Tran Harry – The Economy Needs A Fix

Tranharry.com is a site created by Harry Tran as a hobby, a portfolio, and as a platform to display his experiences, talents, and motivations.

Name: Tran, Harry
Alias: Harrison
Hometown: San Francisco, CA
Current Residency: Renton, WA
Major: Business Administration – Marketing
Masters Degree – MBA – In Progress

Contact info:
Phone: Will provide upon request
Email: harry@tranharry.com

Interview with TranHarry:

So, tell us who is TranHarry?

Well my full name is Harry Tran. My parents were born in Vietnam from Chinese parents and my parents had me here in the United States.

Aside from my heritage you could say I am pretty much an all American as I don’t know any other society from a first hand perspective, albeit I was given the exposure of a traditional Chinese upbringing. This blend of East meets West has definitely opened my mind to different possibilities and views.

What makes you tick?

I guess I have always had a fondness for rooting for the underdog. I can’t say I make rash decisions as I like to plan things out really well; I’m a bit of a detailed person. I enjoy a good debate and that’s probably what inspired me most to create this blog, so that I could put my ideas out there and maybe someone will spark a discussion out of them.

Where did this sudden interest in economics stir from?

Well the concept of the economy and economics never really stirred up much in me as I’m sure it hasn’t in many others in my age group, while I was living at home with my parents.

It wasn’t until I had moved out that the price of things started to matter and the way prices worked in the macroeconomic world we all live in. I have always been taught that to feel truly successful that I should amongst other things become a homeowner, but after doing much research in the job markets and housing markets I knew that to buy a home now is truly a bad time for my own financial situation. Not to mention how oppressive the real estate industry and mortgage market seem to me, in the county that I grew up in many people ended up moving away to other metro areas because the % of homes that were affordable to its own citizens were astonishingly low.

All this lead me to the point that I have to stay current and knowledgeable about the markets and economy otherwise I may end up signing my life away to debt slavery.

You say you have a younger brother, what would you tell the younger generation?

Yeah, I have a younger brother who is about to turn 18 soon. I’m very proud of him because we grew up in a conservative household, financially, we stretched our money. So when he told me how he was interested in building his savings that really impressed me.

What I see wrong with so many in his generation is what has run rampant in other parts of society as well. They have a misunderstanding of a need and a want. They always try to keep up with the Joneses, if a classmate has an iPod, you end up trying to out do them with an iTouch and there will be someone with an iPhone. So it is never enough, there is also a sense of entitlement because most of their parents grew up between the two recent recessions, they had a good string of economic growth so they tend to spoil their kids with it.

My best advice to this generation is to figure out what’s most important in terms of consumption. Figure out the difference between something they need and something they just want. And if it’s something that they want than save for it. Don’t buy anything thinking the money will be available tomorrow to pay for it because chances are it won’t be readily available. I’m not going to describe to them what a need vs. a want is. Someone may very well need an iPhone to keep in touch with people, but just monitor your spending wisely.

Marketing has a way of speaking to a person’s emotions, half of what makes a product so successful is its functionality and the other half plays into your psyche about how cool and fun the product is. This allows companies to charge a higher premium for products which people are lead to believe that they need, yet many times they could do without. I know a lot of women may argue this point with me, but there’s no reason why a pair of heels should cost $500 without carefully placed marketing in trend setters that make it cool and sexy for women to desire those particular shoes where they’ll pay $500 for.

What are your views on the way our government is dealing with the economic crisis?

I believe in the power of the invisible hand, I believe that the hand will ultimately guide the economy to where it believes is true equilibrium and government policy can only do so much to steer it away but like homeostasis it will always want to gravitate towards what is comfortable for the most amount of people. Right now our government is churning out too many policies without answer to fundamental economic principles, all this debt financing needs to be repaid to its creditors one day, but no one has brought the issue up at a level where it can be discussed. We need to answer exactly who will be repaying these debts, will we be taxed? Or our grandchildren?

Throughout history artificial price controls such as price floors and price ceilings have always failed to protect the very people that they were meant to help. Take for example the current stimulus plans to spur lending and keep homeowners in their homes, well most of these sellers of homes that are being protected probably won’t be able to afford their homes, but as a result of the protection they remain in these homes leaving the price of homes higher than they should be and keeping the person that could afford to be in that home out of the home. The same goes for lending, the government has funneled billions of dollars into our banking system and expects these crippled banks to continue lending, but like the same question I have asked about who will be paying for our national debt, these banks would rather not be lending too much funds out at the moment because given the poor outlook of the economy lending money is actually much riskier. Do you really want to lend money to households when the unemployment rate is rising? Do you want to lend to businesses when consumer confidence is at an all time low? There are no guarantees that the money will be repaid, so reducing the interest rate or flooding the banks with capital won’t help increase their lending if they don’t believe that the borrowers have any shot of paying that loan back.

It’s really a double edged sword, we’re screwed if we do and we’re screwed if we don’t. But once again the economy is simply not ready to naturally revive itself, so all the government supplied medicine and life support won’t help wake it if it wants to sleep.

I want to thank everyone for visiting my site, I really appreciate your interest in these topics that are covered on my site. – Harry