growing substantially in securitizing mortgages and dabbling in subprime CDOs, a business that was generating billions in fees for other Wall Street firms.
But Dimon soon began to see reasons to pull back. One red flag came from the mortgage servicing business, the branch that sends out statements, handles escrow, and collects payments on $800 billion in home loans, its own and others'. During a regular monthly business review for the retail bank in October 2006, the chief of servicing said that late payments on subprime loans were rising at an alarming rate. The data showed that loans originated by competitors like First Franklin and American Home were performing three times worse than J.P. Morgan's subprime mortgages. "We concluded that underwriting standards were deteriorating across the industry," says Dimon.
Steve Black and Bill Winters, co-heads of the investment bank, were discovering more reasons to be cautious. CDOs issue a range of bonds, from supposedly safe AAA-rated ones with relatively low yields to lower-rated ones with higher yields. Winters and Black saw that hedge funds, insurance companies, and other customers were clamoring for the high-yielding CDO paper and were less interested in the other stuff. That meant banks like Merrill and Citi were forced to hold billions of dollars of the AAA paper on their books. What's wrong with that? Doesn't an AAA rating mean the securities are safe? Not necessarily.
In 2006, AAA-rated CDO bonds yielded only two percentage points more than supersafe Treasury bills. So the market seemed to be saying that the bonds were solid. But Black and Winters concluded otherwise. Their yardstick was credit default swaps - insurance against bond failures. By late 2006 the cost of default swaps on subprime CDOs had jumped sharply. Winters and Black saw that once they bought credit default swaps to hedge the AAA CDO paper J.P. Morgan would have to hold, the fees from creating CDOs would vanish. "We saw no profit, and lots of risk, in holding subprime paper on our balance sheet," says Winters. The combined weight of that data triggered Dimon's call to King in Africa. "It was Jamie who saw all the pieces," says Winters.
In late 2006, J.P. Morgan started slashing its holdings of subprime debt. It sold more than $12 billion in subprime mortgages that it had originated. Its trading desks dumped the loans on their books and mostly stopped making markets in subprime paper for customers. J.P. Morgan's corporate treasury under Ina Drew even starting hedging, betting that credit spreads would widen. Over the next year those hedges reportedly yielded gains of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Dimon's stance was radical: He was skirting the biggest growth business on Wall Street. J.P. Morgan sank from third to sixth in fixed-income underwriting from 2005 to 2007, and the main reason was its refusal to play in subprime CDOs, which its rivals were gorging on. "We'd get the quarterly reports from our competitors and see that they'd added $100 billion to their balance sheets," says Dimon. "And they were hardly adding any capital, so it looked like their investments were almost risk-free." But in the end, of course, the decision to shun subprime made Dimon a hero.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Summer Olympics - Beijing 2008
Hottest news so far...
1. Michael Phelps after all did win 8th gold medal at a single Olympics from the pool with slightest of a margin -- his 100m butterfly event was only 1/100 of a second ahead of Milorad Cavic of Serbia.
2. Usain Bolt of Jamaica is indeed running like a lightning bolt in the 100m men sprint event with a world record time of 9.69 second. The final showdown between Bolt, Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay did not materialize after Gay failed to qualify for the final. Powell finished the event in the 5th place.
3. Roger Federer of Switzerland did win the gold medal from Beijing -- not from the men single but from the double event in which he teamed up with Stanislas Wawrinka to beat Sweden pair of Simon Aspelin and Thomas Johansson in the men tennis double final.
4. Rafael Nadal of Spain celebrates his world no.1 status with an emphatic win over Chilean Fernando Gonzalez in the final of men tennis to win the gold medal.
5. Can China win the overall title from United States of America? China is still leading in the gold medal haul but USA is closing the gap fast with Olympics is only less than a week to go.
1. Michael Phelps after all did win 8th gold medal at a single Olympics from the pool with slightest of a margin -- his 100m butterfly event was only 1/100 of a second ahead of Milorad Cavic of Serbia.
2. Usain Bolt of Jamaica is indeed running like a lightning bolt in the 100m men sprint event with a world record time of 9.69 second. The final showdown between Bolt, Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay did not materialize after Gay failed to qualify for the final. Powell finished the event in the 5th place.
3. Roger Federer of Switzerland did win the gold medal from Beijing -- not from the men single but from the double event in which he teamed up with Stanislas Wawrinka to beat Sweden pair of Simon Aspelin and Thomas Johansson in the men tennis double final.
4. Rafael Nadal of Spain celebrates his world no.1 status with an emphatic win over Chilean Fernando Gonzalez in the final of men tennis to win the gold medal.
5. Can China win the overall title from United States of America? China is still leading in the gold medal haul but USA is closing the gap fast with Olympics is only less than a week to go.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Difference between Hedge Fund & Private Equity
By Matthew Lynn
What's the difference between a hedge fund and a private-equity fund?
Easy. One speculates in bonds, stocks, currencies and commodities, using leverage and derivatives, while the other uses its own capital and borrowed money to buy companies, improve them, and then sell them on.
Well, not so fast. The evidence suggests that hedge funds and private-equity funds, the two hottest growth sectors of the financial universe for the past five years, are converging.
What seems to be emerging is a new type of alternative investment fund that shrugs aside traditional ideas of risk and seeks the highest returns any way it can.
Last week at a conference in Frankfurt, David Rubenstein, a co-founder of Carlyle Group, the world's third-biggest buyout firm, said private-equity and hedge funds may eventually converge. "Funds may be created that have the combined characteristics of private equity and hedge funds," Rubenstein said.
Carlyle, based in Washington, estimates that there are 9,000 hedge funds with investments worth about $1 trillion, while 3,000 private-equity funds have $150 billion in assets worldwide.
There is certainly no shortage of evidence of the two types of fund treading on each other's turf.
First, Carlyle itself has just announced plans to launch two hedge funds later this year. And New York-based Blackstone Group LP, which manages the world's biggest buyout fund, has already set up a hedge-fund unit, which oversees about $9 billion in assets. Meanwhile, Carl Icahn, a legendary Wall Street raider, is launching his own hedge fund.
$3.25 Billion Offer
Next, hedge funds are now acting more like buyout firms.
For example, Circuit City Stores Inc., the No. 2 electronics retailer, last month received a $3.25 billion takeover offer from Boston-based Highfields Capital Management LP, which manages hedge funds. Likewise, Beverly Enterprises Inc., a nursing-home chain, last month rejected a bid worth $1.41 billion from an investor group that included hedge fund Appaloosa Management LP.
Buying out whole companies because you think they are undervalued? That's the kind of work that used to be done by private-equity firms.
So how real is the convergence story?
Traditionally, hedge funds and private-equity firms have been seen as deadly rivals. They compete in two main ways.
They joust for talent. Any bright 20-something in the financial markets who wants to make a lot of money quickly (and that covers maybe 99 percent of them) faces a simple choice: work in hedge funds or in private equity. One of the tasks for both industries is to bring those people with their ideas on board.
'Alternative Investments'
And they compete for money. Most mainstream investors put the bulk of their capital into equities and bonds. They have a small amount allocated to a box marked "alternative investments" for which they are willing to accept higher risk for bigger returns. Both the hedge-fund and private-equity managers are chasing that same pool of footloose capital.
Yet the rivalry is rather like one of those fiercely contested local derbies between football teams from the same town. The competition is intense precisely because they are, in reality, playing on the same turf.
The two types of fund are now morphing into one another. Both have always, at root, been about the same thing: using financial engineering intelligently in the hope of generating returns higher than anything available from mainstream investments. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. The plan is much the same.
20 Percent Fees
In time, hedge funds and private-equity firms may end up being the same thing. Some already are. Last month, the Financial Times reported that New York-based private-equity firm AEA Investors LLC plans to merge with Aetos Capital LLC, a real-estate and hedge-fund firm.
One of the key features of hedge funds is that they don't accept any artificial boundaries on their investments. If they see a profit, they pursue it. A hedge fund won't stop and say, "No, we can't do this because, even though it might make us some big bucks, that's not what hedge funds do." That would go against all their best instincts.
Meanwhile, for the private-equity guys, a hedge fund has a more flexible financial structure and more freedom in the kind of investments it makes. And it generates higher fees, which are typically 20 percent of any gains made. (Not that the private- equity firms were ever slouches at paying themselves.)
Three Trends
That's why we should expect to see three trends in the year ahead: more mergers between hedge and private-equity funds; more private-equity firms launching hedge funds; and more hedge funds acting like buyout funds. The result? A new breed of alternative investment, probably with the structure of a hedge fund, yet looks more like a buyout fund.
What's the risk profile of Mega-Hedge-Buyouts LLP? Don't even ask. No doubt, some regulators are already chewing their fingernails at the thought of the havoc that might be wreaked if one of them goes wrong.
Still, it will be a fun outfit to work for. And along the way a lot of smart people will make a lot of money.
What's the difference between a hedge fund and a private-equity fund?
Easy. One speculates in bonds, stocks, currencies and commodities, using leverage and derivatives, while the other uses its own capital and borrowed money to buy companies, improve them, and then sell them on.
Well, not so fast. The evidence suggests that hedge funds and private-equity funds, the two hottest growth sectors of the financial universe for the past five years, are converging.
What seems to be emerging is a new type of alternative investment fund that shrugs aside traditional ideas of risk and seeks the highest returns any way it can.
Last week at a conference in Frankfurt, David Rubenstein, a co-founder of Carlyle Group, the world's third-biggest buyout firm, said private-equity and hedge funds may eventually converge. "Funds may be created that have the combined characteristics of private equity and hedge funds," Rubenstein said.
Carlyle, based in Washington, estimates that there are 9,000 hedge funds with investments worth about $1 trillion, while 3,000 private-equity funds have $150 billion in assets worldwide.
There is certainly no shortage of evidence of the two types of fund treading on each other's turf.
First, Carlyle itself has just announced plans to launch two hedge funds later this year. And New York-based Blackstone Group LP, which manages the world's biggest buyout fund, has already set up a hedge-fund unit, which oversees about $9 billion in assets. Meanwhile, Carl Icahn, a legendary Wall Street raider, is launching his own hedge fund.
$3.25 Billion Offer
Next, hedge funds are now acting more like buyout firms.
For example, Circuit City Stores Inc., the No. 2 electronics retailer, last month received a $3.25 billion takeover offer from Boston-based Highfields Capital Management LP, which manages hedge funds. Likewise, Beverly Enterprises Inc., a nursing-home chain, last month rejected a bid worth $1.41 billion from an investor group that included hedge fund Appaloosa Management LP.
Buying out whole companies because you think they are undervalued? That's the kind of work that used to be done by private-equity firms.
So how real is the convergence story?
Traditionally, hedge funds and private-equity firms have been seen as deadly rivals. They compete in two main ways.
They joust for talent. Any bright 20-something in the financial markets who wants to make a lot of money quickly (and that covers maybe 99 percent of them) faces a simple choice: work in hedge funds or in private equity. One of the tasks for both industries is to bring those people with their ideas on board.
'Alternative Investments'
And they compete for money. Most mainstream investors put the bulk of their capital into equities and bonds. They have a small amount allocated to a box marked "alternative investments" for which they are willing to accept higher risk for bigger returns. Both the hedge-fund and private-equity managers are chasing that same pool of footloose capital.
Yet the rivalry is rather like one of those fiercely contested local derbies between football teams from the same town. The competition is intense precisely because they are, in reality, playing on the same turf.
The two types of fund are now morphing into one another. Both have always, at root, been about the same thing: using financial engineering intelligently in the hope of generating returns higher than anything available from mainstream investments. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. The plan is much the same.
20 Percent Fees
In time, hedge funds and private-equity firms may end up being the same thing. Some already are. Last month, the Financial Times reported that New York-based private-equity firm AEA Investors LLC plans to merge with Aetos Capital LLC, a real-estate and hedge-fund firm.
One of the key features of hedge funds is that they don't accept any artificial boundaries on their investments. If they see a profit, they pursue it. A hedge fund won't stop and say, "No, we can't do this because, even though it might make us some big bucks, that's not what hedge funds do." That would go against all their best instincts.
Meanwhile, for the private-equity guys, a hedge fund has a more flexible financial structure and more freedom in the kind of investments it makes. And it generates higher fees, which are typically 20 percent of any gains made. (Not that the private- equity firms were ever slouches at paying themselves.)
Three Trends
That's why we should expect to see three trends in the year ahead: more mergers between hedge and private-equity funds; more private-equity firms launching hedge funds; and more hedge funds acting like buyout funds. The result? A new breed of alternative investment, probably with the structure of a hedge fund, yet looks more like a buyout fund.
What's the risk profile of Mega-Hedge-Buyouts LLP? Don't even ask. No doubt, some regulators are already chewing their fingernails at the thought of the havoc that might be wreaked if one of them goes wrong.
Still, it will be a fun outfit to work for. And along the way a lot of smart people will make a lot of money.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Hoping for a Soul Mate
By Steve Watters
“Nothing has produced more unhappiness than the concept of a soul mate.”
While you served up freshness — alive with flavor.
Sweet but not sticky, bold but not bitter.
Fulfilling my appetite, you restored my strength.
Now the appetizers have led to the feast,
Where you’ve prepared an overflowing table before me
Flavors I never expected — aromas that overwhelm
And I long to sit at your table all the days of my life.
“Nothing has produced more unhappiness than the concept of a soul mate.”
That’s the opinion of Atlanta psychiatrist Frank Pittman in the March 2004 issue of Psychology Today. For the article “Great Expectations,” Polly Shulman interviewed Pittman and several other marriage experts who are concerned that the growing expectation for a perfect match is frustrating singles needlessly and threatening their chances of a satisfying marriage.
If you’re still single, do you think that when you marry, your spouse should be your soul mate first and foremost? And if so, do you believe there is a soul mate out there somewhere waiting for you? If you said yes to these questions, then you’re among the majority of never married twentysomethings in America today. When the National Marriage Project asked those questions, 94 percent said yes to the first question and 88 percent said yes to the second.
David Popenoe is the co-director of the National Marriage Project. He worries that today’s young adults may be “reaching even higher in their expectations for marriage.” He points out that the idea of a soul mate isn’t exactly new, but that “the centuries-old ideal of friendship in marriage, or what sociologists call companionate marriage, may be evolving into a more exalted and demanding standard of a spiritualized union of souls” (National Marriage Project, http://marriage.rutgers.edu/Publications/SOOU/TEXTSOOU2001.htm).
In her Psychology Today article, Shulman describes what singles are looking for in a soul mate as “the man or woman who will counter our weaknesses, amplify our strengths and provide the unflagging support and respect that is the essence of a contemporary relationship.”
That’s definitely what I was hoping for. I grew up convinced there was a soul mate out there for me. In fact, I filled journal after journal imagining such a person. Here’s one short piece I wrote lamenting my endless search for my other half:
I hoped for years for perfection.
In silent thoughts I auditioned thousands.
Reading the part for “mate,”
They danced but stumbled,
They sang but mumbled.
They stole my heart, but broke it in the last act.
And I scored them; with my “perfect” pen I scored them.
But I left the auditions lonely,
Sadly aware perfection is only
Made of hope and dream stuff.
The problem was, I had an undefined longing. I wanted someone to complete me, but I didn’t know how much I could ask for. I was like an eight year old at a buffet dying to just pull up a chair, fork in hand and help myself — but suspecting that might not be quite right.
Every time a relationship didn’t work out, I went back to my journal and asked the classic questions: Is there one person out there just for me? Can someone know and love the real me?
In graduate school, I met someone who seemed to answer those questions like never before. As I spent time with a girl named Candice, something clicked. The conversation poured out, flowing endlessly. I could feel my heart in my throat as we talked about things that really mattered to me and I actually got the response I longed for.
Sitting across the table from each other at the First Colony coffee bar in Norfolk, Virginia we dreamed about changing the world together. We talked about generational issues, postmodernism, writing, editing, music and everything we could think of. We saw our talents and interests fitting together in such a way that they seemed to make us more than the sum of our two puzzle pieces. I wanted to be with her all the time. She was attractive, fun and wonderful to do life with.
Despite the incredible connection that grew quickly between us, however, I wasn’t sure about something. “Is she really my soul mate?” I wondered. If she was my soul mate, why did I still find myself looking out of the corner of my eye at other classmates?
In her article, Shulman warns that because few partnerships can live up to the soul mate ideal, “the result is a commitment limbo, in which we care deeply for our partner but keep one stealthy foot out the door of our hearts.”
Reading Shulman, I was relieved to realize I wasn’t the only guy who ever felt that way. It’s embarrassing to admit it now, but at the point in which I finally connected with someone at a soul mate level, I still felt tempted to hold out just in case there was someone a little prettier, a little more exciting, a little more crazy about me.
Female readers may be thinking, “Why are guys like that? Why do they have an appetite for someone better than they could ever deserve?” I think it often comes down to this: Guys (and many girls for that matter) have a hard time sorting out an internal longing for someone with whom they can deeply connect from cultural expectations that often border on fantasy.
Fortunately, before my confusion steered me away from my best shot at a soul mate, a couple with some wisdom came along. The Morkens, one of my professors and his wife, took time to mentor Candice and I. Spending time with them, I began to recognize where my expectations had been distorted.
They assured me that it’s natural to want a deep connection with someone of the opposite sex. That it’s a longing that goes back to the garden. Ever since man had something taken out of him to form woman, it has been natural for him to seek out a woman with whom he can become one flesh. Despite decades of cultural messages downplaying differences between men and women, there are still God-designed distinctions that fit us together like puzzle pieces into one flesh. Furthermore, God gives us unique gifts and callings that make us more suited for some partners than others.
But the Morkens helped me to see how those natural desires for a meaningful connection were clouded by cultural expectations of beauty, excitement and self-actualization.
The Morkens talked about how magazines, TV, movies and music cause us to overvalue external beauty and to look beyond the real people in our lives. Because of careful editing, airbrushing and cosmetic efforts, we actually start to believe there are people out there with no faults or blemishes — that ultimate exterior beauty is not only possible, but the most important element in our desire for a soul mate.
The people we draw close to end up facing an impossible standard and are left hoping they can either make the cut or that some day someone will have grace for their imperfections. I needed to be reminded that my soul mate would, after all, be a real person — that she, just like me, would want to be loved despite imperfections.
The Morkens also reminded me that even a soul mate would not always be exciting. The reality of marriage, they explained, is emotional slow down, inevitable conflicts, painful sacrifice and lots of mundane activities like paying bills, cleaning up after kids and helping each other through sickness.
The other key reminder my mentors gave was that it wasn’t all about me — that my hope for someone to help me self-actualize (achieve my full potential) was grossly one-sided. While I was looking for a soul mate that could identify and meet all my needs, I was ill prepared to love my wife “just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). Christ, after all, was the only one capable of meeting my deepest needs. Instead of looking for that fulfillment from a woman, Christ was calling me to accept His love and then pour it out on the person He had led me to.
The best thing the Morkens did was help me see what I had in Candice despite my warped vision of a soul mate. Without being distracted by cultural expectations of perfection, endless excitement and self-actualization, I learned to appreciate the real joy of the connection I had with Candice. I could enjoy her beauty inside and out and see all the things that made us practically and spiritually compatible — or as the Morkens put it, “one of the best matches there ever was.”
Just before I proposed to Candice, I wrote her a poem called “Love Feast.” In it I described how my appetite for a deep meaningful connection in marriage had been ruined by the “fast food” of cultural soul mate expectations. It’s my hope that at least one guy out there reading this (even if it’s at the request of his girlfriend) will take a closer look at his desires for a soul mate so that he can see more clearly what he already has. Like I found, he may see that the lure of fast food can keep us from enjoying the truly gourmet.
I used to feast on simple fare
Tame, light spice … just heavy garnish.
Often I’d add a cup of sugar
But it seldom covered the bitter aftertaste.
It was hard to break old patterns,
Harder still to try new things.
But you were persistent and confident
Baby steps, baby bites and sips.
“Try this,” you offered often —
A great chef with the patience of Job.
“Too hot,” I’d say, “too spicy” I’d add
As I kept one eye open for a fast and easy meal.
While you served up freshness — alive with flavor.
Sweet but not sticky, bold but not bitter.
Fulfilling my appetite, you restored my strength.
Now the appetizers have led to the feast,
Where you’ve prepared an overflowing table before me
Flavors I never expected — aromas that overwhelm
And I long to sit at your table all the days of my life.
Believing in the Dream of Marriage
By Kara Schwab
When I was about 10 years old, I used to dream about being married. I had it all figured out. I would get married when I turned 24. I would have four children — two boys, two girls. Of course, some days, that number would change, depending on the scientific experiment I used to look into the future. For instance, every time I ate an apple, I’d count how many times I could twist the stem around before it broke off. Whatever number I counted to would equal the number of children I’d have. Sure I got a little nervous on the days when I counted to, say 15 or 16 ... but I had faith that it would all work out.
Of course, I also dreamed my husband would sweep me off my feet. (And I’m talking he would physically lift me off the ground and twirl me around on a daily basis, because he would be so manly and burly and strong.) We would sing songs by the fireplace every night after dinner — after we ate our chocolate cake — and then dance and dance and dance ourselves silly. This would happen every night until we both went to heaven.
When I was young I knew this would happen, just like I dreamed. It doesn’t hurt to dream, right?
Oh, the confidence of our youth
By age 23, I finally had my first serious boyfriend. He loved God, and liked me a lot. But after several months of dating, I noticed that his head seemed a little small for his body. This realization kept me up at night. I also discerned that his fingernails were a bit too long — even when he cut them — and that disturbed me. Not to mention, he was skinny, so I was pretty sure he couldn’t lift me up, let alone swing me around.
Needless to say, when I turned 24, I wasn’t married. I wasn’t even dating. I didn’t panic though. Per my agenda, I had a whole year to figure things out. But then suddenly, I turned 25. You might say I began to panic. Just ever so slightly.
By this time, I had already been a bridesmaid in approximately 143 weddings — or at least it seemed like that many. These were weddings of friends and classmates from my small Christian college who met their future mates within the first six minutes of freshmen orientation. Was I in the bathroom or something? Because I totally missed that window.
And then I turned 26. Gulp, then 27. And I started to wonder, did God forget about me? I started consuming several pints of ice cream on a weekly basis. Then I remembered something one of my professors said during a class discussion about love. He told us about a woman he met in college. He described her as amazing — exactly what he was looking for. They dated for a while and his love for her grew. He thought she was the perfect woman for him. Then she dumped him. His friends told him not to worry — that God had someone better for him. But he said he was struck with the thought, deep in his heart, that perhaps God had “someone” better for him to be.
There I was, 27 years old, wondering was I the “best” I could be? So, I started to pray. I prayed like never before, that the Lord would prepare my heart for marriage and mold me more fully to His image. Months passed. More pints of ice cream were consumed. And I began to question what really was the will of God for my life regarding marriage. Did He want me to be married? Was this just my hopeful longing — or something He truly desired for me? So I prayed earnestly that He would give me the desires of my heart — not make what I desired magically happen — but that He would place in my heart the very desires He wanted me to have. I prayed that if my dream to be married wasn’t His will for me, He would take that desire away.
Trusting God for your future spouse
Well, the desire to be married did not go away. I decided to choose to find completeness in Christ as a single person. I say “choose” because I knew that for me, this would have to be a decision of the will — at least initially. But, at the same time, I also decided to trust God that someday, I would get married. I began to feel peace as a single person. Yes, I wanted to be married. I even felt ready to be married. But I hadn’t bought a pint of ice cream in months. I was enjoying my current life and felt amazing trust in God’s timing.
I decided to use that time in my life to prepare for marriage. I prayed tirelessly for my future husband, for God to make him ready. I read books on marriage. I sought out married couples I admired and asked them a million questions about marriage: What did they love most about it? What did they find most difficult? What advice could they give me to prepare for it?
I realize this way of thinking is slightly counter cultural. It’s common to hear, “Just be happy. If you’re not married, maybe it’s not meant to be. Get on with your life.” But as a Christian, if you feel called to marriage — if you truly believe God Himself has placed the desire in your heart to be married, then why not actively prepare for it? Why not trust Him that it will happen?
It happened to me. When I turned 28, I met a man and we fell in love. He wasn’t perfect (although his head was a perfect size), and months and months and many, many more months later, he eventually discovered I wasn’t perfect either … but through time spent together and much prayer, we realized we were perfect for each other. We were married shortly after I turned 30. God answered my prayers. It wasn’t the timetable I envisioned as a young girl, but it was the right timing.
Whether married or single, living for Christ is the goal
Marriage should not be the ultimate goal of the Christian life. I do feel blessed that I’m married and experiencing unconditional love from a man. And honestly, I can even appreciate the struggles that cause intense growth … on a good day, anyway. But we're not going to stand before Christ someday as Mrs. or Mr. So and So. We’re going to stand before Him alone. And we’ll be accountable for the kind of person we are here on earth, whether single or married.
If you are single, you’re not of lesser value as a person. God's plan will take each of us down different paths, paths to be celebrated. The key is to submit your will to the Lord’s, because living a life that is glorifying to God isn’t about getting what you want. It’s about conforming to what God wants. And that’s where praying — and I mean really praying — about and discerning God’s will for your life regarding marriage becomes critical. If you do feel called to marriage, shouldn’t we see God as big enough to make it happen? It may not be your timetable, but if He put that desire in your heart, is He not worthy of your trust?
Of course, not everyone is called to marriage. I have the utmost admiration for my single friends who are able to minister to others to an extent that wouldn’t be possible if they were married. I consider them heroes in the body of Christ. And not every single person who wants to be married feels unsatisfied or lonely. But the truth is, many do.
To these individuals I say, be encouraged — God has not forgotten about you. “[He] is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18). Pray that God would be the Author of your dreams. If you believe God has called you to marriage, hold fast to that dream. “God sets the lonely in families (Psalm 68:6a). Use this time now to prepare yourself for marriage. Pray for God to make you — and your spouse-to-be — ready. You can trust God for your future. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5-6).
And remember, you can find peace and joy in Christ right now knowing that you are — and will always be — His bride.
When I was about 10 years old, I used to dream about being married. I had it all figured out. I would get married when I turned 24. I would have four children — two boys, two girls. Of course, some days, that number would change, depending on the scientific experiment I used to look into the future. For instance, every time I ate an apple, I’d count how many times I could twist the stem around before it broke off. Whatever number I counted to would equal the number of children I’d have. Sure I got a little nervous on the days when I counted to, say 15 or 16 ... but I had faith that it would all work out.
Of course, I also dreamed my husband would sweep me off my feet. (And I’m talking he would physically lift me off the ground and twirl me around on a daily basis, because he would be so manly and burly and strong.) We would sing songs by the fireplace every night after dinner — after we ate our chocolate cake — and then dance and dance and dance ourselves silly. This would happen every night until we both went to heaven.
When I was young I knew this would happen, just like I dreamed. It doesn’t hurt to dream, right?
Oh, the confidence of our youth
By age 23, I finally had my first serious boyfriend. He loved God, and liked me a lot. But after several months of dating, I noticed that his head seemed a little small for his body. This realization kept me up at night. I also discerned that his fingernails were a bit too long — even when he cut them — and that disturbed me. Not to mention, he was skinny, so I was pretty sure he couldn’t lift me up, let alone swing me around.
Needless to say, when I turned 24, I wasn’t married. I wasn’t even dating. I didn’t panic though. Per my agenda, I had a whole year to figure things out. But then suddenly, I turned 25. You might say I began to panic. Just ever so slightly.
By this time, I had already been a bridesmaid in approximately 143 weddings — or at least it seemed like that many. These were weddings of friends and classmates from my small Christian college who met their future mates within the first six minutes of freshmen orientation. Was I in the bathroom or something? Because I totally missed that window.
And then I turned 26. Gulp, then 27. And I started to wonder, did God forget about me? I started consuming several pints of ice cream on a weekly basis. Then I remembered something one of my professors said during a class discussion about love. He told us about a woman he met in college. He described her as amazing — exactly what he was looking for. They dated for a while and his love for her grew. He thought she was the perfect woman for him. Then she dumped him. His friends told him not to worry — that God had someone better for him. But he said he was struck with the thought, deep in his heart, that perhaps God had “someone” better for him to be.
There I was, 27 years old, wondering was I the “best” I could be? So, I started to pray. I prayed like never before, that the Lord would prepare my heart for marriage and mold me more fully to His image. Months passed. More pints of ice cream were consumed. And I began to question what really was the will of God for my life regarding marriage. Did He want me to be married? Was this just my hopeful longing — or something He truly desired for me? So I prayed earnestly that He would give me the desires of my heart — not make what I desired magically happen — but that He would place in my heart the very desires He wanted me to have. I prayed that if my dream to be married wasn’t His will for me, He would take that desire away.
Trusting God for your future spouse
Well, the desire to be married did not go away. I decided to choose to find completeness in Christ as a single person. I say “choose” because I knew that for me, this would have to be a decision of the will — at least initially. But, at the same time, I also decided to trust God that someday, I would get married. I began to feel peace as a single person. Yes, I wanted to be married. I even felt ready to be married. But I hadn’t bought a pint of ice cream in months. I was enjoying my current life and felt amazing trust in God’s timing.
I decided to use that time in my life to prepare for marriage. I prayed tirelessly for my future husband, for God to make him ready. I read books on marriage. I sought out married couples I admired and asked them a million questions about marriage: What did they love most about it? What did they find most difficult? What advice could they give me to prepare for it?
I realize this way of thinking is slightly counter cultural. It’s common to hear, “Just be happy. If you’re not married, maybe it’s not meant to be. Get on with your life.” But as a Christian, if you feel called to marriage — if you truly believe God Himself has placed the desire in your heart to be married, then why not actively prepare for it? Why not trust Him that it will happen?
It happened to me. When I turned 28, I met a man and we fell in love. He wasn’t perfect (although his head was a perfect size), and months and months and many, many more months later, he eventually discovered I wasn’t perfect either … but through time spent together and much prayer, we realized we were perfect for each other. We were married shortly after I turned 30. God answered my prayers. It wasn’t the timetable I envisioned as a young girl, but it was the right timing.
Whether married or single, living for Christ is the goal
Marriage should not be the ultimate goal of the Christian life. I do feel blessed that I’m married and experiencing unconditional love from a man. And honestly, I can even appreciate the struggles that cause intense growth … on a good day, anyway. But we're not going to stand before Christ someday as Mrs. or Mr. So and So. We’re going to stand before Him alone. And we’ll be accountable for the kind of person we are here on earth, whether single or married.
If you are single, you’re not of lesser value as a person. God's plan will take each of us down different paths, paths to be celebrated. The key is to submit your will to the Lord’s, because living a life that is glorifying to God isn’t about getting what you want. It’s about conforming to what God wants. And that’s where praying — and I mean really praying — about and discerning God’s will for your life regarding marriage becomes critical. If you do feel called to marriage, shouldn’t we see God as big enough to make it happen? It may not be your timetable, but if He put that desire in your heart, is He not worthy of your trust?
Of course, not everyone is called to marriage. I have the utmost admiration for my single friends who are able to minister to others to an extent that wouldn’t be possible if they were married. I consider them heroes in the body of Christ. And not every single person who wants to be married feels unsatisfied or lonely. But the truth is, many do.
To these individuals I say, be encouraged — God has not forgotten about you. “[He] is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18). Pray that God would be the Author of your dreams. If you believe God has called you to marriage, hold fast to that dream. “God sets the lonely in families (Psalm 68:6a). Use this time now to prepare yourself for marriage. Pray for God to make you — and your spouse-to-be — ready. You can trust God for your future. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5-6).
And remember, you can find peace and joy in Christ right now knowing that you are — and will always be — His bride.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
With E2 the Whole Day
Today, went to pick up E2 at her house.
Initially, we went to Purple Cane Restaurant at Petaling Street but it was crowded at that time. Decided to go Bangsar area instead and ended up at La Bodega Lounge on E2's suggestion.
We had a good chat over various of topics. E2 was pretty. She has a beautiful hairdo, cutting short now. Can't take my eyes off her.
Later that night, we went to a live band performance. The vocal of the singers were fantastic and we had a great time enjoying their performance.
I will always remember this day. :)
Initially, we went to Purple Cane Restaurant at Petaling Street but it was crowded at that time. Decided to go Bangsar area instead and ended up at La Bodega Lounge on E2's suggestion.
We had a good chat over various of topics. E2 was pretty. She has a beautiful hairdo, cutting short now. Can't take my eyes off her.
Later that night, we went to a live band performance. The vocal of the singers were fantastic and we had a great time enjoying their performance.
I will always remember this day. :)
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Roger Federer post Wimbledon - What's next?
Well, Roger Federer may have lost the 2008 Wimbledon final to Rafael Nadal but make no mistakes, that was by the slightest of margin. This tells us that Federer is still the man to beat in the upcoming Beijing Olympics which for the past years, many professional players had shunned it -- so that they have more time to prepare the U.S. Open, normally held after the Olympics.
Not this time.
Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have both confirmed their participation in the Beijing Olympics, which is a major boost for the organizer. Federer has a bit of advantages on the hard court surface judging from past history. But the gap is closing fast now by the way Nadal adjusted his game to the fastest court on Grand Slams tournament in grass court at Wimbledon. Beijing Olympics will use the same type of hard court surface like in U.S. Open called DecoTurf which tends to bounce faster and lower than any other hard court surface. This gives Federer the edge over Nadal. Besides, Nadal has yet to prove he has what it takes to be a major force to be reckoned with on the hard court. Not yet at this moment. He has some points to prove. Certainly not Federer to prove.
Roger Federer is a wounded tiger now. He is licking his wound at this very moment and will ponder his revenge over Nadal in the upcoming Olympics and U.S. Open. Federer certainly play better when he can come to the terms that he is no longer the world No.1 tennis player at this moment, no matter what the ATP ranking tells you. Ok, maybe he is still the world No.1 tennis player, but he is certainly not when playing against Nadal. He needs to adjust his game when facing Nadal just like Nadal adjusted his game on the grass court. Simply, Federer cannot play like he tends to play against other tennis players other than Nadal. Nadal's game is based on his physical approach to the game. His powerful ground strokes with heavy topspin is his weapon. Federer has to do more and perhaps do something differently than exchanging topspin ground strokes with Nadal. Federer has to admit that he is worse than Nadal in this department. Pride and ego will not save the day for Roger Federer.
Perhaps, Roger Federer should use more slice and underspin than topspin with Nadal when dealing with Nadal service game. Then, with his ever reliable service aces, or the usual one-two punch of serving out-wide first, then kill the ball with the short return from Nadal. This has to be his weapon against Nadal. Maybe he also has to mix up his choice of shots a little bit like playing serve and volley more to put Nadal off his comfort zone at the baseline.
The only real problem Federer has now when facing Nadal is his self-belief and confidence. It's the mental fortitude. Not his skills. His inferiority complex kinda creeping in at crucial stages in the game like dealing with breakpoints over his opponent. Just look at the stats of breakpoints conversion ratio at the Wimbledon final -- 1 out of 13 breakpoints won. This is not a good sign for a champion like him. When was the last time we see Roger Federer plays with such gloomy look on his face? Perhaps, in the French Open finals and the last concluded Wimbledon final. So, where is the Roger Federer brimming with confident-look on his face when he defeated Andy Roddick with such grace and elegant shots in the Wimbledon finals three to four years back?
Time will tell.
Nadal has improved virtually every aspect of his game
By Greg Garber, ESPN.com
WIMBLEDON, England -- Toni Nadal, trudging up the steps from the players' locker room, forced a smile and extended his hand. Twilight was gathering outside at the All England Club and silver stubble was creeping through his weather-beaten face.
After a lengthy rain delay on Wednesday, his nephew and protégé (since the age of four) had utterly embarrassed the remaining British hope, Andy Murray. While Murray seemed baffled -- he called Rafael Nadal's forehand "ridiculous" -- Uncle Toni was wearily but thoroughly happy.
Rafa first came to Wimbledon in 2002 and made it all the way to the semifinals of the junior tournament. A year later, he reached the third round of the main draw at the age of 17. In the intervening five years, he has become the second-best grass-court player in the professional game.
The straight-sets match against Murray, accomplished in less than two hours, was his best grass match ever, Rafa acknowledged.
"Many people say, 'Rafael, his grass game has problems,'" Toni said. "They don't remember he is only 22 years old. Is normal to improve still at this age.
"Give him time."
On Sunday, many here have come to believe, that time will arrive. There is a growing sentiment that Rafael Nadal will end Roger Federer's run of consecutive Wimbledon titles at five.
"Can Nadal beat Federer?" said U.S. Davis Cup captain Patrick McEnroe, laughing. "The question is can Federer beat him? Based on what I've seen so far, I don't think he can beat Nadal."
For a child of clay, born on the Spanish island of Mallorca, grass is a truly foreign surface. While the bounces on clay are generally generous and uniform, the ball skids on grass and stays low. Power is rewarded far more often on grass than on clay. Nadal's prototypical clay-court game -- based on consistent power, defense and attrition -- doesn't necessarily play well on grass.
Just as Federer has struggled to adapt his game to clay -- he's lost to Nadal the past four years at Roland Garros, the past three in the final -- Nadal hasn't quite been able to close the gap on Federer's favored surface, losing in the Wimbledon final the past two years.
Much was made of Federer's desire to beat Nadal in Paris, his passion to prove he is the master of all surfaces. But when Federer won just four games in the final, you got the impression that Nadal, if he's healthy, will never lose a final there to the Swiss No. 1. For the record, he has won 115 of his past 117 matches on clay.
Contrast that with last year's Wimbledon final, when Nadal very nearly beat Federer, losing 7-6 (7), 4-6, 7-6 (3), 2-6, 6-2.
When Nadal won the Wimbledon warm-up tournament, The Artois Championships at Queen's Club, it was the first time in 36 years that a Spanish player won a grass-court tournament. It has been 42 years since Manuel Santana won here at Wimbledon.
"Unlike other Spanish players, he has always believed he can win at Wimbledon," Santana told the Times of London.
Watching Nadal, Santana said, "is like turning on an electric light."
Said John McEnroe, a BBC commentator, "A couple of years ago everybody was asking whether he could transition to winning here on grass. He's come here and improved virtually every aspect of his game -- his serve, court positioning, his backhand and his forehand."
As a left-hander, Nadal enjoys a distinct advantage over his right-handed peers. Everything comes at you from an unaccustomed angle, which only makes Nadal's shots even more effective.
If Nadal's game is passive-aggressive on clay, it has evolved into aggressive-aggressive on grass.
Nadal has grown perceptibly stronger over the past several years, to the point that his biceps have become back-page news among the London tabloids. The muscle manifests itself in raw power. After he was vanquished, Murray called Nadal's ball the heaviest in tennis.
"Yup," Murray said. "He just swings his arm so hard at the ball. When you watch Federer play it looks like he's sort of effortless power. When you see Nadal, how fast he moves the racket through the air, and the amount of spin and speed he generates -- his forehand is the heaviest shot in tennis.
"The ball kind of jumps at a tough angle. It's hard to step into the court and just go for it."
Murray probably doesn't know it, but there is scientific evidence to back this up. Recently, the International Tennis Federation commissioned a study to learn how many times a tennis ball spins on average. While most groundstrokes register in the vicinity of 2,500 rotations, Nadal's ball checks in between 4,000 and 5,000.
On clay, where Nadal's power is blunted, he is content to loop the ball more and outlast opponents. On grass, he has learned to flatten out his shots, and the result is a skidding, deeper ball.
"He's taking the ball early," said Murray. "He's hitting it lower over the net, and playing aggressive from the very first shot, which I don't think he did necessarily in the past."
More depth on groundstrokes means it's easier to play defense. At Roland Garros, Nadal typically plays three feet to six feet behind the baseline. At Wimbledon, Hawk-Eye technology reveals that Nadal has crept to within a foot of the baseline, and as many as one-fourth of his shots are hit from inside it.
"That is the most important thing," said his uncle Toni. "Court position. Before, because he always practiced on clay courts, he was comfortable way behind the baseline. Now, he …"
Coach Nadal, struggling for an English explanation, took the writer's pen and drew two diagrams. On clay, it was two arrows, pointing left and right, parallel to and behind the baseline, representing Rafa's defensive track. At Wimbledon, Toni said, the vectors form a "V" at the baseline and indicate Rafa's forward movement.
The biggest area of improvement for Nadal has come on his serve.
In 2003, the average speed of his first serve was a paltry 99 mph, according to IBM statistics. From '05 to '07, he kicked it up to 104 and 105 mph. Through five matches here, he's crushing the ball, averaging 115 mph. Against Murray, his serve brought him all kinds of free points.
And yet, despite the greater degree of difficulty -- and less margin for error -- Nadal's first-serve percentage is 70 -- better than any player in the semifinals, including Federer.
"At Roland Garros he's just pops it in because there's no free points on clay," observed Darren Cahill, the former coach of Andre Agassi and Lleyton Hewitt. "At Wimbledon, he's rewarded for a harder serve. He's hitting his serve harder than he used to, and he's hitting it harder here."
And Nadal isn't just throwing fastballs. He's hitting the black with off-speed stuff, too.
"On clay, 90 percent of the time, he serves it straight into the backhand," said Patrick McEnroe, an ESPN analyst. "Here, he's moving it around to all four corners of the [service] box and both sides of the body."
Nadal is actually serving and volleying, most often on big points, and occasionally, when he serves it out wide, he'll slip into the net when he sees the guy going for a slice.
In the return game, he has become bolder. On clay, he'll return from the baseline or just beyond. In the Queen's final against Novak Djokovic, Nadal usually stood between one and two feet inside the baseline.
Nadal's improved backhand slice has brought another important dimension to his game.
Only one man has managed to win both Roland Garros and Wimbledon in the same summer in the past 38 years. Nadal has a chance to join Bjorn Borg, who did it three years running, in that exclusive club.
A victory could well lead to a change in the 1-2 world order that has ruled tennis for nearly three years. A Nadal win over Federer in the final would leave Nadal with 6,055 points -- just 545 points behind Federer. It would place him in great position to catch Federer as the year unfolds.
If Nadal can break through, Wimbledon would no longer be the exclusive game reserve for Federer. It would set into motion an intriguing swing of the pendulum, for Nadal is just entering the period when great players win the bulk of their Grand Slams -- the sweet spot, if you will.
Federer won 10 of his 12 Grand Slam singles titles between the ages of 22 and 25, and Pete Sampras won eight of his 14 in that same age span. Nadal turned 22 last month in Paris, meaning he essentially has four years to collect some serious hardware. Winning Wimbledon would give him five career Slams and mark him as the favorite for Wimbledon as well as Roland Garros every year.
If he ever concentrates on adapting his game to hard courts, watch out in Melbourne and New York.
Toni Nadal doesn't understand why people have been impatient with Nadal's progression on grass. He correctly points out that Nadal, at 17, was younger than many junior players when he played his first main-draw match here. Juniors face a steep learning curve, the coach reasoned, but because Rafa is under such harsh scrutiny he didn't get the proper time to breathe.
"Rafael learns every year -- because he wants to learn," Toni said. "He wants to be better, and so he has worked hard to do that. I think he can get better."
Monday, July 7, 2008
Captain Cardie's gameplan unravels
Dejected Roger Federer covers his face after the match
Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal before the epic thriller unfolds
By Alix Ramsay
As the light faded over Centre Court, an era faded with it. Roger Federer's grasp on the Championships was finally loosened by Rafael Nadal in a final that will be remembered forever by all who saw it.
It took 4hrs 48 mins for Nadal to make his mark in the All England Club history books but finally, stunningly, the Spaniard beat the man in the cardigan 6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (5-7), 6-7 (8-10), 9-7.
Every superhero, however big, however strong, has his Achilles heel and Captain Cardie’s is Nadal. The man who, for five years, has ruled Wimbledon with a forehand of steel, now seems unable to counter the force of the muscular Majorcan.
Against anyone else, Federer waves his racquet like a wand and can turn any situation to his own advantage. But against Nadal, Captain Cardie's cable stitch gets snagged on the Majorcan's secret crochet hook, his defences unravel and the superhero is rendered mortal.
Grand Slam finals are often strange affairs – two tense men in search of greatness often fail to produce magnificent tennis, especially not in the early stages of the encounter. But when Federer and Nadal stand eyeball to eyeball over a major piece silverware, the result is stupendous.
From the very first point, both men bring the best out of each other – they have to because both know that the bloke on the other side of the net is capable of tearing him to shreds. And to see them in action is to realise just how far above the rest of the pack they stand. Other men may have a good day and catch one of the top two off guard, they may hit a bit of a purple patch one afternoon, but no one belongs in the same league as Captain Cardie and Muscleman.
So evenly matched are the pair that they are looking for any, miniscule, advantage to give them an edge. Nadal is a superstitious soul who likes to walk on court second, who likes to sit closest to the Royal Box to be nearer his support team and who hates to have his routine disturbed. So Federer ushered him on court first (“No, no, after you, Raf…”) and marched purposefully towards Nadal’s favourite seat.
Getting his retaliation in first, Nadal, who shares the same clothing sponsor as his foe, selected a cream coloured warm-up top to top off his otherwise pristine white outfit. It may not have been made of cashmere and it may not have had his own specially designed logo emblazoned on the front, but it made the point – I'm as good as you, amigo, and don’t you forget it.
The nagging worry for Federer is that Nadal is actually better than he is, and that thought has gnawed away at him for the past couple of years. It is all very well for the Spaniard to dominate the clay courts of Roland Garros but SW19 is Roger’s patch and he is none too keen on trespassers. But Nadal, playing in his third final, was no longer an outsider straying into someone else’s territory. He had looked around the property, decided he liked it and put in an offer for the title deeds.
At times, the tennis was remarkable. Federer’s forehand was like a heat-seeking missile, he was trying to attack the net, he was looking smooth. But whenever the match moved to an important point, out came Nadal’s secret crochet hook and Captain Cardie was undone.
For 2hrs 15 mins they slugged it out before the rain sent them running for cover. In that time Federer held 12 break points and converted just one of them. The longer it went on, the less likely he looked to take his chances, tapping his backhand lamely into the net time and again. Creating the break point chance seemed easy – such things are for superheroes – but turning it into an advantage was nigh on impossible.
And all the while Nadal was relentless, grinding on to a two-set lead and watching Federer fluff six break points in the third set until, with the Swiss leading 5-4, the rains came.
Only once before has anyone managed to put Federer on the back foot in the final – and that was four years ago. Then Andy Roddick snatched the opening set against the champion and was running him ragged until a rain delay gave Federer time to think and he came back out with all guns blazing.
History has a strange habit of repeating itself and back at work again 80 minutes later, Federer was back to his best. Perhaps it was the chance to put the magic cardie on again that did it, but having rediscovered his serve, he took charge of the third set tie-break and set off towards the fourth set.
This was a new Federer; this was the majestic Federer – this was Captain Cardie swooping to save his championship.
Twice Nadal stood two points from the title – in the 10th game and again in the tie-break – and then as the fourth-set tie-break came to the crunch, the Spaniard held two, precious championship points. The superhero in Federer puffed out his chest and grabbed the first back with a service winner and the second with a backhand that rifled down the tramline and landed in the corner. They have nerves of titanium, these superheroes.
And then it rained again.
This time there was no edgy switch in momentum, but another 55 minutes of stunning hitting, lung-bursting running and unbelievable, magnificent, monumental tennis.
As a Federer forehand sailed long, he dropped his serve and as, eight points, later another landed in the net, the Cardigan of Invincibility had passed to Nadal. Captain Cardie's reign was over.
Nadal tops Federer in 5 sets to win Wimbledon
Rafael Nadal holds aloft the trophy
Rafael Nadal with the scoreboard showing time played for the match
Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal at the net
By HOWARD FENDRICH, AP Tennis Writer
WIMBLEDON, England (AP)—Rafael Nadal, grass stains on his white shirt and a Spanish flag tucked under his arm, scampered through the Centre Court stands to celebrate his first Wimbledon title with hugs and handshakes.
Roger Federer sat in his changeover chair, protected from the night’s chill by his custom-made cream cardigan with the gold “RF” on the chest. Alone with his thoughts, alone with the knowledge that he had come so close to becoming the first man since the 1880s to win a sixth consecutive championship at the All England Club.
Two points from victory, the No. 1-ranked Federer couldn’t pull it out, instead succumbing to No. 2 Nadal 6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-7 (8), 9-7 Sunday night in a 4-hour, 48-minute test of wills that was the longest men’s final in Wimbledon history—and quite possibly the greatest.
Even Nadal felt sympathy for Federer.
“I am very happy for me,” Nadal said, “but sorry for him, because he deserved this title, too.”
Through rain, wind and descending darkness, the two greatest players of their generation swapped spectacular shots, until, against a slate sky, Nadal earned the right to fling his racket aside and collapse on his back, champion of the All England Club at last.
“Is impossible to explain what I felt in that moment, no?” Nadal said after accepting the golden trophy that has belonged to Federer since 2003.
The first man since Bjorn Borg in 1980 to win Wimbledon and the French Open in the same year, Nadal stopped Federer’s streaks of 40 victories in a row at the All England Club, and a record 65 in a row on grass, thereby stamping his supremacy in their rivalry, no matter what the rankings say.
“Probably my hardest loss, by far,” Federer said. “I mean, it’s not much harder than this right now.”
No man since 1927 had come back to win a Wimbledon final after losing the first two sets, and none had overcome a match point to seize victory since 1948. If anyone could, it figured to be Federer, especially on this particular lawn.
He hadn’t lost a match on grass since 2002, and he hadn’t lost a set during this tournament before Sunday. He also hadn’t faced anyone nearly as talented and indefatigable as Nadal.
“Look, Rafa’s a deserving champion,” Federer said. “He just played fantastically.”
Indeed he did, earning Spain its first Wimbledon men’s title since Manolo Santana won in 1966.
Nadal managed to regroup after blowing a two-set lead, managed to recover after wasting two match points in the fourth-set tiebreaker, managed to hold steady when Federer needed only two points to end the match while ahead 5-4 in the fifth.
He earned his fifth Grand Slam title, but first away from the French Open, by showing fortitude on his serve, saving 12 of 13 break points. He did it by breaking serve four times—twice as many times as Federer lost serve in his previous six matches combined. And Nadal did it by being better from the baseline, winning 24 of 38 points that lasted 10 or more strokes, according to an unofficial AP tally.
“He was rock-solid, the way we know him,” said Federer, who hit 25 aces. “He’s definitely improved his game.”
Borg and Santana watched from the front row of the Royal Box at Centre Court, which next year will have a retractable roof. Perhaps Mother Nature wanted one last chance to leave her mark, delaying Sunday’s start by 35 minutes with rain. Showers again caused a delay of 1 hour, 21 minutes late in the third set, then another of 30 minutes at 2-2, deuce, in the fifth set.
When action resumed at 8:23 p.m., it already was tough to see, and the players traded service holds until 7-7. That’s where Nadal finally broke through, as Federer’s forehand really began to break down. A forehand into the net gave Nadal his fourth break point, and a forehand long conceded the game— the first break of serve by either man since the second set.
Nadal still had to serve out the match, though, and he still had to avoid the sort of nerves Federer noticed when his opponent led 5-2 in the fourth-set tiebreaker.
“I played terrible there,” said Nadal, who double-faulted to 5-3.
Down 6-5 in that tiebreaker, Federer erased a match point with a 127 mph service winner. Down 8-7—again, one point from losing—Federer hit a backhand passing winner.
A forehand winner put Federer ahead 9-8, and when Nadal missed a backhand return, the match was even. Federer jumped and screamed, and the crowd of about 15,000 joined him.
“Rafa keeps you thinking, and that’s what the best players do to each other in the end,” Federer said. “That’s what we both do to each other.”
It was their sixth Grand Slam final, already more than between any other pair of men in the 40-year Open era, and there could be several to follow. Federer is only 26, after all, and Nadal is 22. Federer has led the rankings for a record 231 consecutive weeks, and Nadal has been second for a record 154.
Nadal defeated Federer at the French Open en route to each of his championships there, in the 2005 semifinals and the past three finals, including a 6-1, 6-3, 6-0 rout last month that was Federer’s most lopsided loss in 180 career Grand Slam matches.
But the Swiss star kept reminding everyone this week that he has had the upper hand on surfaces other than clay.
Not this time.
Nadal lost to Federer in the 2006 Wimbledon final in four sets, and the 2007 final in five. Although the latter was certainly suspenseful, it featured neither the drama nor the all-around excellence of Sunday’s encounter, which ended at 9:15 p.m., when Federer pushed a forehand into the net on Nadal’s fourth match point.
Federer made clear afterward he was not pleased that play continued despite the low visibility at the end.
“It’s rough on me now, obviously, you know, to lose the biggest tournament in the world over maybe a bit of light,” he said.
Said Nadal: “In the last game, I didn’t see nothing.”
Both players figured that if Federer had broken back to 8-8 in the fifth, play would have been suspended until Monday because of darkness.
“It would have been brutal,” Federer said.
It didn’t happen. Nadal came through.
Afterward, the new champion was asked if it was the greatest match he’d ever played. Plenty of others around the grounds, including John McEnroe—whose five-set loss to Borg in 1980 gets many votes—already were calling it the greatest match they’d ever seen.
“I don’t know if it’s the best,” Nadal said.
Then he thought about it for a moment.
“Probably,” he continued. “Probably the best, yes.”
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Six Myths About Oil Speculators
By Rick Newman, U.S.News & World Report
So now we know who's really responsible for $4 gas. Finger-pointers from Washington, the International Monetary Fund, and even Saudi Arabia no longer seem to buy the idea that the demand for oil around the world is simply growing faster than the supply, driving prices to record highs close to $140 per barrel. There must be a more nefarious reason, it seems. So now entering this drama is a villain everybody can hate: The Evil Speculator.
At recent congressional hearings, politicians and energy experts argued that speculators have artificially added $30 or more to the cost of a barrel of oil, turned oil trading into a global poker game, and doubled the price of gasoline practically overnight.
But who are these party crashers? Where did they come from? How are they doing this? And who can stop them? We'd all like to see a superhero swoop in and smite the speculators, saving Gotham from the peril of $4 gas. The only problem is, speculators aren't quite the bogeymen that politicians want us to think--and they even play an important role in the oil markets and the global economy. Some major misconceptions:
Speculators are inherently bad for the economy. There's no doubt that speculators are out to make money, by buying a commodity like oil (or gold, or real estate) when they think the price is likely to rise and they'll be able to sell for a profit. But they also help sustain the market for buyers and sellers and provide ways for individuals and businesses to offset risks.
Many companies, for instance, want to lock in the price they're going to pay down the road for petroleum products and other supplies they need to run their businesses. So they make agreements with suppliers on a price they'll pay next year, or the year after, when they actually take possession of the oil. Buying and selling such "futures contracts" makes these companies speculators by definition, since they're placing a bet on the future price of oil.
Companies doing this kind of hedging include gasoline refiners, airlines, shipping companies, and others that spend a lot on fuel or petroleum. Often they use investment banks or other intermediaries to arrange the deals. They might be gambling, but this kind of speculation actually helps companies run their businesses more smoothly, and if they guess right on future prices, it may give them a competitive advantage against other companies that don't plan as prudently.
There's a Speculator Star Chamber somewhere. Global markets are so abstruse to ordinary folks that it's easy to imagine a cabal of evil geniuses pulling the levers from some fortified complex in London or Geneva. But that's the Hollywood version. "The market is so competitive that that's nonsense," says Bob Hodrick, a finance professor at Columbia Business School. "There's no way for everyone to communicate and get together and say, 'We're going to buy and drive the price up.' " There are thousands of investors around the world placing bets every day on whether oil prices will go up or down--and they have no way of knowing who their fellow speculators are. All they know is the current price, shown on a computer monitor, plus whatever their own research tells them.
Speculators are super-rich market manipulators. Certainly some are super-rich, including investors in sovereign wealth funds from Middle Eastern and Asian nations. But new data show that many oil speculators these days may be big pension and index funds that invest on behalf of ordinary working Americans. These huge investment funds have typically invested in equities, but in recent years they've been adding commodities--including oil--to their portfolios as a way to diversify.
Even if the commodity portion of these portfolios is just 3 or 4 percent, that can trigger big swings in the oil markets, where most investors up till now have been smaller players. "There's no malice or manipulation here," says Ed Krapels, an analyst with the research firm Energy Security Analysis. But the entry of such big institutional investors into the oil market could definitely contribute to rising prices, especially since they tend to buy and hold securities like futures contracts, instead of quickly selling--which contributes to scarcity and rising prices.
The government tracks speculators and knows who they are. Part of the reason nobody's really sure what effect speculators have on the oil markets is a lack of information. Exchanges like the New York Mercantile Exchange track the activities of their members, but even then, a trader could be a speculator one day, buying oil or futures contracts, and a seller the next day: Nobody checks a "speculator" box when making a trade.
A recent study by the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates commodities markets, found a big increase in the percentage of speculators buying oil contracts for investment purposes--"paper barrels"--instead of buying because they need the oil. But oil markets are less regulated than markets for stocks or bonds, and there's still a lot that's unknown. Congress has ordered more studies, with new regulation likely as well.
Speculators are creating a huge bubble in oil. We've just seen a bubble pop in the housing market, with home values now plummeting. And before that, the tech bubble inflated, then burst. But the run-up in oil prices is probably different. The housing boom was generated by cheap and, in some cases, fraudulent mortgages, not by a huge increase in the number of people who needed housing. The tech boom was similar to old-fashioned manias, where investors raced in hoping to cash in on a gold rush and bid the price of technology shares way above their inherent value.
But in the oil markets, there is in fact growing demand because of strong Asian economies. And supply is fairly fixed for now, since adding more oil to the market means finding new sources and spending billions to extract it, not just opening a spigot a little wider. "There are pretty strong fundamentals behind this run-up," says Sarah Emerson, another analyst at Energy Security Analysis. Speculators may be pushing oil prices somewhat higher than they would otherwise be--but a bust similar to housing or tech stocks seems unlikely.
Speculators should be banned. Few, if any, economists or energy analysts advocate this. In fact, some fairly modest regulatory changes could bring greater transparency to oil markets and force them to operate more like stock and bond markets. Buying a contract for oil futures, for instance, typically requires the buyer to put down less than 10 percent of the value of the contract; the rest can be borrowed. That allows buyers to roll up big stakes with relatively little cash. Raising the "margin requirement" to 50 percent, the usual threshold for stocks, would cool demand for oil futures, while still keeping the speculators in business. And maybe get the witch hunters off their case.
So now we know who's really responsible for $4 gas. Finger-pointers from Washington, the International Monetary Fund, and even Saudi Arabia no longer seem to buy the idea that the demand for oil around the world is simply growing faster than the supply, driving prices to record highs close to $140 per barrel. There must be a more nefarious reason, it seems. So now entering this drama is a villain everybody can hate: The Evil Speculator.
At recent congressional hearings, politicians and energy experts argued that speculators have artificially added $30 or more to the cost of a barrel of oil, turned oil trading into a global poker game, and doubled the price of gasoline practically overnight.
But who are these party crashers? Where did they come from? How are they doing this? And who can stop them? We'd all like to see a superhero swoop in and smite the speculators, saving Gotham from the peril of $4 gas. The only problem is, speculators aren't quite the bogeymen that politicians want us to think--and they even play an important role in the oil markets and the global economy. Some major misconceptions:
Speculators are inherently bad for the economy. There's no doubt that speculators are out to make money, by buying a commodity like oil (or gold, or real estate) when they think the price is likely to rise and they'll be able to sell for a profit. But they also help sustain the market for buyers and sellers and provide ways for individuals and businesses to offset risks.
Many companies, for instance, want to lock in the price they're going to pay down the road for petroleum products and other supplies they need to run their businesses. So they make agreements with suppliers on a price they'll pay next year, or the year after, when they actually take possession of the oil. Buying and selling such "futures contracts" makes these companies speculators by definition, since they're placing a bet on the future price of oil.
Companies doing this kind of hedging include gasoline refiners, airlines, shipping companies, and others that spend a lot on fuel or petroleum. Often they use investment banks or other intermediaries to arrange the deals. They might be gambling, but this kind of speculation actually helps companies run their businesses more smoothly, and if they guess right on future prices, it may give them a competitive advantage against other companies that don't plan as prudently.
There's a Speculator Star Chamber somewhere. Global markets are so abstruse to ordinary folks that it's easy to imagine a cabal of evil geniuses pulling the levers from some fortified complex in London or Geneva. But that's the Hollywood version. "The market is so competitive that that's nonsense," says Bob Hodrick, a finance professor at Columbia Business School. "There's no way for everyone to communicate and get together and say, 'We're going to buy and drive the price up.' " There are thousands of investors around the world placing bets every day on whether oil prices will go up or down--and they have no way of knowing who their fellow speculators are. All they know is the current price, shown on a computer monitor, plus whatever their own research tells them.
Speculators are super-rich market manipulators. Certainly some are super-rich, including investors in sovereign wealth funds from Middle Eastern and Asian nations. But new data show that many oil speculators these days may be big pension and index funds that invest on behalf of ordinary working Americans. These huge investment funds have typically invested in equities, but in recent years they've been adding commodities--including oil--to their portfolios as a way to diversify.
Even if the commodity portion of these portfolios is just 3 or 4 percent, that can trigger big swings in the oil markets, where most investors up till now have been smaller players. "There's no malice or manipulation here," says Ed Krapels, an analyst with the research firm Energy Security Analysis. But the entry of such big institutional investors into the oil market could definitely contribute to rising prices, especially since they tend to buy and hold securities like futures contracts, instead of quickly selling--which contributes to scarcity and rising prices.
The government tracks speculators and knows who they are. Part of the reason nobody's really sure what effect speculators have on the oil markets is a lack of information. Exchanges like the New York Mercantile Exchange track the activities of their members, but even then, a trader could be a speculator one day, buying oil or futures contracts, and a seller the next day: Nobody checks a "speculator" box when making a trade.
A recent study by the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates commodities markets, found a big increase in the percentage of speculators buying oil contracts for investment purposes--"paper barrels"--instead of buying because they need the oil. But oil markets are less regulated than markets for stocks or bonds, and there's still a lot that's unknown. Congress has ordered more studies, with new regulation likely as well.
Speculators are creating a huge bubble in oil. We've just seen a bubble pop in the housing market, with home values now plummeting. And before that, the tech bubble inflated, then burst. But the run-up in oil prices is probably different. The housing boom was generated by cheap and, in some cases, fraudulent mortgages, not by a huge increase in the number of people who needed housing. The tech boom was similar to old-fashioned manias, where investors raced in hoping to cash in on a gold rush and bid the price of technology shares way above their inherent value.
But in the oil markets, there is in fact growing demand because of strong Asian economies. And supply is fairly fixed for now, since adding more oil to the market means finding new sources and spending billions to extract it, not just opening a spigot a little wider. "There are pretty strong fundamentals behind this run-up," says Sarah Emerson, another analyst at Energy Security Analysis. Speculators may be pushing oil prices somewhat higher than they would otherwise be--but a bust similar to housing or tech stocks seems unlikely.
Speculators should be banned. Few, if any, economists or energy analysts advocate this. In fact, some fairly modest regulatory changes could bring greater transparency to oil markets and force them to operate more like stock and bond markets. Buying a contract for oil futures, for instance, typically requires the buyer to put down less than 10 percent of the value of the contract; the rest can be borrowed. That allows buyers to roll up big stakes with relatively little cash. Raising the "margin requirement" to 50 percent, the usual threshold for stocks, would cool demand for oil futures, while still keeping the speculators in business. And maybe get the witch hunters off their case.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Appointment with E2 at Pasta Zanmai
Natto is typically eaten with rice
Today I had an appointment with E2 at Pasta Zanmai.
We had these acquired taste natto as the side dish. Natto is a traditional Japanese food made from fermented soybeans, popular especially for breakfast. As a rich source of protein, natto and the soybean paste miso formed a vital source of nutrition in feudal Japan. It has powerful smell, strong flavor, and sticky consistency.
We had a pretty good conversation and talked nineteen to the dozen at time. Later, we went to Oldtown White Coffee for a cuppa.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Luck on Ivanovic's side at Wimbledon
Ana Ivanovic kisses the net after the match with Nathalie Dechy
By LOUISE WATT, Associated Press Writer
WIMBLEDON, England (AP)—Nathalie Dechy thinks it might be a good time for Ana Ivanovic to buy a lottery ticket.
Facing match point in the second set of her second-round match at Wimbledon, the top-ranked Ivanovic drove a forehand into the top of the net—it somehow trickled over.
From the brink of an embarrassing exit to a player ranked 97, she recovered to beat veteran Frenchwoman Dechy 6-7 (2), 7-6 (3), 10-8, in a match lasting 3 hours, 24 minutes.
“Someone from upstairs made the ball roll over,” Ivanovic explained, laughing. “I just feel so lucky.”
“I felt like time stopped for a moment. … I just thought the match would be over.”
“After that point I felt like it was a new match for me and I had a new opportunity.”
Dechy had an instant of thinking she had won. “Then I saw,” she said. “I was like, gee, there’s maybe somebody in the sky who help(ed) her on that one.
“Maybe today she can go and play lotto also a little bit. It would be a good day for her.”
In her first tournament as a Grand Slam titlist and the No. 1-ranked woman, the 20-year-old Ivanovic seemed to be in a big rush, trying to finish points quickly.
It worked to start. The Serbian star won the first three games in six minutes.
But Dechy, determined, patient and no-frills, rallied and took the first set in a tiebreaker.
The second set began in a similar fashion with Ivanovic up 3-1, only to fall behind 3-4, with Dechy serving well and Ivanovich having problems returning.
So it went to Ivanovic serving to stay in the match in the 10th game.
Facing two match points, she fired a big serve and followed with a forehand winner.
One to go.
The pressure compounded with a fault. But rather than back off, Ivanovic produced a big second serve and charged in, driving a forehand into the net. That’s when time stopped for both players. Ivanovic’s ball clipped the net, and dropped over.
She smiled nervously, then pulled her sun visor down over her face to stifle a laugh.
Dechy grimaced and looked up. She pushed Ivanovic for the rest of the match, but never seemed to get on top again after Ivanovic dominated the tiebreaker.
The Frenchwoman was broken twice in the deciding set to fall behind 2-4 and then 3-5. But she clawed back again to 5-5, when another slice of fortune fell Ivanovic’s way.
Dechy played a forehand volley which ought to have sent her 15-30 up on the Ivanovic serve, but her hat fell off in the process. It was extremely unlikely Ivanovic could stay in the point, but she asked for and was granted a replay—a fair call under the strict definition of the rules.
Ivanovic won that point and regained some momentum. After converting her fourth match point, Ivanovic went over to kiss the net because she felt “so lucky.”
“If it wasn’t for that net and that place, I would be booking my flight back home.”
Dechy sat down on court with a towel over her head and cried. It was her 13th trip to Wimbledon and “for sure one of my best matches so far this year.”
Ivanovic praised Dechy’s game. “She deserved to win also because she played really well,” Ivanovic said. Asked if she was still feeling lucky about the Championships, she laughed and replied: “Well, I don’t know,” she said. “I think I used a lot of luck today.”
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Sharapova goes for tux at Wimbledon
Maria Sharapova with her tux-like outfit and shorts
By LOUISE WATT, Associated Press Writer
WIMBLEDON, England (AP)—First, there was Roger Federer’s cardigan and Serena Williams’ trench coat. Now, Maria Sharapova has set her own fashion trend at Wimbledon—a tuxedo.
“I love men’s wear in general,” Sharapova said Tuesday after beating French qualifier Stephanie Foretz 6-1, 6-4 in the first round. “I love tuxedo jackets.”
The 2004 champion played the match in a sleeveless top with a tuxedo-style bib front. She strode onto Court One sporting a single-breasted jacket with gold stitching on the collar lapel and front edge, which she hung on her chair.
Sharapova also wore shorts—the first time the 6-foot-2 player has done so in a Grand Slam tournament. But not just any old shorts: ones worn low on the hip with a wide-tailored waistband, pin stripe-effect and gold-stitched buttons.
“It’s hard to do things different with white,” Sharapova said, referring to Wimbledon’s strict dress code. “I thought ‘why not do shorts this year?’ I’ve never done it at a Grand Slam. You know, if there’s one place to do it, it’s here.”
Sharapova didn’t wear the other half of her tailored, tuxedo-inspired warmup suit—wide-legged pants.
“I love things that are actually a bit baggier and wide,” she said. “I loved it when that whole wide-legged pant trend set in. I’m tall and I can pull those things off.”
If Serena Williams can wear a short rain coat on court when there is not a cloud in sight, as she did on Monday, why shouldn’t Sharapova wear men’s clothes? Even if Williams described hers as “ladylike.”
The 21-year-old Russian’s outfit was inspired by “London’s history in bespoke tailoring,” according to her clothing sponsor. It may have been inspired by a man’s suit, but she made the seamless, lightweight vest look feminine. Perhaps the $5,000 Tiffany diamond and platinum dangly earrings helped.
While Federer played up to Wimbledon’s old-style traditions by donning a herringbone-patterned cardigan on Monday, Sharapova’s take on the classic tuxedo caused more of a stir.
Her post-match news conference was dominated by questions about her outfit, to the extent that she remarked it was “amazing.”
She thought Federer’s gold-trim cardigan was “classic and beautiful.” And Serena’s raincoat? “I didn’t see it,” Sharapova said.
What does she think of all the attention being paid to players’ clothes?
“I think it’s great,” she said. “I mean, look, tennis is not a a sport where you have to wear uniforms. It’s an individual sport. I’ve loved fashion since I was very young. … I loved working with thread and needles, making things on my own.”
Sharapova also revealed that because of retail demands she already knows what she’s wearing in fall 2009. But when asked what she will wear next year at Wimbledon, she laughed.
“Oh, goodness,” she said. “I still haven’t finished the tournament. We’ve got a lot in store.”
One player who isn’t particularly interested in all the fashion talk is Andy Roddick, the two-time men’s runner-up.
“I personally don’t care,” he said.
If attention is drawn to tennis for whatever reason, that’s fine, Roddick said. If that means Federer’s cardigan, “then so be it.”
“I don’t know if it would be a good look for me,” he said. “Or any of my friends. Or relatives.”
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