High salary is the root of all evil

Why are banks going down under so quickly? Greed, in the form of high salaries and high bonuses. Paying the top management a ransom is easy, but finding the money to pay is not. The money must come from somewhere. What business in banking can generate that kind of income to sustain the big pay checks and the big bonuses? Gambling and high risk pursuits, trading and selling dangerous products, encouraging clients to gamble and take risk.

The banks have no choice. Every monkey wants to be paid in golden peanuts. The good old days of slow and steady growth, with decent pay cheques are seen as backward and unprogressive, unproductive. The banks are only doing well if they can perform better than the market. That means if one bank or more banks are doing better or betterer, the market indicators will go up. And banks that failed to keep up are seen as failures. Even insurance and pension funds are in high risk financial instruments.

So, if the shareholders want good results, they need to pay golden monkeys to produce the gold. Really? In most cases the shareholders, mostly minorities, did not have any say. It is left to the top management and their self serving logic, circular logic, which all ended up in paying themselves crazy, at the expense of the small shareholders.

In a way, our little island is also caught in the same mousetrap. The high salaries are unsustainable. The money must come from somewhere, not just a few plates of char kway teow. It is more serious than that. The whole machinery needs to be lubricated with expensive oils. That is why high economic growth numbers are indispensable. That is why high population growth is indispensable. Who really benefitted from this high growth formula?

The little guys are constantly trying to make ends meet, told to tighten belts, while the big guys are crying salary not enough. The $200 pay increase will quickly evaporate by the rising cost of everything. The big guys know, and that is why they are asking for more millions. There is no real absolute gain or improvement for the lower income group. Only the small elite group and the super rich are seeing real growth in income and quality of life with million dollar bonuses and tens of thousands in increments. The cost of living cannot touch them. Their real income accelerates at rocket speed against inflation. Inflation only eats up the income of the average and lower wage earners.

High salaries are not sustainable and will add to a lot of costs to the system, including social and the intangibles. I know that some will disagree and will vouch that high salaries should be the way to go, like we have plenty of land to build more houses and facilities for an unending influx of foreigners, 10m, 20m, no problem at all. The secrets to our success are high salaries and high population growth.

No one will look further down the road to see the disasters that can be wrecked by these two gambits.

OSA, ISA - The guardians of national interests

The recent calls for more transparency on the two sovereign funds and reports on their performance have elicited an official reply from the MOF. It is now official that GIC and Temasek would not report their numbers as disclosure would put the nation’s interests at risk. Thus divulging such information will come under the OSA, the Official Secrets Act. Maybe there can just report just the profit or loss without stating how this is related to the total assets. At least it will give the people a glimpse or feel of whether the two funds are making money or losing money. If not they will just have to look at other ways to guess if the funds are doing well. A convenient indicator is the CPF savings and whether more schemes will be schemed to delay or push back the withdrawal dates.

We are a small country and very vulnerable. Not only should GIC and Temasek be protected under the OSA, DBS, ST Eng and a few other big GLCs should also come under this umbrella. We just cannot afford to expose too much or else our security would be compromised.

The other important pillar of our national security is the ISA. Just because Malaysia is lifting this skirt, it does not mean that we should also do so. We are small and very vulnerable, especially with terrorism becoming a big threat. We should take this very seriously and not to compromise the happy situation we are having at the moment.

I would recommend that all the digital maps in the internet be removed and anyone in possession of them be monitored carefully. These are highly sensitive and strategic information that should not be easily made available. Also, the schedules of SIA and SMRT must also be made available on a need to know basis. Terrorists will be most happy to have maps and schedules to plan their operations.

Now what else should be protected and covered under the OSA and ISA? Some of you may not realized, taking photos of sensitive and security institutions and their infrastructure is not allowed, including embassy layouts.

Don’t pray pray with our national security. The OSA and ISA are the silent guardians of our national security and survival. Ok, please feel free to disagree with me. This is just my current view. I will change my view if there is convincing feedback to do so. I may even cancel this article.

The Internet Balancing Act

This is the most appropriate statement about the state of affairs in Cyber World. It is all a balancing act by the internet service providers, software designers and producers, software companies and the internet terrorist brigades and their voracious and destructive viruses. They compliment each other’s existence and usefulness, scratching each other’s back and making a pile for themselves. The victims are all the internet users, the institutions that depended on the internet to do their businesses, and the policing forces that are always playing catch up with them.

The software and systems providers need the vicious virus developers to keep the losers continuously upgrading their systems and keeping the industry happy and rich. While they think that this is a good symbiotic relationship to fleece on the innocent users, it will one day grow to such a mammoth proportion that will crash the whole system.

Internet virus developers, including spammers and hackers are dangerous and destructive to the viability of the internet as a convenient business tools. Until the authorities and the software developers, system providers are serious in removing this plague, they will have a life of their own, conveniently accepted by the software developers and system providers, to create problems and generate more businesses.

My redbeanforum.com has been subjected to daily attacks of pornography and nonsensical spammings, nothing different from the attacks on MBS or Resort World, or other govt or commercial institutions. I have made it a read only blog to stop the attack.

I am very pleased with Bloggers for being able to fend off most of the spammings and pornographic attacks and keeping mysingaporenews.blogspot.com relatively free from them. Unlike other blogging or internet platform, Blogger is superior in this sense. Many of you did not see the spamming and have taken this for granted. But I am receiving daily feedbacks on the number of attacks in my email.

There is no reason why the scourge of spamming and virus attacks cannot be eradicated. The culprits are the software developers and system providers who are in a way accomplices to this menace and allowing them to continue to spread the disease. If the authorities can come down hard on them, with their combined resources, every one of them will be arrested. There is no where to hide and no where to run, if the authorities and the industry mean business to wipe out this pain for good.

Until then, it will be a balancing act. Yes, we need the National Cyber Security Centre to combat such crimes.

The horse is sick

It was a strong and healthy horse. The owner saw the great potential in this animal. He had great plans for the horse to run in all the great derbies across the world, Singapore, Hongkong, Dubai, American, Australian, English etc, to be a champion among the best of race horses.

The best international trainer and manager were hired to groom this horse. World class vets, dieticians, the best diet, drugs and stimulants were injected into the horse. A well planned training regime and the best computer programmes to monitor its progress. The best and finest of everything money can buy were bought for the horse.

For a while things looked promising. The horse was lean and trim, looking more like a race horse. The bets were good and winnings started to roll in. International syndicates were brought in to raise the bets. Big dreams and big time gambling and big egos were fanned.

Then everything started to go wrong. And the horse fell sick, very ill. The punters lost everything and lost interests as well as their capital. The international syndicates also started to lose interests as the winnings got smaller. Their investments were big and they expected big returns. But with all the punters packing their bags after losing everything they had, there was nothing left for the pickings.

What went wrong? Actually it was too obvious. Everyone knew what went wrong except the owner. Even the international manager and trainer knew what was wrong from the start. But they were paid well and tried their best, but not telling the owner. Or maybe they too believed that they could do wonders to the horse.

It was never a thoroughbred to start with. It was a strong and sturdy work horse, a farm horse. It would work hard in the farm and be very productive in its own way and at its own pace. It could never race with the best in the world. It could not take the drugs and the regimes of a race horse.

The name of the horse is SGX.

In the last few sessions, the trading volume has dropped to a level never seen before. It was scary. The investors are fleeing or have gone hiding. They could not win in a system that favours the big players and their machines. Small innocent men are no match against machines. They lost and lost and lost. So were the remisiers trying to trade against the high speed computers.

The next victim would be the brokerage. Their overheads are high. Management, staff, rentals, hardwares, all cost money. The miserable trading volumes would not be able to support their overheads. Retrenchment and downsizing are imminent.

The big players and the machines will find it no longer lucrative to be in the market when there is a dearth of investors. They can’t justify their presence without the comparable income and winnings from the market. They will quit for greener pastures.

The listed companies will find it meaningless to see their shares become penny stocks, practically worthless and unable to raise funds from the market. There is no point paying the listing fee to be in a cheap stock market. It is a matter of time before they start to delist from the exchange as well.

New IPOs will have problems finding takers. The valuation will be low and not worth listing. Even if they are successful in listing, the shares would soon become penny stocks.

The other big losers will be the two great sovereign funds. The values in their blue chip holdings too will go dwindle like any other stocks.

Can the sick horse be nursed back to health? The toll for indiscretion and megalomanic dreams are high. The infrastructure and supporting base of small investors are badly hurt and near to ruins. The industry is at a point of self destruct.

Whither the SGX? Who is killing this workhorse?

Is Halloween a wholesome family affair?

My little knowledge of this western cultural event is that it is a family affair where the parents would dress up their little love ones and walk with them, to knock on their neighbours’ doors for a little treat and fun. It is a wholesome family activity really. Or is it not? Maybe our expats here could help to enlighten the ignorant world citizens that claimed to be well travelled and well read of this festivity that it is not anti family.

My memory of the Seventh Moon Celebration also says that it was/is a family affair. The parents would be buying all the goodies and preparing them as offerings to the good brothers for blessing. No one was to say anything bad. Hmmm, respecting the good brothers. All would be in the best of behavior in greeting and praying to them, and offering them the goodies. What’s wrong with diplomacy with the spirits or even devils?

And at the end of it, there would be a feast. Many in those days did not eat chicken or meat regularly. In such a festival, meat, chicken and fish would be on the table. It was a hearty meal for all that did not come often. If this is not a family affair, what is?

The Chinese cultural and religious practices are all embracing and all inclusive. Gods, deities, spirits, devils etc are all welcome to live in peace and harmony with human beans. Gods, deities, spirits, devils can also give blessing and protection to the mortals. When they are kind, they can give 4 D numbers too. There is no constant battle between the gods and the devils. They are all part and parcel of life, in this world and in the other worlds.

Unbelieveable! The physical and spiritual worlds are very colourful and can co exist. And this can only be more colourful with international and foreign devils in our midst. As a cosmopolitan city of the world, we cannot afford to be narrow minded to be religiously correct and puritans.