“Warren Buffett” of digital bizs

From NYT Dealbook

DILLER’S MINIFACTORY OF SPINOFFS PAYS OFF Somewhat by accident, Barry Diller, chairman of IAC/InterActiveCorp, has built a unique business model that has reaped enormous value for IAC’s shareholders – exceeding even that of Disney and Microsoft, Andrew Ross Sorkin writes in the DealBook column. He describes Mr. Diller’s “minifactory of spinoffs” business as: “Buy digital businesses, fold them into a conglomerate and then spin out the most successful ones,” like the Match Group, which went public last week and now has a market value of $3.7 billion. “I’m really an anti-conglomerateur,” Mr. Diller told Mr. Sorkin.

“If you invested $1,000 in IAC in August 1995 when Mr. Diller began the business – at the cusp of the dot-com boom (and subsequent bust) – you’d have about $16,000 today, assuming you reinvested dividends and held on to shares of the various companies spun off from IAC,” Mr. Sorkin writes. “By comparison, if you invested $1,000 in a fund that tracked the Nasdaq index, you’d have about $4,800 today.”

If the Marxists had seized power

(Update on 9 Dec: When TRE republished this, a “Tan Wah Piow” complained that it was not true that he is “closr” to Comrade Bala and threatened to sue me for alleging that he was. I told him that I was quoting only, not the author.)

We should get on our knees and thank the 9th immortal that Tan Wah Pow and friends didn’t seize power as alleged by the PAP administration.

If so,  Aravindan Balakrishnanguy might be president and the Istana turned into a tottue chamber for the enjoyment of president Bala and his Marxist buddies.

The trial of Aravindan Balakrishnan, 75, is on-going in London. Also known as Comrade Bala, he was a former Singaporean communist that is being accused of rape, indecent assault and even imprisoning his own daughter for 30 years. He is said to use the ideas of communist revolution to convince his victims that what they were doing was for the eventual removal of the evil fascist western domination.

Comarde Bala was stripped of Singapore citizenship in 1977 because of his Communist/Marxist/Maoist beliefs and activities. He is known to be close to fellow Singapore communists such as G Raman and Tan Wah Piow, who also sought refuge in London after being wanted by the authorities for his activities with the Malayan communists in the 1970s. 

http://unravelling1987.blogspot.sg/2015/11/the-trial-of-comrade-bala.html

Btw, he’s a fan of Harry Potter. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-34923884.:”he identified with the characters” (The bad and evil guys?)

Btw2, he says daughter is fantasist.

Whatever it is, heng ah the Marxists didn’t succeed.

Related post: Tan Wah Piow on how to a revoluntionary the easy way. The cybernuts of TRELand (like grave-dancing and singing Oxygen, Dosh who thinks the sun shines from s/0JBJ’s ass, BK, Ng Kok Lim) are his elite warriors and would have enjoyed themselves in president Bala’s Istana, torturing S’poreans.

 

Why MLC has to talk about Calvin

(or “Yet Another good reason to beat-up the MLC and Calvin”)

Calvin Cheng (“kill children” he said), I was told, said on radio recently that he only deletes and blocks abusive trolls, and accepts criticism.

So it’s really strange that the following piece from one Renson Seow, a leading member of a pretty conservative Facebook group (Examples: Their general consensus was that Amos Yee got what he deserved, and the PAP deserves 70%  of the vote but public tpt and FTs suck) went missing (AWOL? MIA?), hours, after it was posted as a comment on Calvin Cheng’s wall. It was in response to Cheng’s “apology” after he got a ticking off from Professor Tan Cheng Han, the chairman of the Media Literacy Council.

Read it and decide if Renson Seow is trolling Calvin Cheng. And if he isn’t, think about complaining to Professor Tan Cheng Han the chairman of the Media Literacy Council about Calvin Cheng setting yet another bad example on how to behave on the internet and on his talking the talk( only deletes and blocks abusive trolls, and accepts criticism). but not walking the talk (removing reasoned criticism). http://www.medialiteracycouncil.sg/Pages/contact-us.aspx

Renson Seow writes

The recent attempts to reframe Calvin’s comments as “meant to be intended to refer to children of terrorists *who are terrorists as well*” are misconceived, as his initial words were unambiguous.

===

The terrorists are not common criminals, it’s not about crime punishment and deterrence. They are a mortal enemy intent on killing and destroying. So you kill them before they kill you. And their children too in case they grow up to take revenge. It’s as simple as that. Please don’t complicate matters.
===

Within the sentence “And their children too in case they grow up to take revenge” are the key two words: *in case*

This clearly means that the proposed killings of the children of terrorists are precautionary in nature, and that he is *clearly aware* that there will be a proportion of those killed, who will not “grow up to take revenge”. (I.e. innocent personnel).

By his own admission, he also states that he was not going for general deterrence value – meaning that he did not also intend to intimidate future terrorists into submission – a stance which would leave room for mercy, for those children of terrorists who are so intimidated by the killing of kin now, that in future they are too cowed to take up the sword.

No, he was going for *precautionary killing*, in *full knowledge* that those killed will include a significant portion of innocent personnel.

The gulf between general deterrence and this is stark – equivalent to the comparison of passing of a deterrent death sentence on a single murderer’s kid to *dissuade* future children of other murderers from following their fathers’ footsteps, against that of setting a policy of killing all these other children too as a utilitarian precaution *in full knowledge* that *not all will turn*, with no room or thought given for the restraining effect of general deterrence.

This callousness and failure to err on the side of innocence is further compounded by the fact that these personnel are children, which have been clearly recognized both in the court and science as deserving of a more rehabilitative, rather than retributive or deterrence-focused sentencing.

The overreach of killing, in Calvin Cheng’s full recognition that there will be risk of killing of innocent underaged personnel, goes directly against the principle that “”It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer” (the well-known Blackstone Formulation).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation

Needless to say, this view of his also puts up a dangerously extreme view that can be easily be mistaken for an officially espoused viewpoint, given the great efforts in which Calvin Cheng has poured into advertising that he had once been appointed as a NMP, which although without a vote, does come with a voice of influence in Parliament and the policies of Singapore.

If left without censure now, it is too easy for the common man to make the logical leap that perhaps Cheng’s view is not opposed by the powers here, and from that, it is only too easy for the next radical here to justify his extreme ways with the battlecry of “They will kill our kids as a precaution, nevermind whether they turn out ultimately innocent or not”

What remains now is the question, of how a member of the Media Literacy Council (MLC), with the higher burden of responsibility placed on his online commentary, could behave like this (and have a noted history of other uncivil comments), and yet continue undisciplined in the same role.

Thus ends Renson’s piece.

Calvin the wannabe baby-killer has by apparently deleting RS’s comments shows us the kind of guy that the MLC thinks is representative of the internet community.

As a member of the conservative group says: Nothing else need be said: For here is clearly demonstrated the sort of merit expected of someone who had once been an ex-NMP, and current member of the Media Literacy Council (MLC)… and more interestingly, the sort of acceptable standard his supporters (many of whom have identified themselves in the course of the affair) deem acceptable.

HK has an edge over us in IOT

“For IoT [internet of things], we see Hong Kong as much more advantageous than other places like Singapore because of its proximity to Shenzhen and the ease with which you can rapidly develop prototypes,” the FT quotes VXC David Chen . He helped investee co Hanson Robotics, move from Texas to Hong Kong’s Science Park

Najib owes China big time

So the Chinese in M’sia will under the protection of the Chinese ambassador who has spoken out against anti-Chineseracism

It’s rare to see the Malaysian ringgit rise against the US dollar – especially given its performance this year – down some 18%.

Even more curious that it happened while regional currencies like the Indonesian rupiah and Thai baht continued to fall.

Research houses are also upgrading their forecasts for Malaysia’s stock markets and the economy.

So what’s driving all this positivity?

Well, in part it is thanks to the sale of the energy assets at one of Malaysia’s most notorious institutions: IMDB.

1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) is a state investment fund set up in 2009 and was supposed to turn Kuala Lumpur into a financial hub. But it is currently on a fragile financial footing.

Now, 1MDB has sold one of it, and Malaysia’s, most coveted power assets, Edra Global Energy, to China General Nuclear for $2.3bn (£1.5bn).

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34918740

Want Thai wives?

Don’t play play.

These ang mohs had Thai wives and Phuket properties. Their wives cheated them.

British expat Ian Rance and Irishman Colin Vard are now living almost penniless with their children on the outskirts of Bangkok as they struggle against overwhelming odds to recover properties they bought on Phuket. Both men lost all their investments through frauds that neither of them imagined were possible.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34346620

The wives (exs?) are now in jail but that’s little consolation to their husbands and children.

US banks: Here we go again

Banks seem to lurch from ome crisis to another. From NYT Dealbook

BANKS WEIGHED DOWN BY PILES OF LEVERAGED LOANS Investors have grown skittish about buying the debt of companies with weak credit ratings, leaving big Wall Street banks stuck with piles of debt, Peter Eavis and Leslie Picker report in DealBook. They are starting to book multimillion-dollar losses writing down the value of these positions.

Banks make loans to companies with junk credit ratings in the hope of selling the debt on to investors that include mutual funds, hedge funds and entities called collateralized loan obligations. Investors snap up the debt obligations, attracted by high returns.

The investment banks that focus on the market appear to be sitting onpotential losses that may exceed $600 million.

Private equity firms finance their purchases of companies with the loans, then put the debt on the balance sheet of the acquired company.

A large part of the paper losses comes from debt issued by Veritas, the software company that Carlyle Group is buying in a $5.5 billion leveraged buyout. Morgan Stanley and Bank of America led the transaction and a lack of demand for the debt has left it on the books of the banks.

The hits are a fraction of those suffered by the banks in the 2008 financial crisis and the market for such debt may well recover, but this could weigh on merger activity. Banks that are unable to sell debt may become more stringent in their lending for acquisitions.

If the Federal Reserve raises interest rates next month, that could limit the flow of money that has buoyed speculative markets, including the one for leveraged loans, in recent years.

Banking regulators had discouraged leveraged loan deals that would overburden companies with debt after the crisis, but the market has still ballooned.

Banks do put financial cushions in deals to protect themselves, but on some deals the prospective prices have fallen so far that they might havedropped through those buffers, leaving the banks at a loss.

Human rights kay pohs don’t do “fixers” and “jihadists”

The Court of Appeal ordered the release of alleged match-fixer Dan Tan release from detention on Nov 25. (Bit strange as he should have released on Oct 15)

The Court of Appeal ordered Tan’s release and called his detention without trial “unlawful”. The court not only gave the reasons for their decision but also also addressed the scope of the Home Affairs Minister’s powers in such cases.

————————————————————

Background 

He has been detained without trial since October 2013, under the Criminal Law (Temporary Provisions) Act. The Act gives the Home Affairs Minister power to detain without trial “a person who has been associated with activities of a criminal nature … if the Minister deems it necessary in the interests of public safety, peace and good order”.

He was arrested in September 2013 for allegedly being the “leader and financer of a global football match-fixing syndicate operating from Singapore”. Between 2009 and 2013, Tan had been linked to match-fixing activities in Egypt, South Africa, Nigeria, Turkey and Trinidad and Tobago. Tan also allegedly recruited runners and agents in Singapore to help in these illegal activities.

Originally detained for one year, Tan’s detention was extended for another year, until October 2015. Tan’s first appeal to review his detention was dismissed by the High Court in September 2014. The Court of Appeal heard Tan’s application against this dismissal.

——————————————————————————————

Below is something I wrote in Jan 2014 about the case and what it showed abiut the human rights kay pohs, Below it is an excerpt from CNA on judges’ reasoning.

(Btw, since the Paris murders, HomeTeam has renewed the detention of several alleged jihadists. Maruah and the rest of the kay pohs are silent but had earlier this yr rushed to the defence of Amos Yee, Mummy’s Boy Fantastic. They scared of being killed by jihadists?)

Govt detains without trial S’poreans: No outrage meh activists?

It might be the season to be jolly and of peace and goodwill, what with the Christmas and NY hols gone and the CNY hols coming, but the human rights activists have really got my goat.

The contrast between their vocal support for FT deportess, and their seeming indifference to S’poreans detained without trial make me sick.

Last Friday, it was reported by CNA that, “MHA has placed the son of Singapore Jemaah Islamiyah leader Mas Selamat Kastari under a two-year detention. Masyhadi Mas Selamat, 25, was detained on 21 November 2013 on an Order of Detention under the ISA.”

The silence on his detention from the usual human rights kay pohs is deafening.

TOC, Maruah, Vincent Wijeysingha, Rachel Zeng, Kirsten Han etc etc were all up in arms demanding justice for the manual migrant workers detained by the police after the riot. They were upset many of those detsined were then given air-tickets to move on out of S’pore, rather than sent for trial. Some had the charges  withdrawn and the court granted them discharges amounting to acquittals and then were deported, while many were never charged, just deported. They demanded “due process” for these FTs, even though as someone posted on Facebook, ” Rightly or wrongly, deportation is more lenient than jail and caning.” A lot more, so is it fair to insist as the kay pohs do that the courts must be involved in “due process”? One could even argue that the govt is being easy on “alleged” rioters.

The deportation law is draconian but there are more draconian laws that true blue S’poreans are subject to: the Internal Security Act and the Criminal Law Temporary Provision Act.

They allow the govt to detain almost indefinitely people who never had the benefit of a trial. The former is nowadays used to detain alleged “Islamic” terrorists,  while the latter is used to detain Dan Tan (the guy alleged to have fixed footie matches) and alleged drug dealers (mules get murdered, judicially, after due process if they don’t have useful evidence).

Yes, yes, I know that TOC and Maruah have spoken out against these laws (albeit once upon a time) and have called for their abolition (again once upon a time), and I’m sure Vincent, Kirsten, Rachel etc etc, if asked, will say they oppose these laws and want them abolished.

Still, their silence*, or indifference(?) whenever the govt and mainstream media report these detentions (and they do) when contrasted with the chorus of disapproval and outrage over what is happening to the alleged rioters, and deportees is disturbing at the very least. Double standards?

I have never heard any activist say about Dan Tan, Masyhadi or any other alleged Islamic terrorist, or drug dealer, “Activists, while often faced with heart-wrenching stories, are not just bleeding hearts. Behind the criticism lies a much bigger issue: that of access to justice and due process … But we are obliged to ensure that they have access to justice.” (Kirsten Han in http://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/singaporescene/did-deported-workers-deserve-time-court-015254163.html)

As I wrote last year: The coming deafening silence [referring to Dan Tan’s case] of the usual human rights kay pohs will tell us a lot of their prejudices: they are supportive of FT drug mules, and middle class anti-PAP activists. But not working class criminal suspects (no-one is complaining that Vui Kong’s alleged drug lord is held under ISA CLTPA) or those whom the govt alleges are Islamic radicals. Touch a FT or a middle class anti-PAP activist, and the screams will be deafening, even if it’s juz a policeman paying a home visit.

Are S’poreans too not worthy of “justice and due process”, Ms Han? They too like FTs are human

                                                                                               Hath
 59   not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
 60   dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
 61   the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
 62   to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
 63   warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
 64   a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
 65   if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
 66   us, do we not die?

(Shylock in The Merchant of Venice)

A wicked, cynical, unworthy and doubtless mistaken tot. Could it because our kay pohs know that ang mohs are not too fussed when alleged drug dealers, footie fixers and Islamic terrorists are detained? Only when migrant workers are? http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/2013-12-18/human-rights-activists-accuse-singapore-of-failing-to-recognise-the-rights-of-rioters/1236768

Since the CIA and MI6 are pretty relaxed about working with countries that do not give alleged Islamic terrorists “access to justice and due process”, one can legitimately (if unreasonably) ask if these agencies have managed to influence our kay pohs.

Let me be clear, the kay pohs like Ms Han etc have every right to champion and fight any cause they like: if they want justice for FTs, taz their right. They also have the right not to want justice for S’poreans. They are free to do what they want to do. But I, and other S’poreans, are entitled to make judgements based on their actions, silence and inaction.

My judgement is that “FTs tua kee” attitude is not confined only to the govt: our kay pohs too take pride in it too. Why like that meh? Hath
 59   not a S’porean eyes? hath not a S’porean hands, organs,
 60   dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
 61   the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
 62   to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
 63   warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
 64   a FT is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
 65   if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
 66   us, do we not die?

Related post: Kirsten Han wants S’poreans to have a dialogue with the govt on FTs, despite fact that as a HR activist she should know that the govt doesn’t do dialogue .

—

*WP asked about Dan Tan in parly getting the standard non-answer. BTW, surprised that DPM Teo didn’t ask Auntie, “Bookie ask WP to ask question meh?”. But then, DPM Teo’s late father was a gentleman and must have brought up DPM Teo the “right” way. BTW2, I understand that Maruah had planned to denounce Dan Tan’s detention, but that the media release got lost. An honest mistake, I assume? Like holding a seminar in Little India on “struggle for workers’ rights” weeks after a riot there, albeit on a day unlikely to have many workers in the area?

From CNA on the Dan Tan judgement

ACT SHOULD NOT HAVE A “LOOSE OR OPEN-ENDED REMIT”: CHIEF JUSTICE

In coming to their decision to free Tan, the Chief Justice and Judges of Appeal Chao Hick Tin and Andrew Phang Boon Leong examined in detail the proper scope of the Act. “At its inception, the Act was intended to deal with real and physical threats of harm within Singapore,” the judges noted, citing times when Singapore had been terrorised by “gangsters, secret society members, and drug traffickers with underworld and international syndicate connections”.

The criminal activities must be of a “sufficiently serious nature” to come under the ambit of the Act. While the “precise range of activities caught by the Act had broadened over time, their core characteristics have not”, the CJ pointed out, saying that the act should not have a “loose or open-ended remit”.

DETAINING TAN WITHOUT TRIAL BEYOND MINISTER’S POWER: CHIEF JUSTICE

The apex court also came to a landmark judgement regarding the scope of the power vested in the minister, and ruled that in Tan’s case, the minister’s action “fell outside the limits of his power”.

The Act provides for detention without trial if the criminal activities have a “prejudicial effect” on the public safety, peace and good order of Singapore. This is the “entire reason” for the Act, CJ Menon wrote, emphasising that the activities need not have occurred here, but that they must threaten our public safety, peace and order.

However, there is “nothing to indicate that (Tan) did engage in any activities of so serious a nature” as to warrant detention without trial under the Act, CJ Menon wrote. Furthermore, Tan’s criminal acts had ceased almost two and a half years before he was served with a detention order, he noted.

Though Tan has been linked to syndicated international match-fixing activities, his actions at best “amount to a slew of corrupt practices”, CJ Menon said. “As reprehensible as they undoubtedly are, (they) cannot be said to rise to the level of gravity that they would have to in order to come within the scope of the Minister’s power to act.”

Dr Chee’s kind of U president

S

Spend and Spend not Pap And Pay.

A Bernie Sanders White House would be $8 trillion in the hole over a decade. The socialist U.S. presidential hopeful wants to shake up the U.S. economy with dramatically more spending. His promises from free college tuition to a government health system, which he is likely to outline during Tuesday’s Democratic presidential debate, would cost far more than additional taxes would bring in.

The Vermont senator’s most expensive idea is to convert the American healthcare market to a national system with the government as the single payer. Sanders would essentially extend the current Medicare program, which is for retired people, to everyone. Breakingviews calculates that this would cost some $9.6 trillion more than current projections over the usual 10-year budget period, based on 2010 healthcare spending and other assumptions including a 25 percent discount thanks to Medicare-style negotiating power and price controls.

Sanders wants another $1 trillion to spend on infrastructure. U.S. roads, bridges, trains and the like need investment, but it’s still a hefty sum. And Breakingviews estimates that his call for free public college for everyone who wants it will cost almost as much again, while universal daycare will weigh in at around $500 billion. Along with four other proposals, this yields $12 trillion in new spending. That’s about 25 percent more than currently projected over 10 years.

The candidate running under the slogan “Feel the Bern” isn’t shy about boosting government revenue, too. He would institute a Wall Street trading tax, aiming to raise $1.5 trillion over 10 years. His corporate tax plan would eliminate most loopholes and deductions but leave today’s 35 percent rate intact and applicable to global profit, which Breakingviews calculates would bring in another $1 trillion. Lifting the income ceiling for Social Security payroll tax would bring in a similar amount. All-in, Sanders would lift revenue by about $4 trillion over a decade.

http://blogs.reuters.com/breakingviews/2015/10/12/president-bernie-sanders-would-dig-an-8-trln-hole/

Tighter checks for M’sian visitors ’cause 0.00011% still is 33

11% of Malaysia’s population are IS symphatisers*. Given a population of 30m this works out to to 3.3m.

That’s a large pool of potential recruits that IS can nurture and exploit to join the jihadist movement, says an alarmist on Facebook adding, It’s a no brainer for moderate Malaysians and Singaporeans to be concerned about and to take whatever actions necessary to protect our way of life.

And even if only 0.11% are more than talk cock, sing song artistes, there are 33,000 potentially dangerous people. And even if 0,00i1% turn out to be committed Jihadists taz 330 persons..

And all it takes is one Jihadist to slip across and there could be a tragedy and trauma.

Here’s how a BBC reporter paints the scene in Paris after the recent killings,and which will happen here if only one Jihadist slips thru.

Now it is a front line in a modern form of conflict in which the comfortable landscape of any European or American city can become a physical battlefield.

The enemy wears no uniform and acknowledges no law of war.

Its foot-soldiers could be a man or woman sitting next to you on a bus who work alongside you**, who grew up hearing the same news and studying the same history lessons as you – and came to dangerously different conclusions.

They might live alongside you as sleepers for years before strapping on a suicide vest or picking up an assault rifle and venturing with deadly intent into the same streets they travel on their daily journey to work.

Of course the truth is that almost all of the commuters sitting around you looking bored or tired or apprehensive are exactly what they seem.

France, its politicians say, is at war but it’s an exhausting, nerve-wracking kind of war in which nothing might happen for months or years but where equally tomorrow may bring the chaos and fear of the battlefield to the streets of the city.

Terrorists target the comfortable certainties of daily life. A big part of what they want is that nagging fear they install at the back of your mind like a computer virus.

Is that jumpy-looking young man with a rucksack a suicide bomber or just a nervous student on his way to an exam?

When you say goodbye to your children on their way to a party in a bar or to a rock concert are you really saying goodbye?

What good does it do to say “Take care,” or “Safe journey,” to the people you love when you know that no amount of care that they might take will really protect them and that the safety of their journey is not really in their own hands?

All of this week, Parisians have been thinking all of these thoughts and yet somehow life here has ground on in the gathering gloom of November.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34879382

Even as one who is not an alarmist (say like self) and complacent (think self again), I hope that more checks are made of M’sians (and everyone else)coming in. Not juz checking but intelligent checking:

An example of intelligent checking: Issy Boim, a former Shin Bet officer who worked closely with Israel’s airline, El Al, argues that whereas the Americans are looking for weapons, the Israelis “are looking primarily for the terror suspect”. Mr Baum is a strong advocate of what is known as “profiling”— building a picture of both passengers and airline staff. He rejects the idea that this has to be based on crude stereotyping (being suspicious of all young Muslim men, for example). It should be based on behaviour both prior to flying—for example, when, how and where a ticket was purchased—and at the airport itself..

Economist blog

————————————–

*About 11% of Malaysians hold favourable views of the Islamic State (IS) a Pew Research Centre study has shown.

In the study of Muslims’ attitude towards IS, which the Pew Research Centre sourced from its 2015 Global Attitudes survey, support level for the group in Malaysia was tied for second place with Senegal among 11 nations with significant Muslim populations polled.

A quarter of respondents in M’sia also said they “don’t know” how they viewed the IS, despite PM’sia declaring the group to be a terrorist organisation.

Expressed support for IS was higher only in Nigeria, the home to the current deadliest terrorist organisation, the Boko Haram, as rated by the Institute of Economics and Peace’s Global Terrorism Index 2015 released this week.

In Indonesia — the largest Muslim country in the world by population — 79% of respondents said they were against IS, with just 4% saying they were positive about the organisation.

** Economist writer writes: In the days immediately after the attacks on the London underground network in 2005, I remember my own feeling of tension whenever “a man who matched the profile”—young, Middle-Eastern looking—got into my carriage. No matter how many times I slapped my mental-self across the face and told it to grow up, it is possible to accept that a climate of fear does funny things to people. But, in such a climate we are much better served by not pandering to our irrationality. Everyone would be a lot happier for it.

 

 

Buffett’s grandson invests too

BUFFETT’S GRANDSON SEEKS A DIFFERENT INVESTMENT ROUTE Howard Warren Buffett, the grandson of Warren E. Buffett, had until recently steered clear of the private sector investing that made his family’s fortune. Now that is changing – Mr. Buffett has helped found a permanently capitalized operating company with big ambitions, mimicking the structure of Berkshire Hathaway, David Gelles writes in DealBook.

Although his grandfather bought companies with timeless appeal, Mr. Buffett’s new company, i(x) Investments, plans to invest in early-stage and undervalued companies working on issues such as clean energy, sustainable agriculture and water scarcity.

But like Berkshire Hathaway, i(x) will buy and hold companies. “A fund structure, with its finite life cycle and investors wanting to see returns, is not the right model for impact investing,” said Trevor Neilson, a co-founder of i(x).

The company is just getting started but the founders are already talking a big game. Mr. Neilson said that friends and strategic partners were investing $2 million to $5 million this year.

Next year, i(x) will accept $200 million from family offices, institutional investors and big companies. Mr. Neilson is pitching to firms like Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz and Google.

Mr. Neilson said he hoped that the firm would eventually make investments worth $100 million each year and file for an initial public offering by 2020.

So far, i(x) has not made any investments, though Mr. Neilson said the firm was close to taking its first two stakes.

One possible addition to its portfolio breeds crickets to feed to chickens and fish – an ecological alternative to traditional feedstock. Another makes machines to turn natural humidity into drinking water.

Mr. Neilson and Mr. Buffett say there is a growing market for such futuristic products as investors increasingly take ethics into account. In the meantime, Berkshire Hathaway is under scrutiny for investing in companies that have been criticized over social issues.

Mr. Buffett said he had not asked his grandfather for advice or money.

(NYT Dealbook)

E-petitions: Democracy with S’porean characteristics?

S’poreans love to petition the PAP administration when they are unhappy, not that it does any good. Between the 2006 and 2011 elections, there were petitions* galore with Tan Kin Lian becoming known as the “Petition King”: he even asked people to petition him to stand for president. They didn’t but he still stood for election, and lost hus deposit.

After GE 2011, the PAP administration woke-up its ideas, realising that the swing voters S’were really unhappy

The drubbing the PAP took in 2011 was taken to heart: faced with rising discontent over housing, immigration and transport, it resolved to rectify its ways. In just four years, 100,000 flats were built, rules on foreign workers tightened and billions of dollars spent on expanding transport services.

http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1858123/after-easy-election-victory-real-work-begins-singapore

(I reported here). And we saw a drop in petitions to Ah Loong.

It is conventional wisdom that internet and social media in make it much easier for members and constituents to hold their representatives to account, so if the PAP had used internet and social media more intelligently after 20o6, it could have avoide the humilation of 2011.

All this came to mind as I recently read that earlier this yr, the UK re-launched an e-petition scheme that had gone into the land of the living dead.

Now when a petition that passes 10,000 signatures, it receives a response from the government, and there’s a new cross-party committee of MPs which will look at each petition that gets 100.000 signatures and consider it for a parliamentary debate. More at **

Here, very clear that comments from Tharman notwithstanding, the PAP administration intends on ensuring its hegemony in a de facto one party state.

The problem for the PAP administration is discerning the BS from the likes of Goh Meng Seng, M Ravi, Constance Singham, Balji (Imperial storm troop general turned wannabe Jedi. He didn’t get what he tot he should get isit?), s/o JBJ, Roy and New Citizen Han Hui Hui, Kirsten Han etc and the concerns articulated by people like Terry Xu, Gilbert Goh, P Ravi, Siew Kum Hong (though he’s been a bit quiet recently counting his share options isit?), Chris Kuan, Donald Low amd Yeoh Lam Keong, and ordinary S’poreans.

Well the response to e-petitions would be a good way to gauge the level of support for any idea or proposal. And show S’poreans that S’pore doesn’t need the Worthless Party or Mad Dog Chee To check the PAP adminidation.

Ownself can check ownself with the help of the internet and social media

Who knows? Maybe one day there may be an e-petition asking for the Constitution to be changed to make the PAP the ruling party forever and a day.

All to play for PAP.

——————————————–

*Interestingly Lord Lisvane, the former clerk of the House of Commons, and an now a crossbench peer, said that petitions had been around for “almost as long as parliament has been around”.

“Petitions were the origin of legislation, and were a way of saying ‘fix this’

“The secret ballot, universal male suffrage, the abolition of the slave trade – they took a long time to come about, but they started through a process of petitioning.”

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-34476264

**Labour’s Helen Jones, who chairs the Petitions Committee, said the committee will also be able to consider whether to hold debates on subjects that fail to reach the 100,000 threshold but are “worthy of debate but would not get time elsewhere”.

“We’re going through a process of learning ourselves how to deal with petitions, but also of engaging the public to allow them to understand what can be done and what can’t be done*.

Anyone can start a petition, as long as they are a British citizen or a UK resident.

More than 1,400 have chosen to so far, on topics as diverse as the introduction of mandatory drugs tests for MPs, the introduction of a UK national day, and minimum prices for milk.

Experience has shown that campaigns can quickly go viral on social media, gathering thousands of supportive signatures in a few hours.

 

 

 

Reits are not bonds/ S-Reits

“Real estate is TIPS (Treasury Inflation Protected Securities) on steroids,” adds Mr Steers. “Reits are not bonds. The most certain thing is that if rates are rising and you are in fixed income you will lose money.” FT 

Mr Steers is  from real estate investment firm Cohen & Steers in New York and he’s bullish on US real estate.

Meanwhile in S’pore, CNA reported on 18 November

‘GOOD DEMAND’ FOR SINGAPORE-LISTED REITS

“With the lower leverage threshold, there might be more Singapore REITs who will look to tap this source of funding, given it is still treated as equity instead of debt,” said Mr Tim Gibson, co-head of global property equities at Henderson Global Investors in Singapore. His firm manages about US$123 billion (S$175 billion) worldwide. “Investors continue to seek yield in this environment,” he added.

Mr Neel Gopalakrishnan, an emerging-markets fixed income analyst at Credit Suisse’s private banking and wealth management unit in Singapore, said: “Most Singapore-listed REITs have good credit quality. Hence, there is likely to be good demand (for their perpetuals*).”

Singapore’s listed REITs had an average debt-to-asset ratio of 34.6 per cent at the end of September, versus 32.8 per cent from a year earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The new cap on borrowings takes effect from Jan 1 and the REITs could issue as much as S$12.5 billion of traditional debt without breaching the new threshold, said Mr Hasira De Silva, a Singapore-based analyst at Fitch Ratings.

That leeway narrows to S$7.5 billion if their S$110 billion of assets suffer a 10 per cent depreciation, he said.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/perpetual-debt-the-new/2270948.html?cx_tag=undefined&cid=tg:recos:undefined:standard#cxrecs_s

CNA also reports:

Falling values, rents and occupancies for debt-backed properties could tip Singapore’s economy into further trouble amid the slowest growth in three years.

Office rents may fall as much as 7 per cent this year and another 8 per cent next year as demand slows, according to property consultancy DTZ, while home prices keep declining as a result of cooling measures and loan curbs.

On Oct 26, office landlord Keppel REIT sold S$150 million of perpetual debt without a so-called step-up coupon, a gradually rising interest rate that is usually a feature of such bonds. It sold the notes at 4.98 per cent, 183 basis points more than seven-year debt it sold in February.

In the same month, business park owner Ascendas REIT raised S$300 million issuing similar notes, while serviced apartments specialist Ascott Residence Trust issued S$250 million of them in June.

The value of Singapore’s office buildings fell 0.1 per cent in the quarter ending Sept 30 from the previous three months, while shop prices declined 0.3 per cent, according to data from the Urban Redevelopment Authority.

Home prices dropped 1.3 per cent, the most since the second quarter of 2009, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The FTSE Straits Times Real Estate Investment Trust Index has dropped 11.4 per cent this year, on course for its worst annual performance since 2011.

Meanwhile risks for Reits here will increase in 2016 because weak economic fundamentals will weigh on demand while new supply is added into most sectors, Fitch Ratings said in a report released on 23 Nov.

Fitch expects S-Reits with stronger balance sheets to become more acquisitive in 2016 as they try to boost earnings growth by capitalising on lower asset valuations. Sector leverage – as measured by debt to total assets – is likely to increase in 2016.

On hotel ones, earnings will likely continue declining next year, but at a slower pace, as visitor arrivals into Singapore is expected to recover. Nevertheless growth in hotel room supply in Singapore will continue to outpace demand, leaving operating conditions challenging for the sector.

“We expect ratings of CDL Hospitality Trust (BBB-) and Far East Hospitality Trust (FEHT, BBB-) to remain stable, supported by strong balance sheets, and around 40-50 per cent of income stemming from fixed rent.”

Other hospitality Reits considered in the report include Ascendas Hospitality Trust and OUE Hospitality Trust.

On industrial Reits, pressure on earnings will increase in 2016: the world economy is weak”We expect lower-specification industrial assets, such as warehouses and multi-user factories, to see weaker rental reversions than for higher-specification assets, such as business parks. The demand for business parks is stronger, and a significant part of the new supply is pre-leased,” it said. Ascendas REIT, Mapletree Industrial Trust and VIVA Industrial Trust are among the industrial REITs covered

The strong performance of healthcare Reits is likely to continue in 2016, supported by robust demand for medical services and an ageing population in Asia. Healthcare SREITs’ long-term lease structures with a high degree of rental protection and their high proportion of fixed-rate debt will also support earnings growth.

—–

*Landlords in Singapore are planning to issue perprtual bonds which are treated as equity to get around new rules curbing their debt amid a property slump. Data from Fitch Ratings showing Reits having issued a record S$700 million of perpetual notes with no set maturity date thus far this year.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore is capping borrowings of Reits at 45% of assets from next year, and debt that can be considered equity (Perpetuals) offers landlords a way out.

Under global accounting rules, bonds with no fixed maturity that allow the deferral of coupon payments can be treated as equity.

 

PAP voters are like M’sian Malays?

When TRE republished this, there was an interesting response from a reader comparing the M’sian and S’pore body politick. I like the comparison (“similarity” a better word?) between the majorities in both countries. And do read the last para, it’s a gem.

Daemonic:

November 19, 2015 at 10:31 pm  (Quote)

The Malaysian political/judicial/economic system as it is today is in a mess. Forward looking Malaysian Muslims are aware and deeply concerned so much so that some are joining the DAP, a supposedly Chinese dominated party.

But the majority of the Muslims are either apathetic, unconcerned or too brain-washed by their leaders (political and/or religious) to understand the issues. Unfortunately, here lies the similarity between them and many Singaporeans.

If the DAP succeeds in showing Malaysians that a country can be ruled with competence, accountability and transparency (their proposed CAT system of governance) then it will be a blessings for all Malaysians, present and future.

But there is a lot of caveats. Can the DAP itself avoid the scourge of corruption from appearing among its own leaders and ranks? Can it avoid the stigma of being a “Chinese controlled” party amongst the Malays? Can it convinced the majority Malays that it does not have any hidden agenda but is a truly credible and competent party?

Again here-in lies similarities between the DAP and our opposition parties. Can our opposition parties maintain a high level of integrity and competency once voted in? For those not yet in parliament, do they have hidden vendetta and are truly out to serve the people (or themselves)?

The difference between Singapore and Malaysia is that we are not in as big a mess as they are. But it is scary to see the same level of complacency amongst the majority from both countries. One majority made up by race while the other made up by political affiliation.

Here’s how confusing the situation is there http://www.asiasentinel.com/politics/could-malaysia-najib-pull-off-snap-election/ that an ang moh thinks that Najib will call a GE soon.

My Facebook avater responded: He’s got 2 and a half yrs in office unless UMNO kicks him out.. If he goes for GE and loses, likely to be prosecuted. Waz that in the context context of adding two and a yrs more?

I’ll add that even if he (or rather his wife otherwise knowwn as FLOM: First Lady of M’sia) wants to double down and wins a GE, he might not last another five yrs. UMNO could still kick him out. And if he (or rather FLOM ) wants to call GE and the IMNO regional leaders disagree, he’ll be out of a job. This ang moh talks cock.

Somewhat related Post: We forgot these lions

End of private banking boom in Asia?

Citigroup plans to double the number of wealth management clients in Asia in the next five years to one million, as the bank seeks to capitalise on an emerging middle class in the region.

Going by Citi’s track record in joining any party when it’s about to end (sub-prime lending, commerical property lending etc) our local banks who are trying to get big in privaye banking should be wary.

DBS’ private banking arm is now the eighth largest in the Asia Pacific, according to a widely followed industry ranking released on Friday (Oct 16), after assets under management (AUM) grew by by 35 per cent last year.

Private Banker International (PBI), an industry journal, said DBS’s AUM for high-net-worth clients rose 35 per cent to US$73 billion last year, helped by the Singapore lender’s acquisition of Societe Generale’s Asian private banking business.

“Other factors that contributed to (DBS’) success are a focus on digital banking, innovation, and the ability to retain customers as their individual wealth grows,” it added.

PBI had ranked DBS number nine in its previous ranking. Overall, PBI estimates that total AUM in Asia Pacific increased by 12 per cent to US$1.54 trillion last year.

(CNA sometime back)

Can Dr Chee relate to the swing voters?

Dr Chee recently took a walk around S’pore and pixs of him with S’poreans he met are appearing on Facebook. This ACS boy is really trying really hard to connect with ordinary S’poreans. But I have doubts that he can do this because he and Mrs Chee have shown that they don’t behave like ordinary S’poreans.

Remember the video that appeared during the recent GE campaign* when the Chees gave us insights about themselves: insights that told me that they can’t relate to those who vote for the PAP but who can be persuaded to vote for the Oppo.

Mrs Chee told us that she had, except for a stint of a few months, not worked since graduation. Wah lan so rich meh? So well qualified, and not working. Study in US up to doctorate level and then become housewife? Got money to waste isit? Not very S’porean?

Even when hubbie lost job and made a bankrupt, she doesn’t go to work? OK, granted she is FT (Taiwanese); still I don’t think any ordinary S’porean woman can identify with her attitude of being highly qualified and refusing** to go out to work (I get the impression that she doesn’t even do part-time work), preferring to look after the kids and doing housework.

While the majority of S’porean women may be prepared to stop working for a few years to bring up their children, once the kids are of schooling age, they calculate that it’s more cost-effective to work full or part-time, and employ a maid. But not Mrs Chee it seems, even if Dr Chee is struggling financially.

————————————————————————-

Working women hold up the sky

About 59% of women are in the workforce. If this is raised to 76%, which is today’s rate for males, the labour force will increase by 13% — Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Grace Fu.

More women work, no need for FTs leh?

———————————————————————

Let me very clear. I’m not saying Mrs Chee is doing the “wrong” thing by focusing her attention on the kids and the typical S’porean mum is doing the “right” thing by going to work. There are studies to prove that a full-time parent can be good for the kids.

What I want to point out is that the ordinary S’pore mum is a working woman, juggling work and a family life.

And husband happy with this situation? He has to struggle to pay the bills without his wife’s help?

Got financial problems but not asking wife to work?

During GE campaign

Doesn’t sound like the typical S’porean young husband does it? Again, I’m not saying that he should ask his wife to go to work. I’m simply saying that his attitude is not typical. In S’pore, husband and wife are a team: both work to make ends meet.

Dr Chee is using his family life to show that he can relate to ordinary working S’poreans. Does not work: he has a  highly qualified wife who doesn’t go out to work, choosing instead to look after the kids and do the housework; and he is happy with this.

Look at WP Low or other WP leader. We know very little of their personal lives but we know enough about them to know that theWP leaders are like us. We know a lot about Dr and Mrs Chee but we also know that they are not like typcal S’poreans. They also aliens from Bizarro S’pore*** like PM , Tharman and other PAP ministers? Btw, despite the ministers’ mega salaries most of their wives go to work. I think only Hng Kiang’s wife is a homemaker like Mrs Chee.

Coming back to Dr Chee: the failure to connect with ordinary S’poreans is sad and worrying because only Dr Chee and the SDP, among the Oppo, realise that to effect serious change on the body politick here, the PAP’s monopoly on the politics of hope in S’pore must be broken.

Uncle RedBean describes part of the SDP’s game plan: The biggest lesson learnt from the GE2015 911 effect must be the importance of being relevant as opposition parties to stay in touch with issues and matters that affect the people and their interests. Chee Soon Juan caught the drift and demanded more transparency in accounting to what really happened in the hepatitis C crisis. What happened, when did it happened, who said what and when, who was informed what and when. These simple questions are going to rub some people the wrong way and instead of answering them, may be retorted with more questions or challenges. 

Because the SDP is the only Oppo party that has a comprehensive list of alternative policies that challenges the PAP’s Hard Truths, this shows that Dr Chee and the SDP are trying to go beyond the anti-PAP vote. In the words of a political observer Derek da Cunha no opposition party can get into Parliament simply on the basis of a protest vote, i.e., a vote against the PAP [WP had a narrow window of opportunity that resulted from the PAP’s arrogance] An opposition party also needs a pro-party vote, i.e., people consciously voting for the party. The sum total of the entire protest vote plus a significant pro-party vote will then get an opposition party across the finish line. 

The problem for SDP is that it has the plan right, but

— it’s not a party that is trusted by those willing to vote for Dr Tan Cheng Bock (my short hand for the swing voter) in preference to the PAP’s preferred candidate, and

— Dr Chee can’t connect with ordinary S’poreans let alone the swing voter.

But let’s give Dr Chee credit for trying.

———————————-

*During the GE campaign, I was hoping the SDP team led by Dr Chee could win an upset victory, so I had to sit on my hands and not comment on the video

**Yes, i’m assuming that Mrs Chee is able to work here. If she can’t because she’s on a long term social pass, then this should have been made clear by her or Dr Chee. Then it would be a question of why isn’t she being allowed to work here despite having a doctorate.  Dr Chee being fixed?

***Backgrounder from Wikipedia: The Bizarro World (also known as htraE, which is “Earth” spelled backwards) is a fictional planet appearing in American comic bookspublished by DC comics. Introduced in the early 1960s, htraE is a cube-shaped planet, home to Bizarro and companions, all of whom were initially Bizarro versions of Superman, Lois Lane and their children and, later, other Bizarros including Batzarro, the World’s Worst Detective.

In popular culture “Bizarro World” has come to mean a situation or setting which is weirdly inverted or opposite to expectations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Haze: Season begins in Feb 2016

Not in Aug/ Sept as is traditionally the case.. Or even like a few yrs back in May.

Enjoy the haze-free environment. Not that long more before next season begins.

This is what i posted a few weeks ago

The Indons tell us the fires will cease by the end of Neovember: rains are late this yr leh. What they don’t tell us: Louis Verchot of the Centre for International Forestry Research warns that El Niño may yet induce a second burning season, next February and March. Lax laws are part of the problem. Even more serious are official incompetence and corruption, which have allowed plantations to keep spreading on land that is supposed to be off-limits. A regional treaty designed to combat the haze was drawn up in 2002 that was full of grand promises but lacked teeth.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/11/daily-chart-3

Govt right to be paranoid about rumours spreading

The govt is really “anal” when it comes to rumours. Readers might remember that two years ago, a friend and a good hearted kay-poh whom I respect was singled out by a minister for rumour mongering. Sadly I agreed that the minister had a point even if he the minister was politicking and granstanding when he (the minister) made the comments.

As a former UK PM said in 1976: “A lie can be halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on.” With social mesia and the internet, lies, falsehoods and misrepresentations travel even faster.

And here’s an extract from a recent BC report on the 15th anniversary of a deadly riot

The rumour had been swirling around Birmingham for weeks – a girl had allegedly been gang-raped by a group of men of Pakistani origin in a beauty parlour on Wellington Road.

When the story was broadcast – and presented as fact – on two pirate radio stations, it was the spark needed to ignite simmering racial tensions. The evening of 22 October 2005 saw petrol-bombs thrown, windows smashed, and an innocent bystander stabbed through the heart and killed.

…the allegation of rape that sparked the night of violence is still a mystery. Police have found no evidence to establish whether the girl existed.

Real or not, the allegation was enough to crystallise the animosity between two communities, resulting in violence which is remembered a decade on.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-34639442

 

China’s ‘One Belt One Road’ good for S’pore

Others see a spurt of investment into regions that are already close trading partners with China. Singapore, the trading hub for Southeast Asia, could capture some of the flow.

“The country’s role as a major business, financial and trade hub for the Asia Pacific region will only be enhanced,” says Stuart Fuller of law firm King & Wood Mallesons.

(FT)

Related posts: Chinese pearls in Indonesia

S’pore’s balancing act

PAP are juz gd marketers?

Robert Shiller and his fellow Nobel laureate George Akerlof, have written Phishing for Phools, about how the sellers of cat food and thousands of other products and services “phish” us into buying things we do not want or need.

“Of course they do it,” he says. “If you had a cat food company you wouldn’t say ‘Dried Dead Fish’ on the label…we live in a constructed world that’s filled with deception like this.”

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34788197

When I read the above, I wondered if maybe, juz maybe, the PAP are juz good at marketing. And 70% of us S’poreans fall for their marketing tactics?

No wonder why Goh Meng Seng, s/o JBJ, Roy, New Citizen Han Hui Hui, Dr Chee and M Ravi get so upset? While the WP MPs juz take the money and keep quiet.

Buffet was a Wharton drop-out

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/professionals/111015/3-accomplished-people-who-dropped-out-wharton.asp?utm_source=warren-buffett&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WBW-11/19/15&utm_term=warren-buffett

So if yr child or grandchild doesn’t do well in Pri 6, O-levels or A-levels relax.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

Tis labor lost thus to all doors to crawl,
Take thy good fortune, and thy bad withal;
Know for a surety each must play his game,
As from heaven’s dice-box fate’s dice chance to fall.

 

 

Surviving a terroist attack

Here’s a good BBC link on what to do to improve yr survival chances when caught up in an attack on a public space

The most important to Be Prepared. 

Many survivors of the Paris attacks have said that they mistook the first gunshots for fireworks. This is typical, says John Leach, survival psychologist and military survival instructor.

People who are not expecting gunshots will assume that they are something else because it does not fit in with their expectations. “We respond to the model in our head and we don’t respond directly to the environment and that is what makes us vulnerable,” he says.

(Emphasis mine)

And part of being prepared is to ask is – if anything goes wrong, what is my first response going to be?

The time it can take to understand what is happening can be lethal. But if someone has already thought through a few worst-case scenarios then this process will be quicker. “All you need to ask is – if anything goes wrong, what is my first response going to be?” explains Leach.

The others tips are

React quickly. Part of this is to ignore what friends are doing. It seems those who go to events with friends etc tend to rely on the reactions of friends. Lone wolves react faster.

Make yourself a smaller target by finding cover, If caught in the open, play dead.

Help each other

And

Once someone has managed to escape the situation it’s important for them to remain vigilant. “Get as far away as possible, behind as much hard cover as possible and go to the nearest authority figures for help,” says Reed.

It can be dangerous to join big groups nearby and to take public transport. “Always assume that there’s going to be a secondary device or action,” adds Reed. The key is to take advice from police officers or other officials, as they may have better knowledge of the situation.

 

Juz improve the work life balance here

And babies will be be a by-product.

Singapore regularly ranks as one of Asia’s worst countries in terms of work life balance, and experts say that’s why it’s suffering from a declining birth rate.

“Some women end up having the ‘either/or’ mentality”, Prof Koh said, “choosing either the life of a professional or the life of a mother”.

“But it doesn’t have to be like that. The government is encouraging companies to bring women into the workforce, because it’s good for business, and for the economy.”

But by some accounts, the workplace is only getting more competitive in an already highly stressful Singapore.

Vithiya Gajandran is a 24 year-old postgraduate student. Ambitious and keen to succeed, she is the epitome of the Singaporean millennial.

But while she does plan to have a family some day, she says it’s much harder to have kids and a career in Singapore now than it used to be.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34864993

PAP admin that repressive meh?

Data that implies otherwise was released by Facebook about a week ago and never received a mention in our cyberspace. But a reminder first.

The cybernuts and ang moh tua kee HR activists have been shouting that since 2013, the PAP administration has become more repressive, more intolerant of the “wrong” views on social media and other parts of new media. They cite what happened to the editors of The real S’porean, Roy, and Amos the Boy Fantastic. They also cite the actions talen against Roy, New Citizen Han Hui Hui and their friends in disrupting special needs children as an example of intolerant and repressive behaviour. And then they cite the “plight” of M Ravi even if the behaviour of Roy, New Citizen Hui Hui and the other young hooligans made him go bananas.

Interesting data from Facebook contradicts this narrative.

In the January to June 2015 report, the United States Government made the most requests for user data, at 17,577 requests. This was followed by India with 5,115 and the United Kingdom with 3,384. Singapore placed 20th overall, out of the 92 countries on the list.

(CNA 12th Nov)

The Singapore Government made a total of 198 requests for data in the first six months of 2015, an 11.9 per cent increase over July to December 2014. A total of 213 users or accounts were targeted from January to June 2015, compared to 194 in the previous six months – a 9.8% increase. (Peanuts % increase: see below for comparison with other countries)

.Better still: The Singapore Government did not make any content restriction requests from January to June 2015, according to Facebook.

The India Government made the highest number of contest restriction requests at 15,155. This was followed by Turkey with 4,496 requests, and France a distant third with 295 requests.

But I’m sure the cybernuts and ang moh tua kee HR activists would sneer that there are too many sheep here. hence the lack of action on the part of  the PAP administration. But then this sneer contradicts the wider narrative of repression?

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/11/daily-chart-11

Degree needed to read “terms and conditions”?

My snarky comments at the bottom.

The small print on some insurance and banking products is only understandable to post-graduate students, a consumer group has said.

Fairer Finance also found that a third of all insurance policy documents were written in language only accessible to those educated to university level.

It compared terms and conditions in 280 documents to a range of reading score formulae.

An estimated 16% of UK adults have a reading age of 11 or less.

The research found that no insurance policy documents could be understood by someone with an education level equivalent to an 11-year-old in the first year of secondary school.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34807020

As the small print here are similarly difficult to read, this is as good a reason as any, why the PAP administration should allow more true blue S’poreans to study in  local uni.

Rail corridor plan/ LKY

This model [of part of the winning plan for the rail corridor] makes me think that there is a secret master plan (planning only leh) for a population of 8m. And fact that ST doesn’t photo highlight this in its article double confirms my suspicion. )))) — This was posted by my Facebook avatar, 

Another member of the Facebook group (pretty conservative: we believe that Amos Yee’s punishment was self-inflicated and hustified) ( added, “It’s ultimately 10m population we are planning for. Global city.”

In general, the presence of high rises buildings in the corridor annoyed commenters.

Must we have high rises everywhere? Add to reserves isit? While low rise structures or the absence of buildings raids our reserves?

Seriously, as one Harry Lee made S’pore a clean and green place, benefitting our pockets, we should forget about the high-rises, keep the area green and rename the corridor “LKY’s Way”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fed officials hawkish abt Dec rate rise

NYT Dealbook

SEVERAL FED OFFICIALS READY TO RAISE RATES Federal Reserve officials are turning from the question of whether to act to how quickly to raise rates afterward, Binyamin Appelbaum reports in The New York Times.

William C. Dudley, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, had been hesitant about raising rates, but said on Thursday that there was a stronger case for moving ahead. Stanley Fischer, the Fed’s vice chairman, also suggested there was no reason to keep holding rates down.

Mr. Dudley is an influential adviser to Janet L. Yellen, the Fed’s chairwoman, and his shift reflected the tentative consensus among Fed officials that the time has come to raise the benchmark rate.

Investors and analysts now consider an increase in December all but certain. Borrowing costs have already started to rise in anticipation.

Stocks in the United States fell the most in six weeks as investors braced for the expected rate rise. The fall was also driven by a rout in commodities, which put energy and raw-materials providers under pressure.

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index and the Dow Jones industrial average both slipped 1.4 percent, while the Nasdaq composite index was down 1.2 percent, Bloomberg reports.

Commodity prices tumbled as the stronger dollar and a persistent slump in demand from China dampened a rebound after the summer. Brent crude closed below $45 a barrel on Thursday, while West Texas intermediate slipped below $42 after OPEC warned about the growing oil glut. Copper hit its lowest price since July 2009.

Europe and Asia joined the slide as European equities slipped to three-week low, The Financial Times reports. The FTSE Eurofirst 300 opened 0.3 per cent lower after the Shanghai composite dipped 1.4 percent, Australia’s resources-heavy S.&P./ASX 200 index dropped 1.5 percent and the Nikkei 225 slipped 0.5 percent.

Ms. Yellen has said that she expected to raise rates by about one percentage point a year, but forecasts submitted by Fed officials indicate a divergence in predictions for the benchmark rate at the end of 2016 varying from -0.1 percent to 2.9 percent.

Charles L. Evans, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said he was focused on pressing for rates to rise slowly, while Jeffrey M. Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, said he would prefer a slightly rapider rate of increase than one percentage point a year.

Paris tragedy: Perspectives from UK papers

 

Even if only 1% of new Muslim immigrants are jidhadist inclined

Charles Moore, of the Telegraph, agrees that “what brings it all home, literally, is immigration”, saying: “The grim fact is that we have within our midst thousands of people whose lives are devoted to doing our society harm and hundreds of thousands more who are susceptible to the lies they tell.”

He argues: “Even if it is true, as it probably is, that the great majority of Muslims are as peace-loving and decent as any other group of people, you have the simple problem of numbers. If a million Muslims are reaching Germany this year, and even if only 1% subscribe to the doctrines of [IS], that means 10,000 people dedicated to killing their hosts and assailing the society that accommodates them.”

Other hardline perspectives

Islam – both radical and moderate – comes in for scrutiny. Dr Taj Hargey, of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford, writes in the Daily Mail: “There is nothing in Islam that can justify the taking of an innocent life, nothing that can condone what murderous Islamic State fanatics have done in its name.”

But he accuses mainstream Muslim groups of doing too little to oppose the extremists’ “poisonous ideology”, saying they should be “bussing in” Muslims from across the UK to London. “They should be organising a mass ‘Not in Our Name’ march of all Muslims, irrespective of sect or denomination, condemning IS unreservedly for all it stands.”

Dr Hargey’s comment is accompanied by a photograph of a Luton shop worker holding up a placard reading “#NotInMyName” for a Twitter campaign. That sentiment is captured by Brian Adcock, whose cartoon for the Independent depicts Muslims from a variety of backgrounds holding up similar signs in front of the Eiffel Tower.

However, the Sun’s Trevor Kavanagh reckons we can forget about any such mass demonstrations. He argues: “One of the world’s allegedly peaceful religions has become a bloodthirsty killing machine and all of us infidels are legitimate targets… It threatens once more to become the medieval religious force that centuries ago threatened to consume the known world.”

And Daily Express columnist Leo McKinstry argues: “Sentimentality is of little use in this fight. We require courage not candles, valour not vigils… For us that means ending free movement, freezing immigration, cracking down ruthlessly on extremism, increasing the powers of the security forces and ending the woeful appeasement of political Islam.”

Calling for a freeze on funding for Muslim schools and approvals to build mosques, he adds: “If the mainstream Muslims are really on our side they will want to join in the battle against the radicals.”

The usual liberal take 

However, in its editorial column, the Guardian says it’s understandable “when under threat, to want to seal the borders, to half the tide of refugees, to allow those who would protect us ever greater muscle”. But it points out that “the most numerous victims of [IS] are not westerners but those Muslims unlucky enough to live within their deathly grasp”.

The paper adds: “In case it needs repeating, European societies do not defend their values when they turn on their Muslim fellow citizens – on the contrary, they violate those values.”

From BBC Online

Related post

NOL: Problem for scholar, ex-general

In response to recent news that Neptune Orient Lines Ltd. is in acquisition talks withMaersk Group and CMA CGM SA, Moody’s Investors Service has warned A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S not to pursue any acquisition, Bloomberg reports.

http://shipandbunker.com/news/world/149384-moodys-warn-maersk-on-nol-acquisition

“Maersk Line could possibly derive some synergies from an acquisition, but Maersk Line is one of the few profitable companies in the sector and it could dilute margins initially,” Marie Fischer-Sabatié, a senior vice president at Moody’s, told BloombergBusiness.

“Real consolidation could be positive for the cost structure of companies involved, but it would likely take more than just one or two mergers to materially improve the overall market conditions in the container market.”

“

It would likely take more than just one or two mergers to materially improve the overall market conditions in the container market

Marie Fischer-Sabatié, senior vice president, Moody’s

Last month, Maersk cut its 2015 forecast underlying profit by 15 percent to $3.4 billion, and as part of a cost-cutting strategy it will also slash up to 4,000 Maersk Line jobs and reduce network capacity.

Although he noted that the group’s base strategy is to grow organically, Nils S. Andersen, chief executive officer for Maersk, said he would “welcome any consolidation – that would only be healthy for the container line industry.”

Fischer-Sabatié believes the group is more likely to pursue acquisitions for its oil unit “because it needs to increase its reserve levels.

“If they find the right acquisition target, it could have a positive impact on Maersk Oil’s business profile.”

Despite Maersk’s challenges, Anderson recently pointed out that the group’s 2015 showing overall “reflects good performance in very challenging oil and container shipping markets.”

SG50: We forgot about these Lions

This pix and accompanying caption in

If you grew up in Singapore, you will remember…

led me to think that we S’poreans missed doing very special something for SG59

roarrrrrr…i hve been relocated from my home due to resettlement from mederka bridge aka nicoll highway with my twin brother over to standium walk in 1966 after them they move me to our final place at SAFTI…

We should have moved them back into a prominent, public place: say at either end of the IR at Marina Bay or at either end of the tunnel near the Marina Barrage. Another good site, though less prominent would be on both sides of our side of the Tuas causeway, They could face one another, or face towards M’sia. A better site, and a really prominent place, would be at the Woodlands causeway but there isn’t the land to site them.

Too late now for SG50. But there is time for this injustice to be remedied.

Really? Islamist extremists “have nothing to do” with Islam

Islamist extremists “have nothing to do” with Islam.

The above mantra is something ministers here and politicians all over the civilised world say

“When [Islamic State] posts videos of jihadists reading Koranic verses before beheading their victims as infidels it is pretty clear that their crimes have quite a lot to do with Islam,”says Ross Clark in the Daily Express, a respectable (OK “less irresponsible” UK tabloid.)

I think he has a point: what do you think?

Btw, this appeared a few months back, not on Saturday or Sunday.

And can you blame Danish?

in June, when a Danish Islamist was sent to jail for four years on charges of glorifying terrorism, the mere fact that he had posted Koranic texts on social media was deemed to be acceptable evidence against him.
Read more at http://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2015/08/free-speech-religion-and-europe#iJCHuAvusgWpHS2g.99

Update at 5.40PM:

This sounds about right: Telegraph: Felix Marquardt: Terrorists are defining Islam. We Muslims must react

Let’s see if our Malay minister and Muslim leaders react in a similar fashion. And not the usual: “But this behaviour is not Islamic”.

Feeling free to bite hand that once fed him cont’d

ST not like this meh in noughties?

Below is a piece that appeareded, when the problem at SGH first surfaced. on the Facebook wall of an ex-ST tua kee. I’ll not mention any names because I’m not a FB friend. It came to me via a third party.

I seriously dislike the ST page 1 story. It’s written in such a way as to put SGH in the best light possible like how it is not easy to spot pattern and alarm bells ringing etc…And how SGH is “confident” that transmission has stopped (when it doesn’t know how it happened and doesn’t seem to have got all patients in the two wards? What class wards btw?) And why is it using multi-vials when WHO discourages the practice? Also, Minister is not just “deeply concerned” (the quote is “gravely” according to ST in another part of the paper) but also DISAPPOINTED (which is missing in the story).

I am going to say this outright. Don’t read ST, much better to read TODAY. It has interviews with other doctors and even lawyers. Nobody, however, seems to have got hold of the PEOPLE affected.

Plus, ST says 21 patients when everybody else says 22..

I think the criticism speaks more the writer than about ST. As I said in previous post, even a pariah dog don’t bite the hand that once fed it. There is such a thing as loyalty.

Feeling free to bite hand that once fed him

This first appeared on Yahoo’s forum and I reproduce it as an example of a retired journalist feeling free to bite the hand that once fed him or her. P.N. Balji was the former chief editor of The New Paper and TODAY newspaper, and a media consultant who did something unprofessional: http://exchersonesusaurea.blogspot.sg/2011/06/pn-balji-formerly-of-st-paid-spin.html

Btw, other snarky comments at the end of this letter.

PN Balji: That letter from the MOH to ST

Those with long memories of the Singapore government’s celebrated fights with journalists will tell you that the combative letter from the Ministry of Health to The Straits Times a week ago shows that its media policy is still stuck in the quagmire of the Lee Kuan Yew era.

And all this talk of a light-touch media policy is just that: Talk.

The government could have said in its response to ST assistant political editor Rachel Chang that it was premature to hint of a cover-up because an inquiry into the Hepatitis C scandal was on-going.

Instead, in language reminiscent of the days of bruising encounters with journalists, the ministry said it was “irresponsible” of Chang to insinuate that ministry officials had “improper motives” when she questioned the gap between when the director of medical services was told of the Hepatitis C scare and when the Minister of Health was informed. From Sept 3 to Sept 18, there was a delay of 15 long days.

Sept 11 was the date when GE 2015 was called and it came smack in the centre of these 15 days. And so the obvious question: Did the delay have anything to do with the election date? It was not something that a government that has portrayed its very existence and survival on clean politics was going to let go without a sharp response.

Its reaction was not just intended for the journalists of ST. It wanted to send a signal to everybody that this is an OB marker that cannot be crossed. This government continues to be obsessed with media control. In fact, it has brought about reforms in nearly every government policy, but has kept its
media policy untouched.

Suspicion of media’s motives continues to run deep even to this day. And if anybody had even the slightest belief that with the swing back in votes in GE 2015, the government would relax its hardline stand, then the MOH letter is a stark reminder that nothing has really changed.

You can bite at the fringes, but don’t dare to even hint of a government cover-up – that is the message. ST could have just published the letter and left the matter at that. But it went on its bended knees and apologised. It might have wanted to stave off further official or unofficial action from the government.

The editors of an earlier era were no angels. But the book OB Markers by former editor in chief Cheong Yip Seng showed some bright spots in an otherwise dark age. The revelations turned out to be an embarrassment for the government after its most trusted media boss listed in a breathless fashion the instances of government interference in what and how media should report certain events and who should be appointed to the top positions in the newsroom.

But there were also instances when the editor in chief had showed his independent hand when calls came from masters at the Istana. And, don’t forget, that was during a time when Lee Kuan Yew was at his rogue best.

Today’s editors, who should be more independent in serving a society that seeks a plurality of views, seem to be stuck in that dark age of Singapore journalism. The worry is that censorship and self-censorship is so embedded in Singapore journalism’s DNA that even if the shackles are removed, I doubt they will know how to exercise their new-found freedom.

How sad.

P.N. Balji

How sad. No loyalty to the hand that fed him well, very well. He should juz sit down and shut up and enjoy his retirement. Dogs, even pariahs know how to behave better, a lot better.

S’pore mercenary prick of region?

Remember this outburst

The verbal sparring between Malaysia’s opposition lawmaker Tony Pua and Singapore’s Ambassador-at-Large Bilahari Kausikan over whether Malaysian Chinese are delusional in trying to change the political system escalated today (Oct 9), after Mr Pua lashed out at Singapore, calling the Republic a “mercenary prick”.

“He did Singapore no favour by cementing the perception of his country as the mercenary prick of Southeast Asia … And they wonder why they have no friends,” the Democratic Action Party (DAP) lawmaker wrote on Facebook today. “I don’t care much if this was the view of some academic or armchair critic. But as the Ambassador-at-large, Mr Bilahari is a spokesman for Singapore.”

Funny for a senior member of a party whose leaders came to S’pore to report to one LKY when the DAP won power in Penang. Did the chief minister and his dad kowtow to Harry Lee?

Well so how come the DAP opposes S’pore type measure that the M’sian govt initiated

Pointing out that Singapore also has cash assistance policies, Prime Minister Najib Razak defended today (Nov 1) the Bantuan Rakyat 1 Malaysia (BR1M) cash handout.

Mr Najib said Putrajaya was only looking after the interests of lower income groups and those in rural areas burdened by rising living costs.

“If Singapore can give cash aid, why can’t Malaysia also give out BR1M?” Mr Najib said in a speech at the Parti Bersatu Rakyat Sabah (PBRS) conference here.

Yes in deed, why not DAP?

Unicorns may not be real

Unicorns: private technology companies with a market value of more than US$1bn.

From NYT Dealbook

DIZZYING RIDE MAY BE ENDING FOR START-UPS Unease over the dizzying valuations of private companies is bringing some prices back down, Michael J. de la Merced and Katie Benner report in DealBook.

Snapchat was discounted 25 percent by one of its more recent investors, the mutual fund giant Fidelity, as The Financial Times reported. The Information also reported that Dropbox was devalued by Blackrock, the giant asset manager.

These markdowns may put the brakes on a market where investors have been pouring in billions in the hope of getting the next Facebook or Google.

Fidelity valued its stake in Snapchat at $22.91 a share as of Sept. 30, down from $30.72 in the previous quarter, though the reasons for the markdown are unclear.

One late-stage investor in Dropbox said that the drop in that company’s value by mutual funds was a result of the company being compared with Box, a storage company that went public in January and has a market value of about $1.6 billion. Dropbox was valued in its last fund-raising at about $10 billion.

Mutual funds had fought to buy pieces of companies like Snapchat and Dropbox because their value was growing faster than that of many publicly traded companies. Private shares also allowed mutual funds to get to know the start-ups and put them in a good position to buy shares when they went public.

Their jockeying with venture capitalists, hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds helped push up prices.

Unlike venture capital firms, mutual funds have to value each of their portfolio holdings every day and report the values at least every half year, even hard-to-value assets like shares in private companies.

There are often discrepancies between mutual funds that own pieces of the same private companies because they can negotiate for special treatment.

Sometimes valuations can also be tricky because there aren’t always fair publicly traded comparisons either. In this case, mutual funds may look at whether the companies have lived up to their earlier projections.

S’pore faces tricky Sino-US balancing act

“Malaysia faces tricky Sino-US balancing act”* was the headline of an ST story on an inside last Friday.

Actually the headline should be changed to “S’pore” and put on the front page to commemorate president Xi’s visit.

After all, we are a forward base for the US navy in all but name what with “Two US Navy (USN) Littoral Combat Ships (LCSs) will be forward deployed to Singapore in 2016, a senior USN official has confirmed.” http://www.janes.com/article/50936/usn-confirms-2016-as-starting-point-for-deploying-two-littoral-combat-ships-to-singapore

And we know don’t we that the US navy intends to challenge China’s claims that the South China Sea is China’s?

And we know that both the US and China are big trading and investment partners od S’pore.

——————————-

*Text: As the United States and Japan tussled with China over the wording of a concluding statement at an Asian security meeting in Kuala Lumpur this week, caught in the middle was host Malaysia.

Plans for a joint statement were eventually dropped by the Malaysian government due to disagreements over the disputed South China Sea. US and Japanese officials wanted to address Beijing’s island- building. Chinese officials resisted.

The episode illustrates the thin line Malaysia and other smaller South-east Asian states must walk in balancing ties with China and the US, especially since a US warship last week challenged the territorial limits around one of China’s man-made islands in the Spratly archipelago.

Malaysia’s biggest trading partner is China, according to Malaysian government statistics and, in contrast to other countries with competing claims to the South China Sea, such as the Philippines and Vietnam, it has typically played down concerns over China’s expanding military reach.

Nevertheless, US defence officials say Malaysia, along with other states in the region, has sought a greater US military presence to counter Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea.

“We see the increased demand… really across the board in the region,” said a senior US defence official. “Malaysia’s a good example.”

Yesterday, US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter visited the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in the South China Sea, accompanied by Malaysian Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, as he wrapped up a three-day stay in Kuala Lumpur. Mr Carter called the ship’s presence “a sign of the critical role that US military power plays in what is a very consequential region for the American future”.

US Marines and their Malaysian counterparts will also hold a joint amphibious training exercise next week in eastern Malaysia.

Malaysia has a long-standing arrangement to service and supply US military ships and aircraft as they pass through the region, making them frequent visitors to its ports. The number of US ship visits has steadily risen, from a handful per year in the early 2000s to more than 30 visits in 2011, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Datuk Seri Hishammuddin this week highlighted the quandary for smaller states, saying he hoped nations outside the region would not raise tensions. “We will continue to engage China. We will continue to engage the US,” he said. “The fact that we are able to engage them and actually look at the reality… That is a clear message to the major powers out there.”

US and Western diplomats say they have been keen for several years for Malaysia to pay closer attention to mounting security challenges in the region, particularly from China. Chinese warships have staged regular patrols off James Shoal off the Malaysian state of Sarawak on the island of Borneo.

Diplomats and analysts who have viewed satellite images say Chinese coast guard ships now also maintain a semi-permanent presence at South Luconia Shoals, to the north of James Shoal.

“Malaysia’s role and importance in broader security issues, particularly the South China Sea, is only going to grow more strategic,” one Western diplomat said. “It is a matter of pushing and nudging them into doing the right thing, rather than expecting them to take a lead and confront China.”

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Crying all the way to the bank

Despite a bad yr with losses mounting.

Or should this be “Laughing all the way to the bank with the investors’ money”?

From NYT’s Dealbook

BONUS PAY ON WALL STREET LIKELY TO FALL Bonuses in the financial industry this year are expected to fall 5 to 10 percent, Nathaniel Popper reports in DealBook. It will also be the first year since 2011 thatcompensation for the whole industry is expected to drop, according to a report by the compensation consulting firm Johnson Associates.

There are still some bright spots in private equity and mergers-and-acquisition work, but most of the industry is struggling. The report expects end-of-year compensation in investment and commercial banking to be down 30 percent from 2009 levels.

Business lines requiring less capital, often because they are considered less risky, are seeing better returns and bonuses. For bankers advising on mergers and acquisitions, incentive payments are expected to be 15 to 20 percent higher.

Asset management requires less capital but will experience a 5 percent drop in bonuses this year as the business struggles with tepid markets and economy. The sharpest decline is expected in fixed income, where bonuses are predicted to drop 10 to 20 percent this year.

Finance remains one of the most generously paid industries in the world. The average securities industry bonus was $172,860, according to the New York State comptroller’s office.

But it is facing challenges from new regulation, slow economic growth and competition from new, technologically oriented competitors.

European banks have had to cut back and make changes to management.American banks have fared better, but companies like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have been turning in disappointing results. Alan Johnson, founder of Johnson Associates, said companies would have to cut costs significantly in the months ahead.

He noted that the ripple effects mean that Wall Street is losing its allure for the most talented young potential recruits who receive better offers from tech companies in Silicon Valley.

“In the last few years, it’s become a real issue,” he added.

A TOUGH YEAR FOR HEDGE FUNDS, BUT NOT REAL ESTATE Hedge funds have had a tough year with volatile markets, but hedge fund managers remain incredibly wealthy, Alexandra Stevenson and Matthew Goldstein report in DealBook. Larry Robbins, the hedge fund manager who founded Glenview Capital Management, bought a Manhattan penthouse on the Upper East Side with sweeping views of both the Hudson River and the East River for $37.9 million this summer.

Mr. Robbins’ real estate deal comes at a trying time for his $8.8 billion hedge fund. Last week, he apologized to investors for losing 15 percent of their money so far this year.

“I’ve failed to protect your capital,” he wrote in the seven-page mea culpa. He promised to forfeit his pay for this year.

Mr. Robbins has still managed to profit handsomely over the years from his firm’s performance and has a net worth of $2.3 billion.

His new apartment in the Charles condominium on First Avenue will be used as a second home. His primary residence is a sprawling estate on over four acres of land in Alpine, N.J.

Mr. Robbins is neither the only one splashing out on property, nor the only one whose hedge fund is struggling.

William A. Ackman, the founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, is part of a group of investors that this year closed a deal to pay $91.5 million for a six-bedroom apartment at One57, a luxury residential tower in Manhattan. Pershing Square is down 19 percent so far this year.

If elections neither free nor fair: Why is Dr Chee bothering?

SDP Secretary-General Chee Soon Juan speaking at the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) Post-Election Conference 2015 said that the PAP wins elections because the election system is neither free nor fair: the party controls the print and broadcast media, it uses state bodies such as the People’s Association for its own partisan-political purposes, and the Elections Department works from under the PMO.

This is a repeat of part of his comments immediately after GE 2015 which left me confused on what the SDP is up to.

Yet Dr Chee has made it very clear in private that the SDP will continue its attempts to win seats in paely. And I’m told by a reliable source that the SDP Old Guard, people like his sis and John Tan, who had supported his long foray into civil disobedience*, support his present position of trying to work within the system. I was uncertain of their views.

Isn’t their attitude strange? They sound like an abused partner who, instead of walking out of a destructive, problematic relationship, just nervously asks: ‘Can we talk about this?’ while continuing the relationship?

Something has to give.

But then. “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”. (Thoreau)

And then maybe Dr Chee and his SDP think that the PAP administration are like the Burmese generals and he is S’pore’s very own Aung San Su Kyi., and the SDP is her NLD.

All I can say is that Aung San Suu Kyi has been pretty consistent in her approach since she entered politics in the late 1980s. Dr Chee has turned this way and that way. And whatever one may say about the PAP administration, 70% of voters trust the PAP to do right by them. Can’t say that the Burmese trust the generals to do right by them.

(Related post: What the SDP, activists and analysts don’t get)

Update at 2.45pm: Dr Chee should be asking himself if he’s right how come WP can win a GRC and retain it; how come Hougang is fortress WP; and Potong Pasir was fortress Chiam for a long time; NBN could win; and SDP once upon a time could win seats (before he took over and ran it aground on the rocks of civil disobedience?

——

*They all believe that the PAP administration’s greater tolerance of alternative voices was due to their heroic efforts but that the WP reaped the benefits (and the MP allowances).

Capitalism beyond parody

Co doesn’t want to make $. But shareholder wants to sell loss making co to highest bidder.

What am I missing?

From NYT Dealbook

TESTING A PLEDGE TO BALANCE SOCIAL MISSION WITH PROFIT Laureate Education, the world’s largest for-profit higher education provider, is about to find out whether it can scorn profits and still be embraced by Wall Street, Steven Davidoff Solomon writes in the Deal Professor column. It wants to become a public benefit company with a purpose of improving global education, not just its profits.

After being taken private in a $3.8 billion buyout led by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts in 2007, it is seeking to return to public markets. While it generates substantial cash, the company has lost about $227 million in the last two years because of high interest payments on its debt.

These losses and a volatile market already make its public offering an uphill battle. That’s why it is a bit odd that the company also announced that it would be the first publicly traded public benefit corporation, Mr. Solomon writes.

A public benefit corporation allows the company’s board to forgo profit in pursuit of a specific benefit for society at large or the company. Laureate’s benefit is the “positive effect for society and students by offering diverse education programs both online and at campuses around the globe.”

The do-gooding may mask deep, complicated issues.

It can be hard to define a public benefit and say exactly what “creating a positive effect” means.

“Given the vagueness here, instead of being a force for good, Laureate’s benefit may simply result in greenwashing, that is, use of a public-relations-enhancing social purpose to fritter away money without oversight,” Mr. Solomon says. Vagueness might be acceptable in a private company with only a few owners, but Laureate will have thousands of shareholders.

Most people invest through mutual funds, which in many cases have an explicit fiduciary duty to invest for profit. So the question is whether many of the big institutions will avoid investing in Laureate because of its status.

In addition, there is the issue of governance. Laureate has a form ofgovernance that is especially unfriendly to shareholders and raises questions about its public benefit status. Laureate will go public with dual-class stock, which will maintain K.K.R.’s control over the company.

K.K.R. is out to sell its stake at the highest price possible, not benefit other causes, so this raises questions about how much attention Laureate will pay to its status.

Companies today do many things that are not immediately profitable. They make donations and support causes all the time. So there is one final question: What is this corporate form good for?

Defining Oppo “Unity” and “Credible Candidates”

Following the Institute of Policy Studies publishing its analysis of the GE2015 results, based on surveys done with voters, and a related  conference, the MSM and cyberspace are full of reports, commentary and analysis. (Even I joined in pointing out that one reasonable conclusion of the survey is that the PAP is doomed.)

The noise reminded me that anti-PAP paper warriors (brainy ande nutty) when still in shock and denial (they still are) gave advice to the SDP, WP and other Oppo parties on how to do better next time.

Their advice centred around the need for Oppo unity and good candidates.

I’ll use Uncle Redbean’s advice as a representative sample of these views as he is pretty direct:

Perhaps these three parties* should hold a pow wow session to build a bigger base for a new coalition to fight the next battle. In the process, they could round up the better potentials in the remnant parties and invite them to the coalition or new party.

There is an urgent need to get the act together, to get all the good candidates together to mean business. To put up an opposition party is a very serious business and there is nothing better than to join forces to stand united. No more loose cannons and mavericks standing alone shouting in the wilderness. It would not do. A real, credible and substantial force is needed to win the confidence of the voters if they want to stand a chance in the next GE.

http://mysingaporenews.blogspot.sg/2015/10/ge-2015-rude-awakening-for-opposition.html

On the issue of “unity”, the problem is that he and others have not defined what they mean by “unity”. A combined manifesto? What can be more united than the present informal system of sharing out “seats”. In the last UK election, the Tories and the Liberal Democrats fought for votes in all constituencies despite being in a coalition govt for the previous five yrs.

True there can be problems when WP thinks it has a better chance than the tiny tots, otherwise the system works: if’s a straight fight between the PAP and an Oppo party (99.9% of the time). And even then when there are two oppo parties, the other oppo party candidates always loses his deposit.

Then there is the issue of “credible candidates”. The candidates of the WP, SDP, SingFirst and the Chiams were all credible candidates in my view. But they were soundly trashed. So the Oppo needs more credible candidates than a NUS, NUH professor, uni lecturers, lawyers? Please define credibility UncleRedbean and fellow advisers to help the Oppo parties better select winning candidates.

Related to this is where to draw the line of who is not a credible candidate, and who is?

Are Roy, M Ravi, New Citizen Han Hui Hui, Goh Meng Seng and s/o JBJ credible candidates? Going by comments that Uncle Redbean has made about them, he seems to think they are all credible candidates.

I for one don’t think they are. To me, they fall within Uncle RedBean’s loose cannons and mavericks

And their share of the votes tell me that only 20 odd percent of the voters (the really hard core)  think they are.

As for the credible candidates of the WP, SDP, SingFirst and the Chiams, their credibility didn’t prevent them from being thrashed, albeit the SDP and WP candidates managed to lose less badly than the other Oppo candidates.

So calls for “unity” and “credible candidates” are only useful if accompanied by explanations of what these terms mean.

————————

*WP, SDP and SingFirst. He now sees the Chiams no “ak”. I also see the Chiams as now irrelevant.

 

Last Deepavali in Marina Bay’s Little India?

A CNA story* on Sunday said that StanChart will be cutting jobs here in Technology and Operations. Now this is an area dominated in StanChart by FTs from India like two-timing New Citizen Raj**

That brings to mind the following:

FT reported that India is so impt to StanChart that it’s planning to set up a subsidiary so that it can expand its branch network there. A wag commented: “In Singapore there is an area known as “Little India” (I had lunch in the area yesterday). Go into the offices of StanChart’s regional office here and any S’porean would think that “Little India” has expanded into the Marina Bay area.”

Marina Bay’s Little India, will be no more? This will be the last Deepavali in StanChart’s Marina Bay office? Next yr will be the first Chinese New Year there?

——————————-

*Following Standard Chartered’s announcement that it will axe 15,000 jobs globally, the bank has declined to reveal how many of these job losses will come from Singapore.

However, recent high-profile departures are said to include the bank’s global head of FX research Callum Henderson and global head of aviation finance Simon Perkins.

A source familiar with the Asia-focused British lender told Channel NewsAsia on condition of anonymity that Technology and Operations is an area in Singapore targeted for cuts.

When contacted by Channel NewsAsia on Friday (Nov 6), a StanChart spokesperson said a large number of the total headcount reductions will be through attrition. The spokesperson said the bank was unable to provide further details at this point in time.

Standard Chartered currently employs around 7,000 people in Singapore.

The bank on Tuesday said it will cut 15,000 of 86,000 jobs around the world, meaning that nearly one in five employees will lose their jobs.

**I understand that New Citizen Raj works in StanChart.

Haze: Help? What help?

A new law introduced in Singapore this year that aims to drag Indonesia’s fire-starters through its own courts may make more difference. Retailers in the city-state have already stopped selling products made by some firms under investigation.

(Economist)

But otherwise our fire fighting team has returned and no new team is going out.

The Singapore team helping to fight haze-causing fires in Indonesia returned Saturday afternoon (Oct 24) after more than 10 days in Palembang.

The return marks the completion of the Singapore Armed Forces’ two-week deployment, as requested by Indonesian authorities.

A total of 40 SAF and Singapore Civil Defence Force troops were deployed on Oct 10.  A Chinook helicopter with a 5,000-litre heli-bucket was also deployed. Over the two weeks, it had discharged more than 400,000 litres of water and extinguished more than 50 hotspots in Sumatra.

(CNA)

This blog has been pretty critical about the Indon officials false pride and BS but if S’pore has not offered to send another team and another to help, then our help is really “peanuts” and not worth accepting in the first place.

More than 20,000 firefighters are battling blazes across its jungles and peatland. So our one-time help of 40 fire-fighters and some eqpt is “peanuts” by any standard,

But maybe we did offer to send another team (and then another), but the Indons refused our help?

But then I’m sure that our ministers would have made that fact public.

30% keep on KPKBing– Don’t despair

Be brave and of good cheer. History is on yr side. PAP is doomed: by demographics and S’pore rising levelsw of education.

I’m not joking.

That’s a reasonable conclusion to draw from the survey* by the PAP administrations’s very own Institute of Policy Studies that shows that respondents who viewed the SDP and WP as credible were mainly those aged 39 years and below, and mainly had a university and diploma education.

As for the PAP, it was the pre-independence generation, or those aged above 55 years that mainly saw the party as credible.

Reasonable conclusion: only the dying, about to die and the uneducated really support the PAP. Goh Meng Seng, Roy Ngerng, Han Hui Hui, Kirsten Han, Lynn Lee and TRE cybernuts are not representative of the 30% even if they behave as though they represent the 30%. SDP’s Dr Paul Thamby, and Leon the Lion are?

No wonder Ah Loong says the PAP must change, and the PAP’s already preparing for the next GE (I’ll blog soon on what its a doing in my area, a safe PAP area according to the WP), and the acting minister of education plays down the PAP’s success (my take).

So Oppo activists and anti-PAP cybernuts should look on the right side, and look beyond the trashing they got and in the case of the latter fully deserved.

And Dr Chee (and the ang mohs backing him) must really be be happy that the percentage of people who found the party credible** more than doubled from 20% in GE2011 to 42% in GE2015. The PAP saw an increase of credibility of only 20 percentage points, while the Worthless WankersP’s credibility in the eyes of voters increased by 15 percentage points. Too bad for Khaw and his ministry’s civil servants, no performance bonus for sliming the Wayang Party over the AHPETC accounts. It didn’t work. WP’s cred did not fall.

Related post on what stats really mean: they are not facts.

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*2,015 S’poeans were interviewed for the survey, by phone from 12 to 26 September. IPS senior research fellow Gillian Koh was in charge of the survey.

**But he can’t afford too many of things like this

The news that Jeffrey George was arrested by the Central Narcotics Bureau comes as a shock. I have known Jeff for many years and all this time he has discharged his duties as an SDP member and leader with professionalism. He is respected and well-liked by his party colleagues. This is why the matter is all the more a complete surprise.

At this time, the family members need support as they go through a difficult period. They should be left alone to sort things out.

Chee Soon Juan

Secretary-General
Singapore Democratic Party

Guy was SDP chairman until juz before his arrest it seems. Very convenient for SDP.

 

 

 

Next haze season begins in Feb 2016

The Indons tell us the fires will cease by the end of Neovember: rains are late this yr leh. What they don’t tell us: Louis Verchot of the Centre for International Forestry Research warns that El Niño may yet induce a second burning season, next February and March. Lax laws are part of the problem. Even more serious are official incompetence and corruption, which have allowed plantations to keep spreading on land that is supposed to be off-limits. A regional treaty designed to combat the haze was drawn up in 2002 that was full of grand promises but lacked teeth. 

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/11/daily-chart-3

China really loves us! No BS!

It sends us its money. Money talks, BS walks.

As at end 2013, we were the third largest destination for China’s FDI.

Ah Loong must be doing something right, right?

 

President Xi, rote learning and interactive teaching style

During his visit to the UK, president Xi said, after watching a BBC programme recreating a Chinese school in England, he had realised that “the British have learned the virtues of strict discipline” from China.

The Chinese, meanwhile, had been learning the advantages of recreation, he added.
“Chinese children do not play enough. They should play more,” Mr Xi said.

But the ex-master of a posh UK (Duchess of Cambridge attended) school expert thinks that

China’s education system is robbing its young people of the chance to become unique individuals, a leading educationalist says.

Author and academic Sir Anthony Seldon says China’s strict schooling style needs to change or its youngsters will suffer, along with its economy.

Chinese schools, often criticised for rote and repetitive learning, should be more holistic, says Sir Anthony.

In a speech in Shanghai on Friday, Sir Anthony, now vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham, said: “China has some of the top schools in the world and is leading the way with maths and science.”

Indeed Shanghai and Hong Kong are among the top performing districts in the world, according to the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development.

Sir Anthony added: “It is the ‘human’ skills that cannot be replaced by computers that Chinese schools and schools worldwide need to be giving far greater focus.

“Many schools are robbing the young of the opportunity to blossom into the unique individuals that they are because too many teachers think that solely cramming pupils’ heads full of facts is education.

“Many education systems focus on exams being the sole validators of school, but recent research suggests that jobs with a big growth in salary have been those that require a high degree of social skills,” he adds.

Sir Anthony, former master of leading private school Wellington College, is a great advocate of protecting and enhancing pupils’ well-being in order to maximise their potential to learn and express themselves confidently.

Like many private schools, Wellington College has an international school in China, where it offers a traditional English public school education.

http://www.bbc.com/news/education-34605430

Rote learning  versus interactive teaching style

The teaching style is focused on note-taking and repetition, otherwise known as rote learning.

This is a great contrast to England’s more interactive teaching style, where pupils are encouraged to participate in class and make judgments for themselves.

The Chinese believe children learn faster and better by rote learning

Chinese children live under the One Child Policy and feel the weight of responsibility on their shoulders, so there is great importance placed on their educational achievements.

Good exam results are associated with social status and success and entire families can pin all their hopes on the single child.

Chinese pupils learn the same subjects as English school children in the main, but are combined with practical work experience around the school campus, as well as Chinese culture, morality and ethics.

One feature of Chinese schools that England’s teachers may welcome is that the pupils almost always are required to clean their own classrooms.

StanChart: What ST doesn’t tell S’poreans

And neither did BT or MediaCorp.

The constructive, nation-building media should have reported or analysed or quoted analysts that

— Temasek could have prevented the problems from growing out of control by kicking previous mgt’s ass* when yellow lights were flashing Ang moh tua kee isit? HoHoHo);

— the shake-up restructuring plans are underwhelming investors (shares have fallen over 11% this week; and

— the changes will not be that rewarding.

It’s not me, or TRE cybernuts or Uncle Redbean (they too didn’t), it’s the UK’s Guardian that writes:

The big long-term shareholders – Temasek, from Singapore, and our own Aberdeen Asset Management – are obliged to sound supportive, swallow the lack of a final dividend and back the rights issue. But they should also look in the mirror. The market smelled trouble at Standard Chartered for at least two years, but the pressure from the wings rarely rose above the level of mumbles. Temasek and Aberdeen were too willing to believe the boasts from the highly remunerated boardroom about Standard Chartered’s specialness.

The consequences of delay are now horribly clear: a decade of chasing growth will be followed by half a decade of clean-up and cost-cutting. This story could have been different.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2015/nov/03/standard-chartered-fails-to-realise-resilience-boasts

Yup it could have been different. Temasek has an over 20% stake in StanChart which should give it a strong voice, if it uses it.

And the MSM doesn’t tell us that some analysts are not impressed by the plans to launch a capital raising, cut 15,000 jobs, slash almost 30% of its $10bn cost base and restructure almost a third of its US$315bn risk-weighted assets.

In fact credit rating has juz been downgraded by Fitch Ratings in the latest sign that the new strategy is not being well received.

And finally the MSM doesn’t tell us that the clean-up will not bring great rewards

Yet these rewards are humdrum and distant. StanChart expects return on equity to remain below 10 percent until 2020. That’s no better than troubled investment banks like Deutsche Bank. A further economic slowdown in its main markets, or increased regulatory demands, could throw it off course. Even after a 10 percent drop on the morning of Nov. 3, StanChart shares trade on about 80 percent of tangible book value, after adjusting for the rights issue. With a long slog ahead, it’s hard to see much upside.

http://blogs.reuters.com/breakingviews/2015/11/03/stanchart-faces-years-of-pain-for-humdrum-gain/

Here’s another interesting insight

Never believe a big bank that boasts that its culture is so different: its lending principles conservative, its business immune to the traditional banking vices of over-confidence, over-expansion and bad behaviour.

For a decade, Standard Chartered told us that its rising income and profits flowed from a unique winning formula. Here was chairman John Peace in the annual report a few years ago describing the supposed magic: “2012 was another year of good performance for Standard Chartered, thanks to a consistent strategy, a stable management team, supportive clients, customers and shareholders, and, above all, our great people.”

(Guardian)

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*It was already unhappy over corporate governance over the number of executive directors on the biard and had expressed its unhappiness publicly by voting against the  reappointment of the executive directors yrs ago when the bank was a jewel in the Temasek portfolio and management were considered geniuses.

Tighten yr belts mortgagors

Enjoy Deepavali but be prepared to suffer during Christmas, New Year and CNY. Interest rates are likely to go up.

Just over a week ago when I wrote this,  interest rate futures implied less than a 3o% chance of a tise by the Fed in December (markets didn’t think the Fed would raise), whereas the odds were close to even (could go either way) yesterday morning our time. Then in NY time, interest rate futures moved to price in a 58% possibility of rate “lift-off” occurring in December, up from 50% earlier in the day. Chairman of Fed said December would be a “live possibility” for a rate rise if incoming data supported that expectation.

Education minister doesn’t know difference between “percent” and “percentage-points”

“If you look in terms of percentage in hotly contested areas, there is no 10 per cent swing. It’s about 5″, said Acting Minister for Education Ong Ye Kung on Wednesday. .

No not another person who doesn’t know the difference between “percent” and “percentage-points” or “points”. And he’s a minister and a next generation leader?

Sometime back I ranted

A Fellow from the Institute of Policy Studies, one Johannis Aziz wrote on IPS Commons (“Where Minds Meet”), Singaporeans voted in a general election that saw the incumbent PAP government enjoy a 9.8% vote swing in its favour.

Hello what “9.8% vote swing”? While this kind of garbage is common on TRE, TOC or social media, a Fellow of the Institute of Policy Studies should know better. He should not be as financially illiterate a TRE cybernut like Oxygen. And if he’s no moron, he should not use words sloppily, again like cybernuts.

I’ve rebuked cybernuts on TRE, TOC and Facebook for the wrong use of “%”. The swing is 9.8 points or 9.8 percentage-points, not “9.8%”.

I pointed out to them that if they can’t get this simple terminology right, why should anyone trust their analysis? I say the same to Johannes Aziz, a Fellow of IPS. Another FT where the T stands for “Trash”?

A minister should know better, particularly a scholar.

Baring this mistake, Ong is absolutely right that the swing a 5 percentage point swing not a 10.

As I wrote sometime back:

There is of angst by the anti-PAP crowd about the 10 point swing to the PAP by those who voted the Oppo in 2011. Actually. only voters amounting to 5 percentage-points voted for the PAP instead of the Oppo parties. But this becomes a 10 percentage-point swing because the Oppo lost 5 points and the PAP gained 5 points.

Not that bad leh as a 10% loss.

Update on 7 November at 6.00pm: A friend who has an MSE degree says that minister and me are wrong to talk about 5 point swing. It should be 10 point swing.

He says

2011

PAP – 60% of votes

Opp – 40%

Difference 20 points

2015

POP – 70%

Opp – 30%

Difference 40

Swing: 40-20 = 20

However, 20 points is incorrect as actual loss/gain of vote share of each side is only 10 points.

Statistics are not facts/ “Statistical objectivity is a cloak spun from political yarn”

“Statistics is about measurement not facts. The measurements only become facts when they are imbued with meaning, Hence I can measure net migration and this measurement can inform many ‘facts’ as the debate on migration amply demonstrates.”

By Xenon on “Statistical objectivity is a cloak spun from political yarn”, an article behind FT’s paywall by this yr’s winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Angus Deaton argues that the role of politics needs to be understood, and built in to any careful interpretation of the data. We must always work from multiple sources, and look deep into the cogs and wheels. James Scott, the political scientist, noted that statistics are how the state sees. The state decides what it needs to see and how to see it. That politics infuses every part of this is a testament to the importance of the numbers; lives depend on what they show.

SGH tragedy: “Penny wise, Safety foolish” allegation

A regular reader and commenter who describes himself  “As someone who has worked in PAP’s health system apparatus and also with the civil service real politicks” gives his take on the sharing of vials. (Btw, here’s his take on why Amos “the Fantastic” was sent to Block 7, Woodbridge.)

Btw, I hope he or she can explain where the huge losses occur in the system: bureaucracy, overstaffing?

———————–

The Hepatitis C outbreak in a Singapore hospital has cast the spotlight on a practice known as multi-dosing, where nurses or doctors inject patients by attaching new needles and syringes to a shared vial of fluid. 

The Singapore General Hospital – the site of the cluster – said the virus could have spread that way, and it has since stopped the practice. 

On Wednesday (Oct 7), the Ministry of Health said that it is “not yet conclusive” that the use of multi-dose vials is the cause of the Hepatitis C infections at SGH*.

(CNA)

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Moral of the story is to have good medical insurance that can cover at least B1 or A-class in govt hospitals. Such “private class” patients are issued their own personal drug vials including multi-use ones — no such thing as sharing of multi-use vials.

The main reason is that C & B2 class are loss-making [CI note: Can explain how the losses come about?], requiring large injections of cash from MOH to cover. Much of the practices in C & B2 wards in govt hospitals e.g. standardised care plans, clinical pathways (equivalent to SOPs & IAs in army) are designed to save money & avoid so-called unnecessary tests / investigations / procedures.

Do you know that even “poor” community hospitals (e.g. Ren Ci, St Luke’s) issue personal multi-use drug vials to their patients — no sharing?!? How come?? Becoz these are considered as private hospitals & they are required by MOH to practice cost-recovery at a minimum, in order to obtain the minimal subsidies from ministry. Hence such hospitals simply issue personal drug vials as (1) to avoid cross-infections which will be hell to recover from as a “poor” community hospital with no ministry backing, and (2) vast majority of such drug vials are priced / cost in the cents or at most $1 or $2 — still easily recovered from individual patients.

—————————————————-

*More from From CNA on 7 October

“Both single-dose and multi-dose injection medication vials are used in our public hospitals. Our public hospitals utilise multi-dose vials where the preparation is specifically formulated for such use, and governed by safety protocols,” MOH said in response to media queries.

“Regardless of whether medication vials are single-dose or multi-dose, their safe use requires healthcare providers to adhere to existing safety protocols for the use of medication vials. Staff education, appropriate training and compliance to the protocols are important in ensuring patient safety.

“As multi-dose vials are potentially at risk of contamination between uses, their safe use requires additional safety and infection prevention and control measures that staff have to comply with, such as opening only one vial of a particular medication at a time in each patient-care area, as recommended by WHO. Failure to comply to safety protocols may cause infection,” the ministry said.

Minimum Wages = Rising Prices

Most of the debate on this topic centres around whether as a result there are less jobs being created. The evidence is mixed.

For S’poreans there should be another more pressing issue in a pay and pay city.

Business reaction has been mixed. Some sectors like care homes, pub chains and more broadly the hospitality industry said that the increases could mean laying off staff or increasing prices.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34416666

(Explanation: In the UK, the “minimum wage” is being rebranded as “Llving wage”: another concept really, though related.)

As a retiree, I don’t like rising prices.

Leon Perera: A Lion of a Man

(Or “Worthless Party’s Worthy Man:Leon Perera” )

If only I had known that Leon Perera would turn out to be the kind of co-driver that I had hoped Low and friends* would be but were not (They prefered to take the money and behave like Kate Spade Tin, the PAP social worker), I’d have voted for WP in the last GE. It was the first time in my life that I didn’t vote for the WP. I once even even voted for a ex-Woodbridge patient but I grew the line on an arrogant, worthless (most of the time and JJ excepted) parly team who don’t do accounting and monitoring.

The Workers’ Party (WP) has reiterated its call for the Government to reconstitute the Hepatitis C review committee as a Committee of Inquiry (COI), saying it does not see the need to wait for findings to be released, before convening a COI.

The party’s Central Executive Council member Leon Perera said this to reporters on the sidelines of a food distribution event on Saturday (Oct 31).

(CNA)

Leon the Lion rightly said it is possible to convene a COI without making public aspects that are under investigation, but said that “deliberations” into the workflow within SGH and MOH after the cluster was discovered, as well as the point of public announcement and containment measures, should be made public.

He also said it is not “necessary or helpful” to have a two-step process, where the authorities wait for the findings of an independent committee before deciding to convene a COI. He again cited the examples of the Little India riots and MRT breakdowns, where COIs were convened missing this step. “We do not see the necessity for a two-step process.We would rather in the first instance take the existing process we have, strengthen it. In the interest of timeliness and efficiency, we feel it is the best approach. It’s not our intent to undermine the current process or the committee members. We want to keep all of them and strengthen the process.”

The last line shows that he knows how to have the cake and eat it too.

—————————–

Losing the plot? Who said what when?

The govt set up an Independent (but it’s an internal) Review Committee earlier this month to look into the Hepatitis C outbreak at the Singapore General Hospital. The virus infected 25 patients and may have contributed to the deaths of five people.

In a statement on Oct 25, WP urged the govt to reconstitute the committee into a COI. NCMP Leon Perera, had said the outbreak is “at least as grave” as the train breakdowns in 2011 and the Little India riots. A COI was convened for both incidents.

The Health Ministry responded saying a COI will be formed if WP is “prepared to lead evidence before the COI, to substantiate whatever allegations it might have”. WP, rightly, called the suggestion “inappropriate”, as the Party does not have inquisitorial or investigative powers to obtain evidence and said convening a COI does not constitute wrongdoings by any party.MOH had also said the WP had asked for a COI before the committee concludes its probes and pending police investigations.

Lion Man repeated the call for a COI on Saturday, adding it will help restore confidence while making deliberations public.

Gan’s response to Leon the lion.

————————–

The WP once was full of loonies and bicycle thieves. But it had a Lion of a man: JBJ, Lion Man..

The way things are going, Leon is the lion who could transform the WP, if given the opportunity by Low and the wankers into an alternative party of govt, rather than the PAP Lite, Worthless Party wanking its way to the bank that it is now.

Any tots JG?

—————————————-

*If only Gerald Giam had done some constructive criticism of the PAP administration’s public tpt system when it ground to a halt between 2011 and 2015. Instead he kept quiet. He only knows how to stab his sifu in back in a dark alley isit?

Hedgies too play fiollow the leader

Despite charging such high fees, they too behave like retail investors. From Dealbook

VALEANT SHOWS THE RISK OF FOLLOW THE LEADER The recent plunge in Valeant shares has revealed the dangerous tendency for hedge funds to plunge in and out of stocks in a herdlike fashion, Steven Davidoff Solomon writes in the Deal Professor column.

The hedge funds invested in Valeant, which includes names like William A. Ackman and John Paulson, took a hit. ValueAct Capital has beenenormously invested in Valeant. Although it sold 4.2 million shares a month ago, the fund still owns 4.4 percent of the company and had made a return of more than 2,100 percent as of September.

Herd investing is common among hedge funds. Goldman Sachs runs an index of the 50 stocks most widely held by hedge funds. At the top of the list is Allergan – there are 67 hedge funds that count it as one of their top 10 holdings. It is followed by Apple and Facebook. Valeant makes No. 10 with 22 percent of its shares held by hedge funds.

“Looking at the list, one has to shake one’s head,” Mr. Solomon writes. “After all, I, too, can do this trick of investing in big and well-known tech and pharmaceutical companies, for much less than the fee of 20 percent of the profits that hedge funds charge.”

Mr. Solomon wonders whether many hedge funds are simply playing follow the leader. With thousands of stocks, hedge funds seem to be concentrating their bets on larger caps and certain industries, like tech and pharmaceuticals. This may work in a rising market, but a decline would be painful.

If hedge funds are all about alpha – finding investments that are undervalued and that can outperform the broader market – then migrating to smaller stocks might bear more fruit and make their research the most useful.

SGH tragedy: Gan emerges from behind Ms Lee’s skirt

I was wondering if Health Minister Gan Kim Yong had gone AWOL leaving his press secretary Ms Lee Bee Khim to say really bitchy things about ST and the WP when defending MoH’s actions in the Hepatitis C outbreak at the Singapore General Hospital (SGH)

Well it seems he has finally found the courage to emerge from behind Ms Lee Bee Khim’s skirt. (Or to be fair, maybe, he had a sour throat and couldn’t speak, writing down the bitchy words for Ms Lee to parrot in public) and said some sensible things that Ms Lee should have said in the first place, instead of the very bitchy things she said on his behalf*.

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*Even when MoH responded in an ultra defensive, aggressive way to an ST article, I wasn’t too fussed. ST was a juz being a pariah trying to bite the hand that fed it. I was thinking, “Yup beating up ST is good. Dogs should not bite the hand that feeds them.”

But MoH’s response to WP’s call for a Committee of Inquiry (COI) was so petulant, aggressive, defensive and so misrepresentative of what the WP said that I’m wondering if there is an email or two somewhere in the system that could be perceived as a “smoking gun” that MoH wants to hide?

———————————————————-

Mr Gan said that since the review committee’s task is to look into the processes of SGH and MOH, and identify gaps, as well as the cause of the cluster, “I think we should wait for the committee to finish its task, to finish its review, study its reports and recommend its findings very carefully, because the findings will be made public.

‘So all of us can look at the findings, and then we can decide what are the next steps. I think it is best for us to wait for the outcome of the review and the police investigations, and then we can look at the findings, and then we can decide what will be the next steps.”

Fair enough**. But this should have been said a long time ago.

——————————–

**Reasonable people can agree or disagree on whether a COI should be held, skipping an internal investigation. I for one tot that waiting for the internal report was a reasonable, responsible position to take but could understand if others tot that a COT was necessary. But Ms Lee’s very aggressive, defensive, “take no prisoners” stance on behalf on her minister and MOH me wondering if there is really something that needs to be hidden from, us, the rabble.

The use of language has consequences, affecting perceptions. Ms Lee as a PR practitioner should be aware of this.

CPF: Roy and H3 would concur

Other people’s money: A financier’s plaything. “The goose that lays golden eggs has been considered a most valuable possession. But even more profitable is the privilege of taking the golden eggs laid by somebody else’s goose. The investment bankers and their associates now enjoy that privilege. They control the people through the people’s own money.” (Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court justice.)

[Err Substitute the words “PAP administration” for A financier’s plaything and The investment bankers and their associates and you see that the young hooligans of “Free Our CPF” are onto something.

Pension plan: A collection of unpayable corporate promises backed by inadequate funds and managed on the assumption of unrealistic returns.

http://blogs.reuters.com/breakingviews/2015/10/16/the-devils-dictionary-of-post-crisis-finance-2/

SG50: Three cheers for Goh Keng Swee

If we were still part of M’sia, S’pore would be like this?

———————————————-

— In April 1964, Zanzibar merged with mainland Tanganyika to form Tanzania.

— Zanzibar was a trading port

— Its population was (is) different from the mainland and were largely immigrants)

——————————————————

Over time, rule by a single party has stoked up Zanzibaris who believe that their state should be more independent than it is. Already Zanzibar is very different from the mainland. It is almost entirely Muslim. A large part of its population is descended from Arab traders. This election has been no exception. On the stump the CUF, together with its opposition allies on the mainland, called for a new federal structure for Tanzania. CCM meanwhile campaigned on a platform of no change, warning that a CUF win on Zanzibar might mean the break-up of the union—or even the return of the Sultan, who was deposed in 1964 and now, aged 86, lives in exile in Portsmouth in Britain. In practice, neither side’s cause is plausible. With a population of around 1m, Zanzibar is too small to have much chance as an independent state. Yet it seems that the status quo is unacceptable to most of its inhabitants. Without a compromise, the islands could retain their curse for some time.

(Economist blog)

I’m glad the Tunku kicked us out and that one Harry was wrong about wanting to stay in.

May 28, 2010 – ST Forum

Separation from Malaysia: How crucial was Dr Goh’s role?

MINISTER Mentor Lee Kuan Yew made an interestingly significant remark about Singapore’s separation from Malaysia in his eulogy at Sunday’s state funeral for his colleague-in-arms, former Deputy Prime Minister Goh Keng Swee.

MM Lee said he had asked Dr Goh to negotiate a looser rearrangement for Singapore, but to keep Singapore within Malaysia.

Added MM Lee: ‘He (Dr Goh) decided that the best alternative was a clean break. After (Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister) Tun Abdul Razak and (Minister for External Affairs) Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman agreed, (Law Minister) Eddie Barker and I worked furiously to settle the terms of the separation.’

MM Lee’s remark is intriguing in the light of the conventional narrative of the events leading up to Separation in 1965. From all that historians have gleaned prior to MM Lee’s remarks on Sunday, MM Lee, who was then Prime Minister, played the pivotal role involving Separation.

His remarks suggest that the decision to break away from Malaysia was decided unilaterally by Dr Goh at the crucial moment; against the proposition MM Lee, and perhaps the collective Cabinet, had decided; which was at the very least, to still remain a part of the Malaysian federation of states.

If the above is true, the apparent contradiction should be resolved. A key question that arises from MM Lee’s remarks is this: What was the extent and significance of Dr Goh’s role in Separation? Furthermore, MM Lee’s remark also suggests that the key Malaysian leaders – Tun Razak and Dr Ismail – agreed to Dr Goh’s proposal of a clean break.

This would imply that it may well have been Singapore which precipitated the idea of Separation, rather than Malaysia, as has been the notion all this while, stemming from first Malaysian Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman’s view. He reconfirmed, when I interviewed him a few years before he died, that he overruled the strident objections of his extremist colleagues in Umno in deciding to sack Singapore from Malaysia.

It would be informative, if not instructive, if MM Lee or Dr Toh Chin Chye (then chairman of the PAP and the only key surviving member of the Old Guard today) shed more light on this critical turning point in the history of Singapore and Malaysia.

Associate Professor Hussin Mutalib