F35 fleet grounded

A fire on the engine of a F35 has led to the complete grounding of all F35s in service. The US Defence Department has announced that a complete inspection of all the engines will be conducted, and for safety reasons, they will not let the F35s off the ground until they know what is the cause of the problem. A decision to put all 97 aircraft on hold must mean something serious is going on.

The F35 is by far the most expensive multi role fighter aircraft ever produced and will cost about $200m a piece. Singapore was reported to have committed to buy the F35s but the decision has been kept under wrapped given the series of problems facing the aircraft and the many concerns expressed over its ability to perform to specifications. The cost is also a very prohibitive factor and only countries that are very rich and have a lot of money to throw would be able to afford it. Singapore is the only exception as it would be small change to our big coffer.

An American general has publicity announced that Singapore has already made the buy decision. Would this be true and Singapore be acquiring this untested aircraft that is extremely costly and plagued with a host of problems? Under the old thinking, especially the leadership of Goh Keng Swee, Singapore will not touch any aircraft with a 10 foot pole unless the aircraft has been operational and proven in service. Has there been a new thinking, a new adventurism to plough billions of dollars on such an expensive piece of untested equipment that is infamous for all kinds of problems and have not been ruled fit and operational, let alone seen service in the battle field? It is like buying a dinosaur egg with a lot of promises and surprises that we would definitely get the dinosaur we paid for.

Maybe a decision has already been made and all the reservations are of no use. Just name the price and we will pay for it as long as it looks good on paper and the marketing brochures. This will be another great new toy to boot should it ever land on our shore. And with the price tag, it must be really good. It must be value for money. Good stuff doesn’t come cheap except when it is a con job like the few banks that we bought and nearly lost our pants.

Kopi Level - Green

Another protest at Hong Lim tomorrow

We would like to inform that we will be having an event on Saturday, 5th July at Hong Lim Park from 4 to 7pm. Subject of the event is titled – “Is our Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong the right person to lead Singapore?”
 
For this event, we have invited 10 speakers from all walks of life to talk about the subject matter. As we know, the prime minister has recently launch a defamation suit against its own citizen, Mr Roy Ngerng. There are legitimate calls from certain sections of the community for our Prime Minister to step down from office.
Most of the speakers on that day will be ordinary Singaporeans who are either frustrated with the policies in place or are personally affected by it. Hence, the event will showcase arguments on whether the prime minister is the right person to lead the nation.
 
Link to the event page can be found in FB – https://www.facebook.com/events/657651847623510/?ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming&source=1....
 
We cannot allow a leader who has no competency and heart to lead the country. We cannot allow a leader who is devoid of compassion to continue and pile on miseries towards citizens any longer.
It’s time for him to step down from office and allow a true leader with the appropriate skills, knowledge, competency and foresight to take over and lead Singapore to the next era….
Hosted by William Lim and Osman Sulaiman.
 
The above is posted in TRE. I am not sure who is the organizer of this event. This is the first time that a protest is directed at a person, in this case the PM, Hsien Loong. The earlier protests were about issues and policies. Just wonder what kind of crowd it will draw.

Kopi Level - Green

CPF – A cut off age to stop contributing

CPF is a forced savings towards a retirement fund, a time and age when the contributor is expected to retire from active employment and to take life at a slower pace with the life savings that he had set aside. At some point in time, people stop working or retire. Some may choose to continue to work if they are physically able, wanted to or needed to. In the last case, it is likely that there is no or not enough savings and no other form of financial support from the family.
 
In general, people may want to retire after spending a whole life working.
And the retirement fund comes in handy for this purpose. Some may not have much but could make do with family support and could choose to enjoy a life of leisure within their means.
 
Under the CPF scheme, there is no such thing as a cut off age when a person can stop contributing. In the case of employment, including self employed, one can still be economically active even at 70, 80 or 90 and is expected to contribute to the CPF, for the self employed into the Medisave Account. What the fuck for? These economically active seniors are in much better financial situation than those who have retired, unemployed and have no income. What are they contributing into the CPF for, for their retirement? If they are still working at such a ripe age, many would pass away without knowing what is retirement?
 
In the case of self employed, even if their Medisave Accounts have exceeded the minimum sum, they are legally required to contribute more to renew their licence. What for? Why is there no cut off date for a person to stop contributing to the CPF/Medisave? Has the CPF Board forgotten what is CPF contribution all about? Or they are treating this as a kind of taxation? You work, you contribute to the Fund. You want your licence, you pay up.
 
What is going on? There must be a cut off age when contributing to the CPF in any forms except on a voluntary basis must ceased.

Kopi Level - Green

A foreign professor telling us that we are walking naked

In his article in the Today paper on 3 Jul 14, ‘Spore universities’ foreign talent policies need to change’, Professor Philip Holden, revisited the issue of disappearing Singaporean faculty members in the local universities raised by Seah Kian Peng earlier in Parliament. His observation, ‘While more than half of current tenured faculty in the university system are Singaporean, Singaporeans now constitute only a quarter of early career academics on the tenure track at NUS and NTU.’ Is this planned and the desired goal?
 
What is Philip Holden trying to say? There are too few Singaporeans in the university faculties and going to get bad in the future? To him this is a problem. To Singapore, is it a problem? Maybe lah. Maybe just enough to ‘talk talk’ and nothing more to it. It was discussed in Parliament, yes, but everything is forgotten. To Holden, this is not a little problem that is good enough for after dinner talk but serious enough to demand action. He said, ‘My experience as a visiting scholar in Canada over the past years suggests that discussions may not be enough and should be supplemented by concrete policy changes.’
 
Funny that a foreigner could see problems in our foreign talent policies and a problem serious enough to require actions while our chaps didn’t see anything wrong and a few talking cock sessions will do, nothing needs to be done? In a survey done, it ‘found that more than 80 per cent of Singaporean graduate students, whether abroad or in the Republic, answered “yes” or “maybe” when asked if they felt local universities prefer to hire non Singaporeans.’ Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Dunno leh, probably not important. The whole faculty can go to foreigner should be no issue too what? After all this is getting to become a non country or a non nation. Anything wrong with foreigners teaching us about our history, culture and literature?
 
There were rumours and murmurs that the selection committees of our local universities were dominated by foreigners who have the final say in who to hire. I can’t believe that this is the case. Next time our political appointees could also be decided by a panel of foreigners and no one will bat an eyelid. What’s wrong with it? Anyone who says foreigners taking over the recruitment of faculty members is unacceptable and must be xenophobic. And anyone saying bad things about the industries being dominated by foreigners and foreigners hiring their own kinds are also xenophobic and deserves to be whacked. We are a free economy and we welcome talents from the whole world. This island belongs to everyone here.
 
What the ….?

Kopi Level - Green

HFT – How much did they hide from you

Michael Lewis' 'Flashboys: Cracking the money code' tells how HFTs rig markets
By Sanjay Kumar Singh, ET Bureau | 30 Jun, 2014,

‘….Michael Lewis, who has written such highly-acclaimed books as Liar's poker, The big short and Moneyball, tackles the subject of high-frequency trading in his latest work, 'Flashboys: Cracking the money code.'

Imagine that you are trying to buy a company's stocks priced at Rs 100 over the Internet. As soon as you put in a bid to buy the stock, its price jumps to Rs 102 and your order doesn't get executed. You wait for a while, get frustrated, and then ultimately buy the stock at the slightly higher price.

Something similar happens when you try to sell a stock. This time the price moves lower, forcing you to take a small loss. It is as if someone has read your mind, acted just ahead of you, and thwarted you. Today technology makes it possible for entities called high frequency traders ( HFT) to do such front-running (which means to learn an investor's intentions and profit from them by acting ahead of him).

When you send a buy or sell order to a stock exchange, its matching engines match your buy orders with others' sell orders and enable you to buy a stock at the best possible price. But what if the process doesn't run cleanly? What if there are intermediaries who can intercept your orders midway and glean the information therein?

They then run ahead of you and buy all the stocks available on all the exchanges and then put in sell orders at higher prices, thereby forcing you to buy at those prices, especially when orders are very largesized. This is a simplified description of what high-frequency traders do.

Now, you might argue: how much would buying a stock for two rupees extra matter in the larger scheme of things? But imagine a couple of bucks earned on millions of transactions—some of them worth thousands or even millions of dollars. All those little gains then add up. That's how HFTs make their billions.

One of the functions of a stock exchange is to make risk capital available to entrepreneurs. Intermediaries like HFTs make money while adding no value to this process, essentially indulging in a form of rent-seeking. They end up raising the cost of capital for entrepreneurs….

Even US stock exchanges were hand-in-glove with them, allowing them to place their servers close to the exchange's servers, thereby gifting HFTs that tiny micro-second's advantage. Broking firms also played a part. Instead of executing the orders they got themselves, they would redirect them to HFTs, who fleeced the customer while giving broking firms a kickback. It is this nexus that Lewis exposes in his book….Well, HFTs have spread their tentacles to exchanges around the globe. The next time the price of a stock jumps suddenly when you try to buy it, or a flash crash occurs, ask yourself: have HFTs arrived?’

The examples given by Lewis were simply criminal in nature. How much more the public did not know about the devious and criminal activities of HFT? If stock exchanges knew about how HFT operates as described, and allowed HFT into their systems, what shall be done to the management of the exchanges? If govts knew the same things are happening and do not stop them, what kind of govts are they? Heard of accomplices or partners in crimes?

Kopi Level - Green