Singapore's answer to save the world

Singapore went to Davos with a solution to save the world from another financial meltdown. It has diagnosed the cause of the current crisis to the low pay of regulators and administrators in charge of Wall Street and the financial institutions. The solution is simple, pay the administrators and regulators at least as much as the bankers and fund managers and the problem will not have happened. The underlying assumption, according to my understanding, is that you pay for good talents. By paying the administrators and regulators as much as the bankers and fund managers, the supertalents will become administrators and regulators. And if they are paid even more, then they will be better than the bankers and fund managers. Now, how much will be enough to pay these supertalents? The bankers and fund managers are being paid hundreds of millions with the top three getting billions at the peak of the market. But there is one problem that I noticed. These supertalents of bankers and fund managers were being paid so much and they could not stop asking for more and actually resorted to frauds to continue to demand more and more pay. Would they behave differently if they become administrators and regulators? Won't they be the same greedy and unscrupulous thieves again? One thing for sure. If this is our solution, we must put it into practice first to show the world it works. The minibond crisis and the rubbish dump stock market are indicators that our administrators and regulators are not being paid enough. Let's pay them as much as the bankers and fund managers first. And when our stock market shoots pass 4000 points and no more similar minibond crisis, then we can tell the world that we have done it. We can solve all kinds of problems by throwing money at the problems.

Who is more guilty?

Wall Street and the American corporate world are in a big mess. And the whole world is suffering the pain. Who is guilty or more guilty? At the moment only a handful of big wigs are caught with their pants down. No, they were not caught. They surrendered to the authority, confessed their own crimes. The authority was sleeping! Or were they sleeping with the thieves? The wonder of it all, the real criminals are all enjoying their ill gotten wealth without any sense of guilt and not guilty of any crimes. The real criminals are the regulators and administrators. They created and managed a flawed system! And the rest took a ride on the flawed system and benefitted from it. No crimes, just mismanagement. The thieves are stealing from an open till. So who is to be blamed? The regulators and administrators are pointing the fingers everywhere except themselves. Who is to regulate the regulators? Who is to guard the guards? When the administrators and regulators are cock enough to let flawed systems to operate and the thieves to take from the till legally, or without breaking the law or the rules, where is the crime? It is time to hang the regulators and administrators. They cannot find excuse that they are not paid as well as the thieves.

Pass the hats around please

We need to create more jobs. I don’t mean creating jobs like cleaners and chambermaids. I mean real jobs that pay reasonably well. There are three ways to go about it. One, with our huge reserves, more jobs can be created with the money available. We can create more seniors and deputies positions, eg senior or deputy President to the President or senior vice Presidents, deputy to the vice President, senior Perm Sec, deputy Perm Sec or deputy to deputy Perm Sec. We can also have senior mayors, deputy mayors, or even create new ones like governors and deputy governors. The people have already accepted the practice of seniors, so it should not be an issue. Precedents have been set. It is a good precedent. A second way is to pass the hats around. Stop the ridiculous practice of one person wearing 10 or 20 hats. Pass the hats around so that more people can wear one or two fat hats. The greedy practice of several hats on a small head or a small head that thinks it is very big is unhealthy. Ok, I must be careful about this as there are not many people that are fit to wear big hats or many hats. A third way, and this concerns the filthy rich oldies. Many of the oldies are so rich that even without the income from their jobs they will have enough money to last a few generations. Let them retire gracefully to enjoy their wealth, to see the world and smell the roses. And let the younger and hungrier people take over their jobs. After all many are so feeble that most of the time they were on sick leave or fail to turn up for meetings or for work. We can spread a little generosity around and cast the net wider to share the goodies.

Too much bad news!

This seems to be the complaint of the day. The old media is joining cyberspace in reporting bad news and more bad news. Now isn't that bad? It is time to report good news. And this is a sign of being responsible, to tell good ending fairy tales. How would the media react to this call of telling good news in bad times? Would they be challenged by their professionalism or their conscience? Should the journalists or anyone reporting on news, deliberately take on a one sided approach, to cook up good news for that happy feeling? To tell the tooth or to tell the truth? It seems that telling the tooth is a duty call. What kind of spin shall one put into it when job losses, wage freezes, cannot keep up with bills and debt payments are the order of the day? One way to approach it is to report on the lifestyles of the rich and famous and their parties and expensive taste. Forget about the hard luck cases. Those are losers and they deserved to be in those desperate situations. These are the people who skims to save 10c on their bus fare, try to whip up dinner for 4 for $10 or downgrade from drinking $200 a bottle wine to a $12 bottle of fermented grapes that are still drinkable. What a life. I hope writing on bad news does not become seditious.

Colossal pays and bonuses to go?

Is it just a sickness? With all the big financial institutions and corporations asking for millions of dollars from the govt to prevent bankruptcies, the CEOs in Wall Street are still paying themselves crazy. They take it as their dues, their just rewards for bringing in big businesses. Gary Goldstein, President and CEO of executive search group Whitney Partners, has this to say. 'It has become very corrupt...I've watched it over the years and everyone was taking their piece of the pie...and not paying attention to the end game, which is the little guy who ends up with all of these securities on their retirement accounts.' If these people have created real value or wealth, no one is going to protest. Have they? Their ingenuity in creating false wealth, doctoring of accounts, false businesses, supported by all the regulating agencies and the civil servants, have led to this world wide financial meltdown. And the best part is that they don't care and are continuing with their taking habits. It is part of the system, authorised, no fault, no crime and no guilt. Obama is furious and so are the Americans. They want to stop it but can't. The people are helpless while those in position to take continue to take. And the value of the stocks of many corporations hit bottom. No sweat. It is the small guys that are holding to the stocks thinking that it will see them through in their retirements. It is time to review the fat bonus scheme. It is the scheme of the thieves in power, to fatten their own pockets. Corporate honchos should tie their bonuses to the performance of the company as well as the value of their stocks. This must be fundamental to the health of the corporations and the wealth of the shareholders and the viability of the stock market. If stock prices are allowed to be manipulated by big funds and corporations do not care a dime whether it is going up or down, or if it is $20 or 20c, then the value of the stock is worth only the value of the paper it is printed. It is worthless. At the rate it is going, the stock market industry across the world will hit crisis situation just like the banking industry. Small investors will end up holding worthless pieces of papers. The compensation of corporate managers must be tied to the performance of the companies and stocks. This will ensure that they will bet their future on the well being of the corporations and stock value. Of course the flawed stock market mechanism must also be revamped to prevent massive sell down of stocks regardless of the value of the corporations. There must be responsibility and accountability! At the end of the day, when investors found themselves holding hoards of worthless papers, someone must be hanged!