I have given notice to TRE to withdraw my permission for TRE to repost my articles in TRE.
Redbean
3/03/2017
Govt policies must be sensible, reasonable, focused and responsible
Many people
have heard the reasoning for the big water fee hike and the logic being aired
in Parliament and many are shaking their heads in disbelief. Do the ministers
really believe they are convincing in their arguments and the people are really
so daft to accept the reasoning. We have a highly educated population, more
than 50% have received tertiary education and any farcical, flimsy or flawed
arguments would stand up like a sore thumb. Ministers must be careful and not
stand out looking like fools with foolish arguments and thinking they could get
away with them.
Just read
this piece of statement saying that ‘Water prices were increased substantially
to reflect its true scarcity value’ by Masagos. Using the same logic, should
not the govt raise the salaries of ministers substantially to reflect its true
scarcity value? The scarcity of good political leaders is frightening and a
strategic issue, a national security issue too. I just borrow some of the
phrases used in Parliament to depict how serious the matter is.
Yes pay the
really good minister $10m or more, but this must be done discriminately not
like the carpet bombing price of water fee that hit everyone so hard. Some
ministers deserved $10m, some not even $100k.
In the case of water, the pricing must be carefully calibrated to be
reasonable and sensible and responsible.
Water is a
basic necessity and is a must use item by everyone, from the richest to the
poorest. And in some cases the poorest need to use more water than the richest.
A manual worker would need to bath more and wash more given the nature of his
work. A multi millionaire could bathe in perfume or Evian water or no need to
bath as he rarely need to sweat under the hot sun. The bedridden would need to
be clean. Everyone needs to take their bath in this hold tropical city.
Everyone, rich or poor, needs to shit and flush the toilet. How can such acts
be punished by high water fees? Don’t bathe, don’t shit, don’t wash and don’t
flush?
What is
reasonable and sensible is to allocate a fix quantity of water to every
individual/household, regardless of wealth, maybe a bit more to the workers, to
clean themselves, for personal hygiene. Water is a basic necessity and should
be priced as such. Then the axe can come down to bear on those that over used,
misused and abused, those that could not appreciate this precious item. Using
water reasonably for basic needs must not and cannot be punished with an across
the board price hike. Levy progressive and punitive taxes on over usage of
water. And I quote Masagos again, ‘Consumers must feel the full price of
water’. The difference is that the axe must not be used indiscriminately
against everyone. Not all consumers waste
water irresponsibly. Many are actively and responsibly cutting down on their
water usage. Why should they also be punished? If an axe is swung wildly like a mad man, it
discredits the person wielding the axe as a mad man, thoughtless and
unreasonable.
I do not
want to belabour this point. It is common sense. Please be reasonable, be
sensible, be focused and be responsible and raise water fees in a calibrated and
thoughtful way. Think a little more. Anyone
behaving like a bull in a crystal shop will look like a stubborn and mindless raging
bull. No one would respect a mad bull ramming and knocking down everything in
its way.
No need to
use phrases like scarce resources, strategic issues, national security issue to
pull a veil over a flawed pricing policy. It defeats everything being said.
3/02/2017
Time to bankrupt the American Empire
Trump has
said he wants to build the biggest and most powerful military force ever for
the American Empire. They could do that when they were productive and fleecing
the Arabs of their oil and the world by printing cheap paper money and selling
them to the world as international currency. Can the Americans afford to
continue to spend lavishly on military weapons to control the oceans of the
world and to maintain 5000 military bases all over the world?
The Arabs
are getting wiser and want to control their oil and decide their own future.
The world will sooner or later abandon the American dollar as the international
currency. The world would soon stop buying cheap and worthless American
Treasury bonds and that would be the end of the American dollar and the end of
printing easy money. The dollar would be worthless when the world gets wiser to
the cheating Americans, getting rich without having to work or pay for it, just
printing money.
In the
meantime China and Russia can play the game in an arms race. Both Russia and
China should spend more on their defence. If China is to roll out 6 aircraft
carriers and Russia likewise or even 3, that would make a combined force of at
least a dozen aircraft carriers to match the existing 10 American aircraft
carriers.
What would
the Americans or Trump do? It can be expected that they would want to double
their carrier fleet to 20 or more. They need the numbers to maintain their
superiority as the world’s hegemon. Russia and China should not just confine
themselves to aircraft carriers and ships, but ICBMs, aircraft, satellites etc
etc. This would force to the Americans to spend big and to bankrupt themselves
faster.
The
Americans no longer have the capacity and the money to compete in an arms race
without the industrial complexes to pay for it. They also cannot rely on free
or cheap Arab oil or printing more greenbacks. The greenbacks would rapidly run
out of its usefulness, become irrevelant and end up like monopoly notes.
Russia and
China must proceed to challenge the Americans in an all out arms race to
bankrupt the American economy and bring the Empire to its knees. The Americans
just cannot afford it. Just keep the defence spending up and let the Americans
try to outdo and outperform and outspend the combined forces and defence budget
of Russia and China. A 3 times more American strategy to remain aloof and
unchallenged would see the Americans huffing and puffing to its own demise.
$600b defence budget and the Trumps wants to spend more. Go ahead and spend. The Russians and Chinese should oblige by providing the reasons and motivation for the Americans to keep spending on defence and make it $1 trillion. That would be nice.
3/01/2017
US Destructive Colonialism And Imperialism
US has inherited the mantle of British colonialism and imperialism for almost four hundred years. This destructive British and American colonialism and imperialism plius that of Spain, Portugal, Holland and Russia has either destroyed or cause great damage to many ancient civilization. History will reveal that the natives of North America and South America were not as savage and uncivliae as the invading white men from Europe. Just because the white men were better armed with modern weapons like guns and cannons does not make them more civilise than others.
Below I quote a passage from an unknown author . Please read it and reflect deeply on the truth of its contents. Those so called selfstyled intellectuals who are history illiterate and like to fawn on white supremacists should go back to school before they write any comments. I am referring to many of those silly intellectuals who are being unreservely highly paid in many of Singapore's institutes of higher learnings and international studies.
THE JADE PAVILLION
--------------------------
" He felt a familiar rise insight him. Eucliff
was a good example of how the Chinese were
being corrupted, their culture eroded, their
countryside altered by speculative land deals.
It was the same wherever the British went.
India, Africa, Malaya, China: whatever they
saw, they changed - as if that was the natural
way of things. They did not learn the local
languages except in order to teach the natives
English. They built their churches and
imported their own god annd tried to convert
the local deities. They eradicated customs
without having anything better with which to
replace them. They brought their own
business practices which they expected to be
adopted, their own laws to be obeyed, their
own merchandise to be purchased. They even
brought their own diseases of influenza and
gonorrhoea to add to the local scourges. When
they could not get their own way with the
natives they ruled by division , pitting tribe
against tribe, clan against clan, religion
against religion: when that failed, they
brought in their troops and their gunboats."
Southernglory1
Wednesday, 1st March, 2017
How long does it take to admit a silly mistake?
A few people came to me
shaking their heads just to ask why it took 6 long years and wasting so many
precious hours of unproductive time to realise that the no lunch break is a total
failure from the start? The promise and optimism of some half baked logic that
longer hours with no lunch break meant more business, would increase
trading business by 10%, were at best be good for a laugh. Only someone not in
the industry could think that such an idea would work when anyone with a couple
of years in this business and with a little grey matter would know how silly it
was. And it took a whole solid 6 years to admit that it was all an expensive
mistake, an unproductive farce.
Then I also heard some
clowns still saying that it was a great idea and it did not fail, it was a
great success. The no lunch break farce gave SGX a big advantage over other
bourses that have to close for lunch. The clown even bragged that if one bought
one share in Timbuktu and the market crashed, the buyer of that one share could
sell it in SGX without missing a bid while other bourses were closed for lunch.
I must say that I agree
with the clown's clever reasoning. We could boast to the world that we have a
market that opens a whole full day, so efficient and so convenient for all the
traders of the whole wide world to trade here. I would also agree that if the
market is open 24 hours, better still, then our aunties and uncles and ah mahs
could trade in all the markets all over the world any time they like. They can
even wake up in the middle of the night after having a good tip from their
dreams to buy shares, and the Singapore market will be there waiting for them.
Come to think of it, the
failure of the no lunch break would not have happened if they open the market
24 hours a day non stop. (Oops, I know some disagreed that it was a failure and
would still swear that it was a great success.) And business would boom and
everyone in the business will be laughing to the bank and no one would be
complaining of no business or a waste of time. It must be, 8 hours of business,
now 3X8 hours would mean business would triple. As they said, want to do
something well, go all the way, no half hearted measures like no lunch break.
Many are cheering that
they are having their lunch break back. Please forgive these people for they
did not know what they missed and how good it would be, how good it could be,
if the market remains open 24 hours a day. The only reason for these folks to
be happy for a miserable lunch break, I think, is that they are not talented so
unable to appreciate how good no lunch break is for the business. A child in
the kindergarten would also be able to work out the arithmetic. The idea is so simplistic!
But that is the brilliant part and even simpletons would know that it would
work. How can anyone say it would not work or it did not work?
Maybe we need to engage
a foreign talent to teach these simple folks how good it is if a market has no
lunch break, or better still operates on a non stop 24 hours basis. Give it
more time to succeed, keep the no lunch break. 6 years is too short a time for
this great idea to bear fruits. Please don’t throw out such a clever idea.
Stupidity has no cure.
A consolation is that
the market still has many great innovations that would keep it flourishing and
in the pink of health. I particularly like algo trading, computer trading,
smaller bid size, can trade one share at a time to improve liquidity and
cheaper for children to play with their piggy bank savings. $1 can buy 100
shares. Now isn’t that nice? And main board shares some more. More than 2
billion shares are traded daily, and will be bigger tomorrow. Don't pray pray.
See how healthy is the stock market or not? It is growing from strength to
strength.
It is such a pity that
they are bringing back the lunch break. Now business will surely be adversely
affected.
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