The Roy Ngerng saga continues

A fire is burning hot. The CPF is a hot potato issue. What about the Roy Ngerng saga? Immediately after the judgement for legal fee was out, another controversy took centre stage. Did Roy give up his right to cross examine, to be cross examined, or did he not? According to Hsien Loong’s press secretary Chang Li Lin, Roy’s lawyer had confirmed that he did not want to be cross examined. According to Roy he wanted the cross examination.
 
What is puzzling is the thinking of Hsien Loong. What is he thinking, what is in his mind? Could he be thinking that this is a straight forward case of libel and he was suing Roy for alleging that he was corrupt? Period. Let the court decide this civil suit and move on? How would this tussle affect his stature as the PM of the country?
Can this legal suit be taken in isolation, to be treated so clinically like a wound, clean it, sanitize it and bandage it up nicely with no further complication or implication?
 
The social media is on fire. Some netizens are fuming and drawing all kinds of conclusions and threatening consequences, as a political issue. Did Hsien Loong see this coming? I bet so. He must have weighed the consequences and how it would impact his standing as the PM and how it would affect the next GE.
 
This legal case against Roy cannot be simply treated as a private matter between the two of them. It is political as in involved the PM, and the people will see it from the political perspective and drag many issues into it, the CPF being one. Without trying to analyse more in the thinking of Hsien Loong or his party stalwarts, there must be political fallouts coming from this case. Perhaps all these have been taken into account and seen as a price worth paying for, or necessary to take Roy to court.
 
How would this end up with Roy now in a mood for a ‘suicidal’ mission, a do and die no option recourse? The bigger this saga is blown up, the bigger the implications, and they are unlikely to be positive for both of them. Would it blow the PAP’s chance in the next GE? This is on the lips of every politically conscious citizens and political observer.
 
What is at the end of the tunnel?

No poverty in Singapore?

The issue of poverty is a very sensitive one in one of the world’s richest city state with the highest percentage of millionaires. How can there be poverty when there are no beggars, or the poor here are better off than the poor elsewhere? How then does one define poverty or being poor? Theoretically, a person with a $1000 pm income could buy a 2 rm public flat. How can that be poor? The assumptions that after paying for the flat he would still have enough to get by, feed a family and children going to school. If this is the bottom line, the number of poor in Singapore must be very low indeed.

Professor Tommy Koh wrote a recent article stating that 30% of the population are poor. He is now embroiled in a debate with the MOE on the scale of poverty among students. Though the data quoted were complex and not everyone is in agreement, the bottom line is that how many are poor or living below the poverty line.

The next question is where is the poverty line? In Singapore there is no poverty line. So how can there be poor when there is no poverty line. Tiok. The next question, why is there no poverty line? The answer and I quote, ‘Minister for Social and Family Development Chan Chun Sing had previously refused to define an official poverty line for fear of a "cliff effect" even though it is not known what this meant.’

If you choose to put on blinkers, the world is a tunnel. If one chooses to read only fairy tales, the world is so airy fairy. Are there people struggling to live on their small income and bordering on poverty or living below the poverty line? Deaf frogs, blind frogs or blinkered frogs, all have a different view on this issue.

Kopi Level - Red

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China providing an alternative to the failed American model stock market

‘China now gives investors an alternative to (the)manipulated HFT U.S. stock markets - www.examiner.com
 
On Nov. 17, China finalized the completion of their linking the Shanghai stock exchange with the Hong Kong exchange, creating a $4.2 trillion capital market that is also open to foreign investors. Debuting yesterday during Asian trading hours, this new and dynamic market will provide an alternative for American and other global traders to invest in a massive stock exchange that is free from the manipulation and High Frequency Trading (HFT) that occurs on U.S. exchanges, and will even exempt foreign investors from paying capital gains taxes….
 
In March of this year, financial author Michael Lewis laid a bombshell on the investment community when he published his book Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt. In this fictional story based on real life factual data, Lewis showed how HFT was used so much by the primary brokers on Wall Street that it completely rigged the stock markets and allowed the siphoning off of hundreds of billions of dollars from investors simply because their machines saw trades before they happened, and bought or sold shares to follow trends.
 
It is perhaps ironic that for decades the perception has been that fraud, corruption, and manipulation has been projected upon Asia, and Asian markets that had limited regulation to protect investors. However, those days are quickly changing and with this new and transparent stock market merger between Shanghai and Hong Kong, opportunities now appear far greater and with much less risk of fraud overseas than they do in the U.S. and European based exchanges.’
 
The above article talked about the alternative stock market platform China is providing to the world of finance to overcome and to step away from the highly flawed, manipulated and failed American stock trading system. Fund managers would now have a more transparent and trusted stock exchange to invest their funds collected from innocent investors in. It is a fairer and less manipulated market than one dominated by high speed computers that made all the trading principles, fundamentals and methodology irrelevant, a joke. Traditional and conventional fund managers and retail traders have been robbed and massacred by the highly deceptive high speed trading programmes without knowing what really hit them, without knowing they have been cheated by them and the regulators of the exchanges.
 
High speed trading has violated and broken all the rules and regulations of stock exchanges for fair trading and have deceived investors that there was nothing wrong or illegal about their modus operandi. This does not mean that the govts, the US govt included, the regulators and the big fund managers did not know that the operations are illegal, criminal and fraudulent. They have been allowed to continue to operate and cheat other investors simply by virtue of their control over the regulators not to report or apprehend them for frauds and cheating. Everyone in the industry, the govt and regulators, are complicit in this crime while the investors are totally helpless about it except to lose their savings and fortunes. The wiser, or those who have lost everything, could only stand aside and watch in vain, not to participate or cannot afford to participate in the con game again.
 
China has seen through the deception and is offering genuine investors and fund managers a fairer and more transparent platform to invest and trade without being cheated by the computer traders. The American model is waiting to collapse just like the greenback, all built and propped up by sheer manipulation of the regulators/govt and the big computer operators.
 
Now that there is a reliable and fairer system to trade stocks, more fund managers are likely to shift their portfolio to the Shanghai/Hongkong market and leading to a quicker demise of the American model. The Singapore Exchange that is highly similar to the American model and would not be spared and would likely meet a similar ending once New York and London hit dirt at ground zero. Good riddance.
 
The end of the American model is near and a new and fairer financial centre in Shanghai/Hongkong would rise to take the place of New York/London and Tokyo. No more computer trading and no more manipulation of the stock market with impunity. There is new hope and a new world order at the horizon.

Kopi Level - Red

Curtain call for the Equity Market?

Stanchart is closing down its equity operation in Asia! More than 200 staff will be laid off. What does this mean? A major bank cannot make money or even losing money in the equity market? It must be. No banks would close down a profit making business.
Is this the beginning for more banks closing down their equity businesses? When banks are finding it tough to make profit in equity trading, what are the chances of the retail traders? You mean the retail traders are still around, still in business and trading with profits while the banks are closing shops? Does anyone want to know, bother to know, what is happening to the retail traders, to all the players including broking houses and remisiers in the equity business?
 
Who cares? It is no one’s business. The equity business can go bust, life goes on. Equity is only a small part of a bank’s business. Some banks even offer free or near to no commission for this service.
 
What about derivatives? Are derivatives related to the equity business and dependent on the existence of an equity market? Would the collapse of the equity market lead to the collapse of the derivative markets? Can the derivative market exist without the equity market or a dysfunctional or dormant equity market?
 
The immediate problem, maybe not a problem, is the loss of jobs in the Stanchart and maybe other banks following suit, to close down their equity business. Who would be the people laid off? Theoretically it would be those in the equity division. Or would a bank choose to lay off Singaporeans in other departments to save the jobs of foreigners in the equity division? To retain the foreigners from the equity division, a bank can transfer their foreign hires to other departments by getting rid of Singaporeans there. Possible? Likely?
 
What would be the case when banks start to close down their equity divisions? What would happen to the stock market when more banks take the path of Stanchart?

Kopi Level - Yellow