SGX, where got elephant in the room?

Goh Eng Yeow wrote a piece titled ‘SGX, where have all the investors gone?’ in the ST on 24 Oct. This is a surprising question to ask today as if it just happened. Remember all the good news when Bockers came on board, that with all the foreign big players, including the algo traders, liquidity would be all time high and broking houses could expect to do great business. He even invested $250m on a new high speed super computer for SGX to prepare for the big volume of trading transactions that it was supposed to handle. There were great promises of a highly strung stock exchange and smiling faces every where.

What is happening today, broking houses trying to break even, remisiers quitting the business, unable to chalk up even commission to pay for overheads, and the dearth of investors?  And the best part, no one knows what is wrong with the stock market.  Everyone in a state of denial. Everything is fine, just fine, nothing to worry about. This is the new normal. 

What is happening, what is happening? Now who is asking what is happening, everything is fine, really, tomorrow will be better. We have seen worst, went through many crises, not to worry, SGX shall overcome.

This is what Goh Eng Yeow concluded in his piece, ‘No doubt it is now also facing big challenges in finding new ways to draw back the investing crowd.  But I have no doubt that it will persevere and succeed.  That must be the fervent hope of remisiers sitting out the trading drought.’ I would like to type HOPE in big capital letters. Not to worry, after the darkest night, the sun will surely rise.

Did anyone see the elephant in the room? No, the market is weak because of external factors, the world economy is slowing, China is slowing down, and what else? Still in a state of denial, refusing to see the elephant? This time the crisis is for real. No amount of monkeying around will do any good until the elephant is removed.

How about having more courses, diplomas, degrees, master degrees and Ph Ds for stock brokings? When we have so well trained and qualified remisiers to help investors to trade, definitely the market will boom. Let’s train more Ph D remisiers. It will sure help, if not improving the liquidity, at least the remisiers can print Ph Ds in their name cards and call themselves investment specialists. Never mind if they are still earning less than $2000 a month.

Any suckers want to acquire a Ph D or Masters degree in stockbroking? Plenty of courses available, to earn $2,000 pm or less.

Labelling President Duterte's wisdom and strategy for Survival as " Duterte's personal game" is downright insulting.

I refer to "Today's Paper" where a miscreant writer from one of Singapore's institute of higher learnings and foreign affairs was being rude and insulting to label President Duterte's wisdom of trying to do what is good for Philippines and its people as "personal game". Calling President Duterte's wisdom and strategy for Philippine's survival as "Duterte's personal game" is horrendous and is not only an insult to President Duterte's dignity, integrity and self respect but also a desperate contemptible attempt to denigrate the intelligence of the Philippinos.

Let the unashamed faceless writer beware that President Duterte knows what he is doing is good for his country and his people  and he does not need to play political game to gain recognition and reward  ( which his predecessor was a suspect  )  from Philippines former evil colonial master, USA.

If the writer has any sense of propriety he should now show contrition and unreservely apologise to President Duterte and the Philippines countrymen for his uncalled for rude and insidious remark.

He should be booted out of Singapore for the good of Asean countries less he and his likes ( and there are many foreign intellectuals attached to Singapore institutes of higher learnings ) bring harm to the region through writing and spouting bias propaganda as little USAs and as mouth piece for USA propaganda machine.

Southernglory 1

Monday, 24th October,2016

Duterte: America has lost

Duterte said this in Beijing, ‘Both in military, not maybe social, but economics also, America has lost. America has lost a 70 year ally in the Philippines to China. 

The USA has been crooning the 70 years of dominating the Philippines as a smaller member of the military alliance as ‘rich people to people ties, including a vibrant Filipino American diaspora, and a long list of shared security interests.’ They did not want to remind the Pinoys that the relations went back even further, to 1898 when they invaded and colonized the Philippines and the massacres of the Pinoys by the Americans. …We also remain one of the Philippines’ strongest economic partners, the current stock of US foreign direct investment stands above US$4.7b’.

The 4 day visit by Duterte to Beijing has led to US$13.5b of agreement signed between the two countries with more to come. And it revives the centuries old relationship between the two countries and the people to people ties built over the past with more than 2m Pinoys with Chinese ancestry and many millions more with Chinese blood in them.

After all these years of manipulation, coercion and behind the door arm twisting, all the American effort and scheming came to nought on 20 Oct 16.  The US$30m spent on the farcical kangaroo court proceedings and rulings went up in smoke. Would the Americans now send the bills to the Pinoys?  All the cloak and dagger hustling behind closed doors in Asean minister meetings to fix China with the Pinoys as the point man now looked so ludicrous. It fell flat.

As they said, man proposed God disposed. Someone up there just said enough is enough and the chapter of American conspiracy to divide the Asean states against China must come to an end. The most crucial piece of pawn in the American game plan, the Philippines, called out. And Duterte even suggested an alliance with Russia and China, and to tell Putin ‘that there are three of us against the world – China, Philippines and Russia. It’s the only way.’

The changing dynamics of the Asia Pacific balance of power would look very different going forward. What would the Americans be thinking of doing? Brewing a military coup against Duterte or an assassination bullet? Would there be more punitive measures against the Philippines or more carrots, like throwing a few antique museum pieces as gifts to the poor brown brothers’ navy for Christmas?

The whole initiative to the new development came out of the blue, in one man, in Rodrigo Duterte. He wrote the script and played the key role to change the course of history of the Asia Pacific region. Now this is powerful.

The American camp is in total disarray, not knowing what happened or what hit them. Obama, you still there? Abe, where are you? More joint naval patrols, freedom of navigation in the South China Sea without the approval of China and the Philippines?

To quote Foreign Secretary Yasay, ‘The US Philippines alliance is the most profound and problematic institutional manifestation of this colonial legacy of arrested development…The US held on to invisible chains that reined us in towards dependency and submission as little brown brothers not capable of true independence and freedom.’

Red Arrows over Marina Bay

Some of the pics I took of the Red Arrows on 18 Oct from the Marina Barrage. Quite a brief display with three passes and all over in 15 minutes. The Brits could put on a better show to show that they still have it as a former world power. The few hundred photographers braving the hot tropical sun with a bright sunny day did not have their fill and were somewhat disappointed as they knew the Red Arrows could show off a bit more.

China misunderstand Singapore? Really?

Tommy Koh wrote a piece titled ‘What China misunderstands Singapore’ in the ST on 21 Oct 16. Before dealing with the content of what he said, let me just take a broad view of what the article is trying to say. My first point, is the author assuming that the Chinese are not that clever and did not understand what Singapore is all about? If that is the case maybe Singapore can loan one of its super talented diplomats to help the Chinese understand Singapore.  Even our journalists and political thinkers are all full of themselves and wanting to teach the Chinese how to run their country.

Oh, they did not know that Singapore is a multi racial country and is in the middle of a sea of Muslim states and have different kinds of problems and issues to think about. They did not understand or got no intelligence to understand that Singapore needs the Americans to use might is right to protect Singapore from its neigbours if they turned hostile.

Ok, let me deal with the straw men that were raised to be shot down.  I would not deal with every little piece of thing the author said but just a few pertinent points for discussion. The Chinese, because Singapore has a Chinese majority country, ‘has given rise to unreasonable expectations on the part of China towards Singapore’. Now what are these unreasonable expectations and why are these unreasonable? ‘They feel that since Singaporeans are fellow Chinese, we should have a better understanding of China’s policies than other Asean countries. They also expect Singapore to support China’s policies.’ The first expectation, a better understanding of China’s policies, unreasonable? Even without the Chinese majority, any foreign officer or leader in charge of foreign affairs are expected to try to have a better understanding of the policies of big powers. Whether he/she agrees is another thing. It will only be an issue when taking a position. What is so unreasonable about a better understanding of another country’s position?

The second expectation, Singapore to support China’s policies. This would be unreasonable when the policies are against the interest of Singapore.  And if it is a case of a tussle between two super powers, it would be unreasonable for China to expect Singapore to support China against another superpower. Likewise it would be unreasonable for Singapore to support another super power against China. Ok, this part is only true if Singapore really wants to be neutral. See, we can see clearly why China is unreasonable but blind to our own unreasonableness. Oh, I forgot, we support US position, or not really support US position, is because we are supporting principles, supporting international laws, supporting freedom of navigation, and these seemed to be the same as what the US is supporting, so we are not supporting the US against China, we are not unreasonable. My eyeballs are rolling. To say this kind of argument is clever is as good as saying snake oil salesmen are very clever.
I do not want to rehash why the kangaroo court is not UN backed and is not about international law or freedom of navigation is affected or someone is more principled and someone is not.

How many reasonable people, principled people, really believe, honestly believe, that the kangaroo court, the way it was set up and the way judgement was passed, is about international law, upholding international law and about principles, justice and fair play?

I will touch on the other 3 ‘misunderstandings’ if I feel exasperated enough to touch on them later, one at a time.

A kangaroo court is a kangaroo court, UN backed or not UN backed. And this kangaroo court was definitely not UN backed.  And its decision was nothing binding and nothing about international law. It abused international law by its rubbish interpretation of reefs and islands. Not all international judges are intelligent and the kangaroo court is a good example to prove how silly these people can be.