How to get rich quick?

The whole world is entering a golden era when wealth of money is made so easily, so quickly and in such a sum that our forefathers would never have imagined. Many of the old rich made it after a life time of slogging and business acumen and hoping that all the decisions made were the right ones. In today’s context, the money made by the old ways was just too slow and too little. The internet age has made many very rich overnight, and many are very young. These are the true entrepreneurs that were there at the right time with the right products. They truly deserve every cent they made.

The money did not go to only the mavericks of the internet world. Money is everywhere, overflowing and it is up for everyone to grab in whatever ways they could. Ok, the internet whiz kids are just an exception. And making money the true honest way is still the way forward for many. But there are many that are taking the shortcut to instant wealth. They defy the old wisdom of making money slow and steady in all honesty. Instant wealth does not come easy for many.

In today’s world of high finance, many fortunes were made by many through other than by the honest, slow and steady way. The old ways cannot make people rich overnight. Only the crooked ways, by cheating, by gambling, by conning and deceiving, by robbing, can people make money so easily and so fast other than the few exceptions stated above. When people are making quick money without having to really sweat for it, the answers are all out there. Put one and one together and you will get two, but the instant wealth makers will get three or four. And remember that they are cheating and robbing others and many will be poorer because of them.

An example of how corrupt the financial system is and how the crooks are making tons of money is the trial of an ex Goldman Sachs trader now going on in New York. ‘The trial of former Goldman Sachs bond trader Fabrice Tourre was about "Wall Street greed," a lawyer for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission…’, reported Nate Raymond in a REUTER article on 15 Jul 13.

The gist of the case is as reported in the same article: ‘The SEC accuses Tourre of misleading investors in a mortgage investment called Abacus 2007-AC1 by not telling them that a hedge fund was involved in selecting the underlying assets and betting against it.

Matthew Martens, a lawyer for the SEC, told the jury the deal Tourre put together was "secretly designed to maximize the potential it would fail" to the benefit of the hedge fund, which made about $1 billion.

"In the end, Wall Street greed drove Mr. Tourre to lie and deceive," Martens said.’

The snake oil seller, Goldman Sachs trader, was selling some toxic product designed to fail and pushing it to his clients while knowing that another party was shorting it and with knowledge of how the CDO was structured, could actually cause it to fail. The result was expected, the clients of Tourre lost more than one billion and the hedge fund of John Paulson made the one billion. How convenient and how easy to make money in Wall Street and how easy to find innocent suckers? The formula is being repeated across the big financial centres of east and west.

Structured products, derivatives, CDOs (Collateral Default Obligations) and CDS (Credit Default Swap) are instruments that the designers had a handle to turn them to their advantage without the victims having a clue of what is going on. That is why they called them ‘sophisticated’ instruments for ‘sophisticated’ clients, with clients thinking that they are sophisticated and clever but in fact the definition means ‘thinking that they know and can afford to lose but cannot claim ignorance.’

And the selling of such snake oils is spreading across the world financial markets with the perpetrators of such products seen as financial geniuses and welcome by greedy govts everywhere. In the meantime the financial time bomb has been set clicking. When will it blow up?

It is just a poll

This latest poll was prompted by a very assertive statement from Hsien Loong arising from the hawker centre cleaning issue debated in Parliament. His statement, ‘Singapore has succeeded because we have honest, upright people in politics: people who can be trusted to uphold the public interest, to speak the truth even when it is inconvenient...’ And the poll is conducted to see whether the people agree or disagree with his statement. What do you think?

93% of the respondents disagree with Hsien Loong’s comment that Singapore has upright people in politics, people that can be trusted, to speak the inconvenient truths when needed. How come like that? Is this frightening, that the people don’t think we have upright and trustworthy people in politics?

The poll is just a poll and it is not conclusive to say that the people are right and we don’t have upright people in politics. We may have a lot of them, we may not. What the poll is saying is that they don’t believe, rightly or wrongly, that there are upright and trustworthy people in politics. This is bad enough. It is like an innocent guy in court while the jury insists he is guilty.

For the people to say so, alright, just the people who responded to the poll, it says something. What has the Govt done to deserve such mistrust from this group of people? Go do some soul searching ok?

The other point is for the Govt to do the right thing so that they can regain the trust and faith of the people, that they are good and upright and can be trusted to speak the truth. I think this is a trying task looking at the emotions today. Can the Govt change this negative perception?

What is bad is that if the perception of the people is true. In that case no medicine can cure this sickness. Habis lah.

Is this poll important to the Govt? It depends. It depends on whether they want to believe in it. It depends on how genuine or how close it is to the perception of the whole population. If this is a true representative of what the people perceived the Govt to be, it is definitely not pretty. The Govt and Hsien Loong can only hope that this poll is not representative, not real or biased, or only the views of a small group of anti PAP cynics.

What do you think?

Hawker centre cleaning, time to move on

As more things are revealed in this issue of great national importance, perhaps it is time to move on as the points in question could boil down to some misunderstanding in what were said and what were written or between annual cleaning and not annual cleaning.

Can we call it a stalemate, both sides never win or never lose, call it a truce and everyone gets back to work? Some overseas blogs are even laughing at us for creating such a hooha with ministers and PMs involved. But I must respect those who think this is indeed a very serious matter of integrity and honesty and needs to pursue until every stone is turned and every straight and honest face turns crooked and red.

Shall everyone say peace? I also feel very embarrass to post about it.

South Korea begging the US to take control of its armed forces

Though the South Koreans have been bragging about how able they are to invade and fight the North Koreans, they are so afraid of losing the backing of their colonial master. This semi American colony is begging the Americans to continue to be their supreme military commander in case a war breaks out with the North. The agreement means that the Americans will have full control of the South Korean armed forces in war. The whole of South Korean military will be under the control of the Americans.

The Americans were supposed to surrender this right to control the South Korean armed forces in 2012 but this was delayed because of the sinking of the Choenan. The handover was then scheduled to be in December 2015 but the South Koreans willingly wanted to submit their armed forces to the control of a foreign power, the USA and is asking for a delay in the handover of power back to the South Koreans. It is unbelieveable that a sovereign state would willingly beg another country to assume command of its military. Where is the pride of the Korean people? Is this not a sign of a semi colony?

And now we know the reason why the Choenan was sunk in October 2010. The real reason, the South Koreans would be assuming control of their own military by December 2012. And there must be a strong reason to frighten the South Koreans to want to continue with the Americans as their military commander and colonial master. Who then has an interest to sink the Choenan to keep this status quo?

The North Koreans, the South Koreans or the Americans? Who sank the Choenan and the reason for its sinking is now clear as day light.

Malaysian University admission standard very high

It is reprinted in My Paper of a report in The Star/Asia News Network of a number of top Malaysian students with perfect scores for the STPM but either failed to get a place in Malaysian Universities or being given a course not of their choice, or courses that are unpopular or of lower economic values.

Chai Yee Lin obtained a perfect 4.0 CGPA score, applied for medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and bio medical courses but was given a veterinary science course in Kelatan University. Another student, Chong Yong Sheng, also with perfect score was not even good enough for a place in the universities. And another girl, Deveshini Uthani was devastated as well for not given a place. Her score was poorer, 3.96. She thought it was good enough and that she had done her family proud.

What all these students failed to understand is that there must be many many students with perfect scores, probably 10,000 or 20,000 or more. Thus, their perfect scores were actually average or below average. And the standard for admission must also be very high.

These students should work harder if they want to get admitted to Malaysian universities. On the other hand they may try their luck in Singapore Universities. Here the entry requirements would not be that high and they may even be good enough for an Asean or a Singapore Govt scholarship with food and lodging thrown in. And if they did well on graduation, they may even be given citizenship.

The competition of the local students is not so fierce as the local talents are deemed daft and would not have that kind of scintillating results. It has been proven that many third world students have done much better than the locals and even in employment. Even a youtube porn star was once a scholar in a Singapore university.

I will encourage these top Malaysian students to come down south. Oops, they are not tops in Malaysia but tops in Singapore, I think. They will be received with open arms.