PM, this is real economic growth

On a year on year measure, GDP rose 3.8 per cent – above a 3.3 per cent forecast – and a moderation from the 4.3 per cent year on year registered at the start of the year. The first quarter expansion was Hong Kong’s best since 2011.

FT

Now our constructive, nation-building media reports that for S’pore

the year-on-year growth number of 2.9 per cent for the second quarter could be the economy’s strongest showing this year, given MTI’s expectation for 2017 growth to come in at 2.5 per cent. This means that the economy will likely see an average growth of about 2.3 per cent of the second half of the year after having expanded 2.7 per cent over the first two quarters.

Read more at http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/business/better-gdp-growth-for-singapore-in-2017-but-watch-out-for-9114588

Btw, HK revised its full-year GDP forecast from a range of 2-3 per cent to 3-4 per cent in 2017. So 2.3% iGDP growth is “peanuts”.

While PM was bawling and brawling with his siblings in a muddy playpen and ensuring that we have a Malay president whose i/c says “Indian”, HK’s economy, despite all its internal political problems (shumething we don’t have since we are a defacto one party state under Lee) is powering ahead.

When talking on “Indian” is “Malay” I wrote something that helps explain, partially, why we are growing at only the average first world standard, not more, unlike HK:

Whatever, how can S’pore be creative, let alone progress if the ruling party in a defacto one-party state refuses to change its mind on policies that no longer work or never worked in the first place?

Take the economy where the PAP

— continues to see welfare** as a bad thing except when it needs to buy votes, and

— believes that FTs are needed to keep the economy growing.

No wonder we have had restructuring plans galore (Once every decade it seems),

Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back

John Maynard Keynes

Tomorrow, I’ll tell of an Asian city (not HK) that has no high-paid ministers or bureucrats mindlessly churning out restructuring master plans but which is a place that even Silicon Valley respects albeit grudgingly.

Temasek makes money on Snap

Something alternative media will not tell u about. To be fair neither will the subversives working in ST.

FT reported that filings showed Temasek sold Snap 300,000 shares valued at US$6.76m. This works out to US$22.33 a share. Snap sold shares at its initial public offering in March at $17 apiece and at that price was worth US$24bn. This was more than a pre-IPO valuation in the second half of 2016 of US$20bn, when it raised US$1.8bn in a Series F round.

Of course the amounts involved are “peanuts” but every little “peanut” counts.

Btw, Snap shares have collapsed to around US$12.

Drinking good wine

The Mail  …reports that the way to make wine taste better is to put a high price tag on it, after volunteers who tasted the same wine with different price labels said the one thought to be most expensive tasted the best.

BBC