Guilty, guilty, guilty!

No, no, no, we are fair, we reported the by election fairly. We gave both parties equal coverage. The pictures used were appropriate to the stories. We are not biased! We are a respectable and professionally managed newspaper and we are reporting the facts after doing all the due diligence. This is the roughly the reply from the main media against the complaints by Low Thia Khiang for unfavourable coverage of his party during the election campaign.

Who is telling the truth? Who is dishonest? Whose integrity is in doubt? You be the judge. But, sssssshhhhh, keep it to yourself please. Don’t say anything. Don’t tell anyone. ‘Ren zai zhuo, tian zai kan.’ Translated, Man do, heaven watch.

Wall Streets betting slips

Many funds have been set up to advise high net worth clients on how to manage and invest their money. Actually the term invest is a misnomer. They should call themselves betting agencies, betting the clients money in the biggest unregulated casino, the New York Stock Exchange. Many funny instruments called options and derivatives and a mix match of these instruments were offered to high net worth sophisticated clients as sophisticated and complex investment products. In common layman parlance, these are just variations of betting slips or gambling offered to rich and daft clients who were either too lazy to know what they were, or too confused to know what these products were.

All the products can easily be explained in the language of the gamblers in the casinos, turf clubs or football betting counters. Strip them of their financial and unfamiliar jargons, they are nothing new that the gamblers in these gambling outlets did not know.

Options is simply placing bets and covering the opposite position. Putting $100 on white may lose everything. So to minimize the risk, depending on the appetite, the gambler could put $80 or $90 on red. And if the risk appetite is lower, put $100 on each to cover both sides. To be 100% safe, put a few chips on 0 and all bets will be covered.

Then there will be bets on big numbers or small numbers. The variation will be to place some on big and some on small and a few chips on single numbers, the so called high risk high return part. To package the bets to look more sophisticated, put some bets in big and small, some in white and red, and some in quarters or doubles to confuse the clients and gave them high sounding names like structured notes.

To raise the level of complexity, put the bets across tables or in different kinds of games. Put some bets in the roulette tables, some in black jacks and some in the poker tables. The latter two can charge higher management fee as a gambler would be needed to ‘manage’ the gambling. And call these bets structured funds to mesmerize the daft sophisticated investors.

Options in many instances are nothing more different than betting in a football game. Win if the score is 3 goals or more in call options. In bear options, win if the team loses by more than 2 goals or a combination of such bets. Create terms like spread, shoulders, butterfly to impress the investors. Butterfly is nothing but betting for a win if the scores are more than 3 for, or more than 3 against. Another variation is that any scores of more than 2 goals for or against will be knocked out.

The whole scheme of thing is betting and betting and betting. It has nothing to do with investment which fundamentally is putting money on a company because it has growth potential and to grow with the company through profits/dividend payouts or higher share prices. This kind of investment strategy is too slow.

Sophisticated daft investors would be better off betting in the turf club or in football matches as the games are simple enough to understand without the fictitious financial jargons that meant nothing. It is better to know what one is dabbling with than to be confused by the funds and their derivative products that are out to confuse by mixing a whole basket of bets. Why take the risk in betting that only the fund managers know what it is all about? If investors have high appetite for risk, go bet horses and football matches that are more transparent.

Of course horses and football matches are exposed to match fixing. So could these highly sophisticated betting slips. They are easier to manipulate by the big funds with their big war chests and sophisticated computers.

Wall Street and its parallel models across the world are just highly deregulated casinos and nothing else. Until it reverts to the original model of stocks and shares for investment, it is going to break the world’s financial system. It is no longer an investment market but a market for gambling. Wall Street should stop conning the world that it is a sophisticated stock market and a financial centre. It is NOT!

The worst part is that the snake oils are tainted to cheat the investors wholesale. The odds are worst than the highly regulated casinos in Las Vegas. With high speed computers plugged into the system to check all the buys and sells of small investors and to formulate a sure win position for the funds, how can the rest of the investors win? It is cheating of the first order. It is a crime that is allowed to commit in the heart of the world’s biggest financial centre. Do they know they are committing a crime? Yes. But with all the congressmen and regulators in cahoot, all paying themselves crazily, who is there to stop the embezzlement and daylight robbery?

Globalisation used to be the in thing

We plugged ourselves into the global system in every field. It was a good thing and we have had phenomenal growth by holding on to the coat tails of the American economy and system. And many countries too jumped in and everyone got hooked up into the same system. When the system is sound and doing well, everyone shares the prosperity. When the system is sick, everyone will be infected.

The unfortunate part today is that the global system is so sick, operated by crooks in all colours. And no matter how well run a country is, it needs a badly run country like the US or one in Europe to drag everyone else along. And this gets worst when many of the so called well run and well off countries are troubles themselves. Every crisis is an opportunity to patch up holes, and to create bigger holes.

And the rot does not stop here. The Americans and Europeans have plundered the system, corrupted the system and cheated the system for so long that it is no longer able to continue with just printing money for the crooks. They just cannot print fast enough.

And the safety of being too big to fall becomes the biggest problem as all the too big to fall is falling. Every too big to fall has an empty or rotten core. This looks like the world is set to have a free fall and there is no where to run.

All those stuck with big mortgages and multi million dollar properties are like those too big to fall. But when they fall, it can be quite disastrous. The big foreign banks are retrenching, downsizing. And the people let off are big earners with big mortgages. It is coming. It is contagious.

Low Thia Khiang won Hougang

After the Hougang by election, Low Thia Khiang lashed out at the media for biased reporting in favour of the PAP. This has elicited an editorial reply in today’s ST. The paper denied any unfair practices at all and in all purposes, have reported fairly, given both parties equal coverage and treatment. Low Thia Khiang’s remarks were thus unfounded.

What is interesting is the comment that Low Thia Khiang more or less single handedly won Hougang for the WP. He is so charismatic and the people were drawn to him, loyal to him, and Hougang was his. KNN, Teo Chee Hean not charismatic meh? Auntie killer Desmond Choo not charismatic meh? And Hsien Loong and Boon Wan all not charismatic meh? All the PAP’s charisma not good enough against that of Low and lost the by election. Wah Lau eh.

We have a Singapore idol in the making in Low Thia Khiang, the most charismatic leader that outshone all his opponents combined. He won the election because of his charisma. Aljunied will be with him for as long he wants it. And another few GRCs will go to him in the next GE when he appears on stage. Finally Singapore has thrown up a real charismatic leader, and rightly he should be good enough as the next PM.

Now that the election is over, let’s go back to deal with more formidable issues like population, immigration, housing and transport, upgrading and widening income gap. Actually, to me these are non issues. They are all self created and inflicted issues, petty issues that need not be issues at all. Who insists on bringing more immigrants? Who refused to build more public housing? Who increases the load on the transport system or what are the causes of transport woes? They are caused not by external factors. What about widening income gap? Caused by external factors, cannot be helped, must be like that because this is progress?

Maybe we should give the charismatic leader and his team a chance in the next GE to solve these formidable problems. Low Thia Khiang should start to recruit a good team to prepare for such an eventuality now that his charisma has been acknowledged and a force to be reckoned with.

The obsolescence of a once mighty political party

Is it because it is living the proverbial wisdom of not outliving the third generation? Or is it a party that outlives itself? The PAP is looking more like an obsolete party working itself out of favour from a populace that once held it in high esteem and in awe. Within a brief period of a few years, the awe and confidence just simply disappeared.

I hope I am wrong, but as a political observer, this is exactly what I am seeing. The PAP has lost the support of the people except for some diehards. It still has a lot of yesterday’s glory to crow about. But the future, the way it is leading the country forward, is treacherous and slippery. It is looking very unsustainable in many areas.

The ridiculous high remuneration at the top for deserving and undeserving incumbents cannot be kept going for too long without a healthy money printing machine. And this machine comes in the form of more migrants, higher fees and prices for public housing and public services and taxes. And an ever rising cost of living but a depression of wages at the lower end. It is simply a very vicious cycle that will ground to a halt in an ever greater speed. Tell the people that this is the way it is?

The situation is such that the PAP/govt has dug itself deeper and deeper into a bottomless pit and unable to extricate itself. The high salaries cannot come down without a rebellion from the recipients as they have lived it up, incurred heavy mortgages, and used to a lifestyle difficult to maintain. The high property prices cannot come down without destroying the wealth and savings of the owners. The high cost of living cannot be brought down without hurting the economic growth numbers. The high import of foreign workers cannot be reduced without affecting the industries and economy and to support the high salaries at the top.

It still looks good to some who are enjoying and benefitting from it and blind to the tight rope they are balancing on. No mis-step as the fall is steep. But they are oblivious to what is happening below, the masses that have to deal with the rapid changes of a very expensive city and lifestyle without the accompanying increases in income. Whatever increases will be eaten up immediately by inflation.

How long can the good time last before the bust? Those who are at the fringes are seeing and living the danger facing them. Those that are comfortable are not. However, the cracks are appearing everywhere. Land for cemeteries must go. Land for nursing homes, hospices and caskets are needed but where to build them when the competition and demand for space are growing with an unrestrained population growth to keep economic numbers looking good? Living with the dead, the sick and the old as neighbours will be a norm no matter how unpleasant. There is just no where else to go. The price of growth and growing the economy/population at all cost, to sustain a high living low thinking, no tomorrow or tomorrow will never come lifestyle will have to be paid sooner or later.

And where are the super talented leaders to lead the people? Why is there a feeling of a void, that not many are worthy or being regarded as worthy to lead and command the respect of the people? Many are looking so clumsy and inept and questionable. A side effect of scrapping the bottom of the barrel?

As the party keeps trotting down the path of no return, it is distancing itself more and more from the common people, unable to understand them and forcing them to accept that that’s the way it is, and that’s the way it should go, and be. The income gap is widening. The visions of the rulers and the ruled are widening at heady speed, heading in different directions. When both rulers and ruled do not share the same dream, one must become obsolete or go.

The rousing reception of the WP in Hougang in the by election was once the exclusive right of the PAP. The people were celebrating their victory with an outpouring of unrestrained joy. It was hallelujah! The contrast, the PAP contingent was greeted by cold stares and a few polite waves, a very unfamiliar situation that they were not used to, and would have to get used to as a new future dawns. It is a new phenomenon and a new reality. It is coming to an end so fast.

Just my observation.