11/26/2008

Myth 195 - The American Myth

Singapore is, and still is, the ideal convert of the Great American Dream. Everything American is good, except the bi party system. We adore all the big names, the great talents and the American melting pot. We plugged into America more than just to the world. We aped almost in entirety, the American financial system and their greed. And we are the first to pay the price of our childish phase of growing up. Big names, tested names and great talents cannot be wrong. Just pay them as much as they asked for, for they are worth every cent of it. We have seen many American myths in the past that went up in smokes. But those were totally ignored. Now this final disclosure of the colossal mismanagement and cheating by the financial whiz kids and their dirty dealings that cheated a whole nation and the world being opened up for all to see. Real talents would not have dug a hole that is so big to bury America and the world. Million dollar and billion dollar talents are everywhere on the streets of New York. Are we eagerly waiting to grab them to create our own myth? We have been conned by the juicy big apples of big names like Merrill Lynch, Citibank, Goldman Sach, Morgan Stanley etc etc. I too thought it was a great idea to put a stake in these great banks. I too was conned by this American Myth. Shall we continue to go along as a bright eye kid and saying yes to anything America? Pay big money for big talents, buy up big American banks and duplicate American financial systems and practices without a second thought to their relevance and extravagance?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can someone provide some clues as to how much we have been conned so far, or how much lesser we could have lost if we had bought into those banks much later. I think the long term investments will really be long term now, if they expect to make some money out of it, provided of course the entities are still there.

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

i saw an email circulating with all the investments and the money values of each investment. the paper loss aggregated at this point in time is more than $30b. the email was not making a wild guess.

i thought the number was too high, but not really unbelievable.

Anonymous said...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are now more or less resorting to blackmailing the US Govt to pump in more money to keep them alive. I wonder who is next in line for further handouts and how long the US Govt can sustain such practices.

Anonymous said...

The world today is like two people, one working his guts out to produce something for consumption and the other blowing air into a balloon. Then the one blowing air into the balloon says, let's exchange what you produce for my ballon. And that's exactly what everything in this world is about. Now, nobody wants to exchange what he produced for an inflated balloon. That's what some billion dollar companies are made of now, just air.