China coming down hard to control sky high property prices

There was a report yesterday that a property developer is slashing its prices by 15%. This must be the result of pressure from the Chinese govt to bring down the prices. Wonder if this developer is private or govt owned. If it is a private developer then it is wrong for the Chinese govt to make them slash prices. But maybe they can do it in an authoritarian state. But this will interfere adversely with market forces and market pricing. And developers will not be able to make more grotesque profits. The Chinese govt must understand that private developers are only there to make profits. Making them slashed prices is bad. But if this is a state developer, then there are reasons to do so as the govt has to manage the housing prices to make them affordable to the people. The Chinese govt will have to tussle between making housing affordable or pricing as high as possible as long as the buyers can afford to pay. The latter is obviously good as they will have more money to raise their own pay unless they are contented to be paid lesser than the private sector. At the moment it seems that they are willing to suppress the market forces and sacrifice their own pay for the good of the people. Who says authoritarian govt is bad? When they know what is good for the people and act accordingly, even a dictatorship is good. But when the govt acts against the interest of the people, even western democracy is bad.

Dow plunged 998.5 pts at its worst

Dow was trading weak yesterday but still within reasonable limits until a sudden plunge one and a half hour before closing. This is almost a 10% drop in a day and panic was in the air. It quickly recovered 650 pts to close at 10520, losing 347.8 pts. Though buy orders kicked in after the sharp plunge, the sentiment was badly hit. It was reported that it could be due to a trading error and programmed sell orders just kicked in to complete the massacre. Many people must have lost a lot of money during that 20 minutes. The stock Accenture fell from $42 to 4c but recovered to close losing only $1. Nasdaq has announced that it would cancel all trades between 2.40pm and 3pm on grounds that they were obviously error trades. What we have seen is the destructiveness of programme trading. When machine takes over, they can kill without any qualms. Programme trading in itself is an unfair advantage in favour of those with cash and machines. It is better that this process be curtailed and remove from the system before it inflicts more severe damages to the financial systems around the world. No one is pointing a finger to the possibility of an act of terror, an intentional as opposed to accidental error. Even if it is not a sabo act, a sabo act can still happen one day. This over reliance on the machine must be tempered with human control and not machine control.

The mother tongue debate

This perennial problem is resurfacing again with the MOE sending out signals that the weightage will be lowered. The two camps have their valid arguments. The pro mother tongue group see the emotional and cultural importance of their language and identity being eroded. The pragmatists just would not bother about such 'wishy washy' sentiments. All they are concerned is the utility value of the mother tongue. And if they couldn't see any value in it, and if it is too difficult for them to learn, too high an opportunity cost, do away with it. Lump it and move on. All of us went through this process of learning and schooling as children and as parents or would be parents. Learning something is never easy, especially when the heart is not there, and able to see any value in it. I had my difficulties in learning languages as well but more because of the lack of interest, neglect and not willing to put in the effort. I hardly read anything when young, not even the text books unless compelled to. Under such circumstances you can expect my grades for all the languages, Malay, Chinese and English, all bordering on the red. Eventually both Malay and Chinese were dropped and all I had now is pasar Melayu and fortunately still able to make a decent conversation in Chinese, and able to recognise some words to get by. But I regretted not doing more for these languages as their utility values are much more than I thought. They become very useful and essential when travelling around, Malaysia, Indonesia and further away. How to flirt with the mei meis if one does not know Chinese, or the sayangs if one does not know Malay: ) On the part of mother tongue, the older one gets, the more one gets sentimental and emotional to it. It is part of one's identity, one's root. It can be quite embarrassing and uncomfortable in situation when one is expected to know one's mother tongue. But of course if one has erased the meaning of race in one's mind and make up, then mother tongue is totally irrevelant. And one can stand up tall and proudly proclaim that one does not know any word about one's mother tongue and would not be bothered to know. And my English was just as bad. Nearly failed at O level, or actually failed. That was bad huh. I only picked up when I started to read more and write more. There was an urge to read and a necessity to write when one wants to submit a paper for a grade. And the more one reads, the more one writes, the easier it becomes. Be it English or mother tongue, it is the usage, the constant use of the language that makes it easy to learn. If one is from a home that does not use mother tongue, and does not make any effort to make it a working language, it is tough, sure. Let's see how Eng Hen addresses this emotional and sentimental issue in the face of the protest from the utilitarians.

Two little traders caught

They got this guy Jerome Kerviel for chalking up a loss of $8.9 billion while trading for Societe Generale, and a Fabrice Tourre of Goldman Sachs for concocting ‘Frankenstein products’ that led to the 2008 financial meltdown. Both were traders in their early thirties. And for all the things that they had done, the huge sum of money involved and the papers that were pushed around for approvals, no one seems to be responsible or know anything about their wrongdoings except themselves. This gives the impression that the two must be running the two banks independently, just like Nick Leeson, without supervision, without reporting to anyone, and answering to no one. And there are no internal audit and control systems to check their actions. And for what he had done, Jerome said he was treated like a hooker, being praised daily for the earnings he made that were good. And it could be pretty quite the same in the case of Fabrice, the darling or Fabulous Fab of Goldman Sachs. Jerome has written a book about the ‘big bank orgy’ that he witnessed as a young trader. And the rest of their superiors, the administrators and regulators are all so innocent. This is what Jerome got to say, ‘I am struck by the fact that nothing has been done during the past two years of the financial crisis so that the causes of the crisis are addressed and a situation like mine does not happen again.’ Was there a crisis? Uh no. Anything happened? Uh no. The financial system is kicking again, and the banks are making big bucks too. So what’s wrong? The financial system is fine, just fine. Time to loot again.

A Malay elite’s response

Hussin Mutalib, an Associate Professor, responded to Muigai’s recommendation to consider a ‘stimulus package’ for the Malays in a letter to the ST forum. He said that there was some merit in not dismissing Muigai’s report altogether and a little tweaking might be good. While saying this, he acknowledged that there were some govt policies that were needed from the pragmatic point of view, ie barring Malays from sensitive appoints in the SAF and the adoption of GRCs to prevent qualified Malays from defeat in an election. There are good and bad in such policies which are obvious. Hussin also dispelled the beliefs that the Malays were being discriminated against, and non Malays were simply smarter than Malays. The former is generally true except for the appointment to sensitive positions but there is a pragmatic angle to it. The second belief has been proven wrong in many instances when Malay students have excelled and better themselves over the other races on their own merits. Every 500 years a genius could be thrown up from any race or class while every group will have their talents and duds. The disparity in the progress between Malays and the other races has been there since independence. Historically, during colonial days and post independence, the progress of the various races, particularly in schools, were left primarily to their own individual effort. All started from the same footing with no special assistance or affirmative action. Why then is there a need to have some form of affirmative action to help the Malays now? In this line of thought, there is an assumption that the Malays will do better than what they are today if given some assistance. Also, the disparity is seen as something abnormal and unacceptable. What if the disparity is in favour of the minorities and not the majority, would affirmative actions be deemed necessary? There are some questions to be asked. After more than a century of coexistence, the present status quo could be the natural balance of things. If this situation has come about naturally after so many years, would a window period of a few years of affirmative actions make any difference? What if, after affirmative action, and the Indians or Chinese become the least progressive, does it mean that there will be a need for affirmative action as well? Where will all these lead to? Would it be satisfactory only if the majority is the group that is lacking behind the minorities? Or is the expectation that an acceptable status is that all three groups are progressing at the same rate? Is this natural or possible, or a should be situation? Given the rate of progress that is being made by all groups, would it be a better objective to raise the level of every group, to improve their well beings, rather than to harp on the fact that one group is two steps behind another? It is never the natural order of things that everything is the same or can be the same. Can all countries in the world progress at the same pace and be at the same stage of economic development? Seriously, is affirmative action the answer? If the community is not honest enough to face the problems and address them squarely, no affirmative action can bring about positive changes.