The CPF Rally is today, 4 pm at Hong Lim Park. Singaporeans who want to know more about what is happening to their CPF savings would be briefed by at least 7 speakers, including Tan Kin Lian, Leong Sze Hian, Vincent Wijesingha, KJ Jeyaretnam, Han Hui Hui, M Ravi and Roy Ngerng. Yahoo reported that Reform Party speaker would be Prabu Ramachandran. He may have replaced KJJ.
These speakers will be talking about the CPF from the people's point of view, like looking at a coin from the other side. The young Singaporeans and those reaching 55 must want to know what is going to happen to their money when they reach 55.
A big crowd is expected today, rain or shine.
Kopi Level - Green
6/06/2014
Tiananmen Square ‘massacre’ was a myth
By Deirdre Griswold
WikiLeaks confirms it
Published Jun 29, 2011 2:53 PM
How many times have we been told that the U.S. is an “open” society and the media are “free”?
Usually such claims are made when criticizing other countries for not being “open,” especially countries that don’t follow Washington’s agenda.
If you live in the United States and depend on the supposedly “free” and “open” commercial media for information, you would without a doubt believe that the Chinese government massacred “hundreds, perhaps thousands” of students in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. That phrase has been repeated tens of thousands of times by the media of this country.
But it’s a myth. Furthermore, the U.S. government knows it’s a myth. And all the major media know it too. But they refuse to correct the record because of the basic hostility of the U.S. imperialist ruling class to China.
On what do we base this assertion? Several sources.
The most recent is a WikiLeaks release of cables sent from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing to the State Department in June 1989, a few days after the events in China.
Second is an assertion in November 1989 by the Beijing bureau chief of the New York Times, an assertion that has never again been referred to by that newspaper.
And third is the account of what happened by the Chinese government itself, which is corroborated by the first two.
Only one major Western newspaper has published the WikiLeaks cables. That was the Telegraph of London on June 4 of this year, exactly 22 years after the Chinese government called out the troops in Beijing….
They knew the truth in 1989
The New York Times knows it’s credible. Their own Beijing bureau chief at the time, Nicholas Kristof, confirmed it in an extensive article entitled “China Update: How the Hardliners Won,” published in the Sunday Times magazine on Nov. 12, 1989, five months after the supposed massacre in the square.
At the very end of this long article, which purported to give an inside view of a debate within the Chinese Communist Party leadership, Kristof stated categorically: “Based on my observations in the streets, neither the official account nor many of the foreign versions are quite correct. There is no massacre in Tiananmen Square, for example, although there is plenty of killing elsewhere.”…
The full article can be found at : http://www.workers.org/2011/world/tiananmen_0707/
Kopi Level - Green
High-Frequency Trading Models Under FCA Scrutiny,
By Lindsay Fortado and Dave Michaels
June 4 (Bloomberg) -- Britain’s market regulator is
scrutinizing high-frequency trading algorithms to ensure firms
can suspend operations at short notice and aren’t abusing the
market, its chief executive officer said.
The Financial Conduct Authority is monitoring firms across
the industry to understand “the risks associated with the
development of algorithms for use in high-frequency trading,”
Martin Wheatley said at a conference in New York today….
Mary Jo White, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission, told lawmakers on April 1 that the agency is
conducting “a number” of enforcement investigations that focus
on high-frequency trading and automated trading strategies. The
regulator has also said it’s conducting a broad review of equity
market structure and may make changes to the way investors trade
stocks.
European Union lawmakers approved legislation in April that
will create some of the toughest rules in the world for high-
frequency traders. The limits include standards meant to keep
the price increment for securities from being too small,
mandatory tests of trading algorithms, and requirements that
market makers provide liquidity for a set number of hours daily….
“Essentially what we have now in the U.K. is a mix of
exchange-led monitoring, with the regulator analyzing risks such
as cross-market techniques on the one hand,” Wheatley said.
“On the other, industry itself reporting suspicious activity,
so the challenge here becomes a shared one.”
My Comments: The American and European regulators are putting on a show but not doing much. The important thing to know is that the regulators knew that HFT is unfair trading and violating the rules and regulations of the exchanges, but they still allowed HFT to operate.
This is as good as knowing a crime but closing an eye to let the crime to be committed. They are both condoning a criminal act and should be prosecuted for allowing it to go on.
Kopi Level - Green
June 4 (Bloomberg) -- Britain’s market regulator is
scrutinizing high-frequency trading algorithms to ensure firms
can suspend operations at short notice and aren’t abusing the
market, its chief executive officer said.
The Financial Conduct Authority is monitoring firms across
the industry to understand “the risks associated with the
development of algorithms for use in high-frequency trading,”
Martin Wheatley said at a conference in New York today….
Mary Jo White, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission, told lawmakers on April 1 that the agency is
conducting “a number” of enforcement investigations that focus
on high-frequency trading and automated trading strategies. The
regulator has also said it’s conducting a broad review of equity
market structure and may make changes to the way investors trade
stocks.
European Union lawmakers approved legislation in April that
will create some of the toughest rules in the world for high-
frequency traders. The limits include standards meant to keep
the price increment for securities from being too small,
mandatory tests of trading algorithms, and requirements that
market makers provide liquidity for a set number of hours daily….
“Essentially what we have now in the U.K. is a mix of
exchange-led monitoring, with the regulator analyzing risks such
as cross-market techniques on the one hand,” Wheatley said.
“On the other, industry itself reporting suspicious activity,
so the challenge here becomes a shared one.”
My Comments: The American and European regulators are putting on a show but not doing much. The important thing to know is that the regulators knew that HFT is unfair trading and violating the rules and regulations of the exchanges, but they still allowed HFT to operate.
This is as good as knowing a crime but closing an eye to let the crime to be committed. They are both condoning a criminal act and should be prosecuted for allowing it to go on.
Kopi Level - Green
CPF Life and Medishield Life – Two life savings schemes
The CPF Life and Medishield Life are two of the greatest insurance schemes thought of by the Govt. The two schemes help to solve two of the most costly and serious living problems of the people, one to have money to live during retirement, and the other to have money to pay for medical bills that could make the HDB millionaires bankrupt even after selling their flats. The people can now live in peace, sleep in peace because of these two great schemes.
How much more would it cost if these two schemes were private insurance schemes? The three most important cost of private insurance schemes are commissions for the agents, bonuses for the over riding top management and profits. Oh, there is another cost, operating cost, marketing cost and overheads. With the two compulsory schemes, the cost must be very low as there is no need for much marketing, and lower operating cost as everything can be computerized under one roof. There will be minimal marketing and sales staff that private insurers would need.
Without the insurance agents and their overriding managers, this middle man cost would also be removed. And without the profit motive, the premiums could be really low, to cover just the necessary. Tiok boh?
How can private insurers compete in operating cost against compulsory insurance schemes offered by the Govt? These savings can easily be worked out and must be quite substantial. I am not an expert in insurance, but people like Tan Kin Lian could easily show us some numbers between private insurers and the CPF Life and the coming Medishield Life for comparisons. Say if the private insurer is charging $1k, by removing the agent commission, overriding commission, marketing, sales, profits, etc, how much should the net number be?
A compulsory scheme surely need not have to pay commission and profits and high marketing and sales cost, no middleman cost and NO profits. So, how much are the CPF Life and Medishield Life premiums compare to those of private insurer’s, apple to apple? Or are the premiums the same or the difference marginable?
No savings from economy of scale? I will be damn if the premiums work out to be similar. I will fall off my chair if compulsory schemes actually ended up paying more.
Kopi Level -Green
Ai Weiwei - A Chinese Inquisition necessary for China to move forward
Mypaper published the thoughts of Ai Weiwei on 5 Jun rebuking China for not wanting to face its troubled past. With 5000 years of history, there are a lot of ugly past that China would have to confront. Fortunately Ai Weiwei spared the readers the agony by limiting China’s past to the era of Communist China. He went as far back as the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square Incident. In his view, unless China accounts for the wrongful past, it cannot move forward and would be bugged by a credibility crisis.
‘China has chosen to forget, or to allow forgetting – an attitude the West will find hard to understand. This provides China a way to liberate itself from self criticism, as well as a heavier moral burden.’ From the idealistic point of view, from an intellectual point of view, I fully agree with Ai Weiwei that it is good for a nation and a people to face up to its ugly past, do some critique, appease the conscience and move on to a higher plane.
What bothers me is his deference to the West as if the West is superior in not forgetting their ugly past, that the West was an epitome in facing and criticizing their sad past.
How much did the West live up to this fairy tale expectation of Ai Weiwei? The genocide of Red Indians, the slavery of the Black Africans, the oppression of Asians, particularly the Chinese migrants, how much were these episodes really discussed and reflected by the West to clear their conscience? But these are too historical, too ancient to talk about. Okay, what about the wars of lies in Iraq and the oppression of the Islamic countries, regime change all in the interests of the West under the guise of democracy, freedom and human rights? Were these discussed, or were they not as they were not seen to be wrong or ugly? What about colonialism and the butchering of natives in the name of civilizing them? Were they really discussed in the West?
But the West moved forward with no trouble at all, with no sense of guilt, with no heart wrenching spasm, soul searching to want to liberate themselves from their ugly past.
Japan too had moved forward with no remorse to the cruelty and barbarism in the Second World War. Or does Ai Weiwei believe that Japan has repented, critiqued its Imperial past? Of all that I know, Japan has white washed its gory history that the young did not know what their cruel forefathers did in Asia. Or Japan is suffering from a crisis of credibility for not confronting their past and not moving forward? The Japanese are trying to rewrite history, no comfort women, no Rape of Nanking, no massacres of natives in China and Southeast Asia, no Unit 731….
Ai Weiwei is a modern Chinese intellectual, very well respected. I think he over respected and overrated the West and their white washing of their ugly past. The West did not suffer from amnesia. Any amnesia is selective amnesia, intentional amnesia just like Japan. Or it is because the Asians and Chinese have amnesia about western history of conquest, genocide and oppression?
Countries moved forward whether they take the effort to confront their past or not. Did the West confront the Inquisition in Europe, the massacre of pagan natives and non God believers all over their colonies? Many in the West, if not most, have conveniently chosen to forget their ugly and uncomfortable past. Many Asians chose to believe that the West did not have any ugly and uncomfortable past to confront, some out of ignorance, some out of idealistic adoration, and some out of stupidity.
Kopi Level - Green
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