Why NOL was sold/ S’pore missed a bullet

We damned lucky that a 2008 deal to make it bigger failed:

Amid the structural changes in world trade, the driving forces behind industry consolidation have also changed. U.K. maritime and shipping industry research company Drewry said that consolidation before 2008 was driven by “a desire for growth.” But mergers in the past few years have been “more about survival and the need to address structural industry problems.”

The best example is Singapore’s Neptune Orient Lines, which was sold earlier this year to France’s CMA CGM, the world’s third-largest shipping company.

Until 2008, NOL was expanding fast. It acquired American President Lines, the biggest operator in the Pacific container trade, in 1997. In 2008, the Singaporean company made a serious bid for Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd, another major container transporter.

After eight months of talks, NOL walked away from that deal as the economic outlook darkened. But NOL failed to maintain cost competitiveness against other major lines, which reaped economies of scale by investing millions of dollars in huge new containerships. The company’s acquisition by CMA CGM underscores the difficulties facing midsize container lines in the current protracted downturn.

 http://asia.nikkei.com/magazine/20161124-S.O.S/On-the-Cover/Shipping-lines-plunge-into-a-war-of-attrition

Double standards: S’pore can change position, China cannot isit?

(Or “Typical S’porean attitude: Actions have no consequences”)

China has made an official protest to Singapore over its military ties with Taiwan after nine Singaporean military vehicles were seized in Hong Kong. It’s very own ST, Global Times says “It is no longer reasonable for Singapore to continue … any kind of military exchange with Taiwan.”

Ordinary patriotic S’poreans (not juz PAP bootlickers) other than the China tua kees  are shouting that S’pore has always trained in Taiwan and China knows about it, so why the KPKBing by China.

Err why nationalistic S’poreans so cock? Don’t know this isit?

Singapore has strengthened its military ties with the US over the past year, agreeing to boost co-operation on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief missions as well as cyber-security. Singapore allowed US Poseidon surveillance aircraft to operate from the city-state last December.

And the US had based a naval vessel here that was specifically designed for operations in waters like the South China Sea. The vessel was withdrawn and not replaced.

And Ah Loong* has been pretty noisy about the need for the TPP and rule of law in the South China Sea. Both issues are important to S’pore but were used by the US to maintain US regional hegemony. The US defence secretary said that the TPP was worth to the US the addition of another US aircraft carrier to the US navy

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Rule of law what rule of law?

The US refuses to sign UNCLOS because it refuses to play by the rules of sua kes like the UN and PinoyLand. It reserves the right to do what it thinks is right (Usually this means “Might is right”).

But China did sign up and now refuses to abide by a decision of its highest tribunal. Why so stupid?

So if Ah Loong is genuine and consistent about wanting the rule of law in the South China Sea, he should say that the US is wrong to refuse to rarify UNCLOS.

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S’pore has tilted towards the US, China has noticed it (see below) but China cannot change it’s mind isit?

So far I’ve not seem our MSM or social media tell us that the state-owned hawkish Global Times said in an editorial that S’pore was supposed to have suspended its military co-operation with Taiwan in 2012. “However, the recently detained vessel with its cargo of armoured vehicles reveals Singapore’s hypocrisy.”

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My toes are laughing

“One thing in Chinese culture is you never forget your old friends … and surely in Chinese culture you appreciate this concept of loyalty to old friends”: Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan.

Old friends surely don’t allow US Poseidon surveillance aircraft to operate from their homes?

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And really as someone who thinks US global hegemony, is the least bad option (OK, Ok, it’s actually a lot better than the alternatives), I can’t argue with Global Times when it says “For quite some time, Singapore has been pretending to seek a balance between China and the US, yet has been taking Washington’s side in reality.”

Err didn’t realise that China so cock not to realise this until now? That stupid meh?

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*For every prime minister like Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore, who can provide off-the-cuff a detailed and sophisticated tour d’horizon of the Asia-Pacific region, there is a boorish novice like Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.

PJ CrowleyFormer US Assistant Secretary of State in a BBC article

Lose-lose for OCBC and Barclays

FT reports that Barclays has raised almost a third less than expected from the US$225m sale of its wealth and investment management business in Singapore and Hong Kong to OCBC.

 When the deal was announced in April this yr, Barclays had indicated it could fetch US$320m from selling the business, which had US$18.3bn of assets under management at the end of last year. It had tot the unit was worth US500m.

When the unit’s clients were given the choice of whether to join OCBC, some of them decided to either stay at Barclays or to leave for another bank. This reduced the price OCBC paid, which was fixed at 1.75% of assets under management.

While OCBC paid a lot less (one third less), it can’t be happy that so many clients don’t believe the BS about Bank of s’pore, it’s private bank.

Blur Tiger Mom digs deeper hole for herself/ Wrong KPI

A kiasu tiger mom gave her side of a story that has gripped local cyberspace. A newspaper article reported that despite her son getting straight As in her PSLE, she was unhappy that he got 231 points not the 250, she expected and had “punished” her son.

Her explanation showed her in a worse light. She was unhappy with her son because he got 230 points, not the 231 she expected? Wah lan.

As far as I’m concerned, I only want to know if the points he got, would get him into the school of her choice i.e. the “right” school. Nothing else matters. And no-one other than me seems to have asked this question.

PLSE points don’t really matter (bar bragging rights), getting into the “right” school matters.

All this fixation by her and S’poreans about the boy’s points prove my point that S’poreans work stupid from young.

I repeat, from young, S’poreans work hard but stupid, not smart. Who to blame? Blame the PAP administration who is responsible for the education system.

Lim Swee Say (http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2016/11/02/lim-swee-say-improve-productivity-or-singapores-competitive-primacy-will-be-risked/) should have a word with the relevant minister of education.

I’ll end on a morbid note. Some wag posted on FB

The urgent thing now is to send an open letter to mdm soon’s kid, telling him if he can’t take it anymore, there are places he can run to for help. And put a list of counselling centers and homes for kids like him.

Banking: Nothing has changed since 19th century

In the 19th and early 20th century, bankers were seen as the aristocracy of clerks. They were paid more and had better conditions. Sound familiar doesn’t it?

But what doesn’t sound familiar at all was that a banking career was then seen as a moral duty.

In 1912, AW Kerr, a senior figure in Scottish banking, gave an address to a packed meeting of the Institute of Bankers in Edinburgh.

“The banker engages in capitalistic economising not purely as a matter of expediency, of constrained adaptation to the mundane necessity of making a living, but in the expectation that such activity would test his inner resources as a person in charge of his own existence, and affirm his human worth,” he said.

Those were different times. Though, curiously, since the financial crisis top bankers are once again banging on about human worth.

Just a couple of months ago the new head of Barclays gave a speech in which he told staff that if they didn’t hold values such as respect, integrity and stewardship dear, they should quit.

Kerr, I think, would have approved.

Then, as now, the rank and file may have seen it rather differently.

A sketch by Robert Shirlaw, who worked at the bank in 1900, shows a clerk who has climbed a stair of ledgers and is waving a victory flag. He looks pretty pleased with himself there at the top, yet trapped below him are squashed clerical workers.

The caption reads: “We climb upwards on the stepping stones of our own dead selves.”

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23419229

So doing God’s work and minting it ain’t new.

Keeping power in a one-party state

(Or “Why CCP’s fears are PAP’s fears”)

More on why S’pore should be analysed from the perspective that it’s a one-party state like China and N Korea rather than as an authoritarian mutant version of a democratic state.

BBC’s Carrie Gracie( http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-37724839) wrote recently

China’s “consultative democracy” has one glaring challenge of its own: the paranoia of the ruling party.

It never ceases to amaze me how afraid the Chinese Communist Party is of its own people, and how fear clouds its judgment and skews its decision making.

Fear of street protest ties its hands in tackling pension reform or state-owned enterprises. Fear of a punishing assessment of its mistakes makes it manipulate history in a way that distorts not only the past but also the future. Fear of competing narratives makes it drive some of China’s brightest and best into exile or jail. Fear has become a huge overhead and a great brake on China’s progress.

While this is not quite true of S’pore in a literal sense

Fear of street protest ties its hands in tackling pension reform or state-owned enterprises.

because the sheep of Animal Farm S’poreans (Like BG Yeo’s Christians) don’t riot let alone protest, the PAP is kiasu of providing evidence that it’s not true that the “PAP is always right”. This ties its hands in radically reforming the CPF system, GLCs, immigration and in general the economy. After all it can’t blame another party for the problems.

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Every decade, another restructuring master plan?

The PAP keeps saying the economy must be restructured.

In the 80s, one Lee Hsien Loong as trade and industry minister headed a committee to recommend changes in the economy. In the early noughties when DPM he headed another committee on the same issue.

In 2010, one Tharman and his committee produced the 2010 Economic Strategies Committee (ESC).

Now in 2016 (to make up for no plan in the early noughties?)

Indeed, in updating the 2010 Economic Strategies Committee (ESC) report headed by Tharman), the 30-member CFE will have to take into account new global and domestic realities. Chaired by Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat, the panel has been tasked with developing economic strategies to keep Singapore competitive; it aims to complete its work by the end of 2016.

More on the latest plan anon.

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Again, while not exactly true here “Fear of competing narratives makes it drive some of China’s brightest and best into exile or jail” the PAP’s fear of competing narratives has stifled society here largely thru self censorship and self blinkered minds.

Hence, this fear and the resulting self censorship and self blinkered minds have become a huge problem for S’pore’s economy and body politick. It can’t be the creative, open society that the PAP says it wants and it says is needed because there are limits to creativity and open society: BG Yeo’s infamous OB markers.

“Control of information and thinking and systems is central to the government, and they genuinely want to harvest the economic advantages provided by a populace that is creative and independently minded, but they want to do it without surrendering control. It is their dilemma,” said Michael Barr, associate professor of international relations at Flinders University in Adelaide.

FT. (Btw, Barr can be classified as anti-PAP. But he’s right on this point)

True, S’poreans enjoy Western-style consumption (fuelled by debt) and personal freedoms (tell that to the ang moh tua kees and their anti-PAP cybernut allies). But S’pore is also a complex place with contradictions (think the contradiction between 377A and the relaxed official and civil attitude towards the gay community), and inequalities (think Gini and the elderly poor). “It needs a pluralistic, flexible and modern political system.” (Economist view of Russia, which applies here.)

This modern system doesn’t look like happening any time soon. The PAP has imposed an archaic authoritarian political system (de-facto one party rule) softened by more welfare spending using S’poreans’ forced savings (CPF and btdger surpluses). These can temporarily suppress economic, social and political problems but are unable to resolve them.

The ongoing public transport problems is a good example of what can go wrong with the PAP’s way of doing things.

So as I wrote here: “[T]he level of authoritariansm  is so extreme that a good strong dose of liberal values would do the body politick, and economy no harm.” The problem is with the ang moh tua kees who prefer to ape Western liberals rather adapt liberalism to suit S’poreans. They want us to eat potatoes like them.

It’s personal: Liberal MSM’s problem with Trump

OK, OK it’s not all personal but here are excerpts from a BBC report http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38072407 that show the that the journalists from the liberal MSM are not happy with him because he won the election, attacks them, has views that offend them, and reporting him is not easy because they can’t resort to lazy clichés or pigeonhole him.

Err what ever happened to holding their prejudices and emotions in check and thinking thru the issues.

And btw, I suspect that his skill in talking to the “stupid” masses makes them worried about their relevance as the fourth estate.

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After reading the u/m excerpts I appreciate more why one Harry Lee did what he did to local media: he castrated the journalists.

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Trump is willing to change things around to make people happy or when it suits him. Everything can be negotiated, including the scheduling of meetings and positions on issues.

…

 

In contrast journalists at the mainstream organisations don’t like last-minute schedule changes or sudden, unexpected shifts in policy. They also don’t like feeling beholden to elected officials.

And

The relationship between the mainstream journalists and the president-elect has been fraught with misunderstandings – and laced with rage. Trump regularly lashes out at these reporters on social media and in other forums.

In turn, these journalists are mystified and angry.

As I’ve been travelling with the press corps during the transition, it’s clear that many of them can’t believe he won the election. They’ve also been frustrated by his abrupt shifts in policy and his decision-making process.

“How am I supposed to cover this?” one reporter said to me recently, looking at a laptop that he held open in front of him. He said he wasn’t sure how to describe the president-elect’s foreign policy since he’d changed his mind so often.

And

Trump demonises these media organisations, as well as their executives and reporters, and this way makes it hard for the media to be seen as impartial.

This puts mainstream journalists in a bad spot. Many of them feel that when it comes to covering Trump, they can’t win. They feel offended by his actions – and resent the way that he acts in his job.

Life of a S’porean wage-slave

One Daniel Tan responding to this article (Singaporeans among the world’s gloomiest millennials, Japan tops survey) wrote

48 hours a week meaning 9.6 hours or about daily 9 – 640pm or 740pm if you exclude lunch

reach home have dinner settle down maybe an hour half or so later provided mrt no delay. 10pm start making babies in small space as adovated by brilliant Ms Teo.

done and showered again by 11pm, sleep 8 hours to wake up at 7pm to prepare for work

no chance to ask the parents how’s their day, no time to help out kids with homework until weekend

Below are two charts from report cited that show S’poreans are slaves.

Insulting Trump’s “stupid” supporters is a lose-lose proposition

The extreme ultraliberal left can’t stop insulting the poor whites who voted for Trump. The latest tactic is to sneer at them for making card-carrying liberals richer. Here’s an example Cox: Liberal elite owe gratitude to Trump voters

And our very own liberal tua kee Donald Low keeps doubling down on using the word “stupid” to insult voters who vote against their economic interest.

Well they should stop for the sake of their own reputations.

Now, I’m sure people like Donald Low and Cox are proud to be called “arrogant”.

But would they like to be called “stupid” with evidence supporting the claim?

Stretching the arguments laid out by Cox to their logical conclusion, the extreme ultraliberal liberals are really stupid. They not only didn’t see Trump winning but they should have voted for Trump, not oppose him, given that he’s making them a lot richer relative to the white trash.

They’d argue that there are more important things than material well-being, and that they not are stupid for preferring racial and gender equality, poverty reduction or the right not to get killed by gun-toting white trash.

Well why then are they not willing to concede that the white trash too have good, valid reasons (trying to preserve their towns and societies, fear of terrorism or anger at being sneered and lied to) to vote against their own economic interest?

Seems that for many liberals what is sauce for goose is not sauce for the gander: Do what we tell you to do, not what we do.

One Harry Lee dismissed liberals out of hand as a bunch of wankers, talking cock and singing song. Seems he has a point.

Sad as in the S’pore context, the level of authoritarism  is so extreme that a good strong dose of liberal values would do the body politick, and economy no harm.

Why cybernuts still read ST, watch MediaCorp

In a recent survey, 88% of Russians said that TV news was one of their main sources of information. But here’s a funny thing – at the same time 31% of respondents said they thought they were being completely misled by the information provided.

That means that about one in five Russians choose to watch the news on TV, while at the same time believing that news to be a lie. How to account for that?

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37871543

2 reasons says this BBC reporter, and both apply here too on why S’poreans read, warch the constructive, nation-building media

“Everything is relative,” he told me. “We in Russia could use postmodernity in order to explain to the West that if any truth is relative, then we have our special Russian truth that you need to accept.”

Mr Dugin’s contorted Orwellian logic is influential in Kremlin circles, though not necessarily among the masses.

And

Ekaterina Schulmann, a political scientist, gave me a different interpretation.

“People are not looking for news as such,” she said. “They are looking to decipher a system of signals – who is on air today and who was yesterday, what is the intonation, the choice of words. It is important to understand all this, because it helps you survive if you are dependent on the state.”

The second chimes in with what the Jap owner of the FT says about SPH:

The company enjoys a relatively favourable position as the sole newspaper publisher in the city-state, and while it is not government-owned, the content of its publications is heavily influenced by the authorities, effectively making them a semi mandatory read for civil servants and businesses seeking insight into policymaking.

And before any cybernut challenges me on my assertion that cybernuts read ST, nuts should remember remember that a lot of what they read are in reality cut and paste stuff from ST. The cut and paste artistes at TOC, TRE, TISG know that there is a hunger for such stuff.

Social media: Ang mohs and Chinese are different

In China, Millienals have no issues allowing their social media activities (contacts and payments) to be used to judge their creditworthiness. In fact those with very high credit worthiness flaunt this fact on social media.

Having a credit score and showing it off to one’s friends is now something of a status marker for the affluent young. Sesame Credit has teamed up with Baihe, China’s largest dating service, to encourage users to flaunt their credit scores on their dating profiles.

But in the West:

In 2014 Facebook began toying with using social media to gauge users’ credit. But it called the plan off in February 2016, citing regulatory concerns. Critics thought it creepy.

Read more at http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21710292-chinas-consumer-credit-rating-culture-evolving-fastand-unconventionally-just

 

SPH fights property fat cats

But first,like this description of ST’s owner

The company enjoys a relatively favourable position as the sole newspaper publisher in the city-state, and while it is not government-owned, the content of its publications is heavily influenced by the authorities, effectively making them a semi mandatory read for civil servants and businesses seeking insight into policymaking.

http://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Asia-s-print-media-are-on-the-ropes

A running dog of the PAP.

Valuers make a good living by doing almost bugger all, so it’s good that SPN is suing their trade union.

SPH-linked Streetsine Singapore* is taking the Singapore Institute of Surveyors and Valuers (SISV) to court for not recognising its technology-based automated valuations as valid, and claims the lack of recognition led to business opportunities being lost.

Streetsine alleged that SISV failed to fully assess the programme’s capability – which offers property valuations at a fraction of the cost and time incurred by manual valuations – before issuing a press release in April saying it did not recognise computer-generated valuations.

It claimed SISV neither conducted nor commissioned any expert evaluation, investigation or audit of the two services at issue or any automated models in general.

http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/suit-over-computer-generated-valuations

*60% owned by SPH

S’poreans should learn this trick from the Americans

Wonder if former BSI banker Yeo Jiawei had sought lawyers advice over his actions?

In response to DPP Tan’s suggestion that Yeo met both men because he knew the CAD was investigating him for illicit transactions, Yeo said he disagreed.

“None of my transactions are illicit,”

(Part of former BSI banker Yeo Jiawei cross-examination byDeputy Public Prosecutor Tan Kiat Pheng, as reported by BT.)

Somehow I doubt it as if he he would have raised  the “advice of counsel” defense and that he was acting in good faith because his lawyer had cleared his actions.

In the infamous case involving Sun Ho, her hubbie Kong Hee and his church team never got legal advive on the legality of the transactions to fund Sun Ho’s Hollywood lifestyle. They relied on an “Uncle” who was the church’s auditor. He like the German sergeant in Hogan’s Heroes saidv”I know nothing. Nothing.”

In the US, where no-one does anything without getting the advice of counsel according to the NYT Dealbook:

The “advice of counsel” defense is raised with increased regularity in white-collar crime cases, often coupled with its close cousin – acting in good faith.

WHITE COLLAR WATCH

Martin Shkreli May Point the Finger at His Lawyers

By PETER J. HENNING

 

 

Debt is good

Somehow I don’t think Americans (and btw S’poreans) need to be taught how to “destigmatize debt; they embrace debt.  But S’poreans sure need to “explore new ways of managing their debt” what with a recession coming, and property prices tottering. LOL.

From NYT’s Dealbook:

Goldman’s Ad Pitch for the Masses

As part of Goldman Sachs’s push into consumer lending, the bank wants Americans to know that debt happens.

That message is central to its first ad campaign that is aimed at individuals — even those who may barely qualify for credit.

The 15- and 30-second video ads, which will appear on Facebook, Hulu, Pandora and YouTube, depict debt as an unavoidable nuisance of modern life, not something shameful. “Debt happens. It’s how you get out that counts,” the ads say.

Dustin Cohn, who oversees brand management for Goldman’s new consumer lending arm, Marcus by Goldman Sachs, said the bank’s aim was to “destigmatize debt and help consumers explore new ways of managing their debt.”

Identity trumps economic interest

Local ang moh tua kees like Ariffin Sha and Donald Low openly call “stupid” those who vote against their economic interests. They are juz mindlessly parroting and aping  the “exotic ultraliberal left” of the West.

Well, I’m one of those stupid people. I’ve never voted PAP even though its policies (bar its forced savings policy) were and are good for me.

In particular its present wage repression policy by way of a liberal immigration policy have been good for me.

I “retired” early in the early noughties because looking for another job was too troublesome. Might as well opt out and live off capital.

Retirement has been very comfortable what with luxuries that are affordable, SingHealth and public transport. All three are possible because of the wage repression that results from very liberal immigration policies.

But I still don’t vote PAP because I feel liberal immigration is taking away S’pore from S’poreans. By the standards of Donald Low and Ariffin Sha, I’m stupid, but I’m proud that I’m prepared to vote against my economic interests.

And I’m not the only one in the world who are stupid:

“Donald Trump received a huge number of votes from better-educated and more well-off voters as well, who were not victims of globalisation but still felt their country was being taken from them. Needless to say, this dynamic underlay the Brexit vote as well.”

The last sentence is from an essay in the FT

Francis Fukuyama

US against the world? Trump’s America and the new global order

In 1989, the political scientist said liberal democracy signalled ‘the end of history’. He now looks at the nationalist politics now reshaping the west

LKY said when he was young, in 1959,”we must go about our task (of building up a nation) with urgency … of integrating our people now and quickly”.

He said this after pointing out that only 270,00 out of the 600,000 voters were born here.

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Info from

Singapore Correspondent. Political Dispatches from Singapore (1958-1962)

(http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/mai/new-book-singapore-correspondent/)

by Leon Comber*

Publisher:  Marshall Cavendish International Asia

“Singapore Correspondent” covers five years of Singapore’s colourful political past – a period of living turbulently and sometimes dangerously. It is a collection of eye-witness dispatches, sent from Singapore to London, spanning a time when Singapore was emerging from British colonial rule and moving forward to self-government and independence. Many of the early struggles of the People’s Action Party (PAP) are described as the focus is on the political struggle taking place in which the PAP played a major part. Many important events which have long been forgotten are brought to life. These dispatches prove that political history need not be dull, and indeed can sometimes be entertaining and lively.

* MAI Adjunct Research Fellow

——————————————-

 

Sadly in his old age he decided that the sun could only shine from the asses of FTs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why stop whining and whinging about Trump

He could be the best thing since sliced bread.

Let me explain

The FT magazine has a column called “Undercover Economist” written by a really smart man Tim Harford, a paid-up member of the Western liberal elite, even if he has an, open lively mind.

On 9th November he wrote

when a group of very smart people with similar perspectives find themselves stuck, someone who brings a new intellectual tool or a fresh perspective is far more valuable than one more smart guy in the same mould.

Err well the Western liberal elite and the ruling class have a problem: how to handle resentful mobs ungrateful with the benefits of globalisation and capitalism because they unlike the elites didn’t have their snouts in the trough. They are in the cold, noses pressed against the windows looking in at the feast that the heroes of Donald Low and Ariffin Sha and indulging in.

Enter one smart, succesful hustler who has been thru tough times and reinvented himself. Btw, he went to a really elite university.

So stop the whining and whinging liberals.

The only problem with the Donald is that he could start WWIII accidentally. Otherwise he could be what the doctor ordered.

Men can’t multi-task and why

According to the Daily Mail, brain research carried out in Russia has shown that the old excuse may be right: men “can’t multi-task”.

The paper says the study suggests that men’s brains were shaped in pre-history by their duties as hunter-gatherers. It says women’s brains “had to evolve to cope with managing the family at home”.

Or, as the Sun puts it, “blokes” are drained by multi-tasking because they “have to switch on more parts of the brain to cope”.

BBC Online

Fintech round the world

Where Finance and Technology Come Together By NATHANIEL POPPER The new industry mixing finance and technology has no clear capital, but major international cities and lesser ones are vying to attract companies.

Sit on Toilet Trump

In China, Toilets Have Trump’s Name Without His Permission

By SUI-LEE WEE

Claims to the name by makers of computers, cosmetics and leather goods highlight the difficulties that big names face when dealing with Chinese trademark laws.

NYT Dealbook

Real meritocracy at work, not the PAP version

Furlong, 30, enrolled in a three-month coding boot camp that usesHackerRank, a web platform that trains and grades people on writing computer code. After earning a top ranking for Java developers globally, Furlong was hired by JPMorgan Chase & Co. in December for its two-year technology training program.

This is Wall Street’s new tech meritocracy.

Wall Street needs coders. Banks need to fill so many programming jobs that elite schools can’t possibly pump out enough candidates. So the industry is looking in places it never did. – Bloomberg

From NYT’s Dealbook

Contrast this with the PAP way.

My posts on meritocracy the PAP way

Meritocracy? No leh Cosiness

Meritocracy’s feet of clay: Ong Ye Kung

Lucy Kellaway, FT’s court jester on management issues, once described what Charles Trevelyan, the permanent secretary to the UK Treasury 1840-59, had in mind when he proposed that meritocracy should be introduced into the civil service.

“He wanted young people to be chosen who had merit – the very best,” says Greenaway. “But he believed that the best were to be found in the gentry, in the professional classes. As the 19th Century went on, the education system mirrored the social system. The universities in Oxford and Cambridge and public schools became the preserve of the gentry and the professional classes – clergy and lawyers and so on.”

Education locked in what used to be patronage, replacing it in a way that was acceptable to the conservatives who had been fearing that these exams would undermine the social fabric of the country.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23376561

Sounds like the PAP way doesn’t it?

S’pore Inc: Ownself pay ownself

CapitaLand Commercial Trust Singapore’s First and Largest Commercial REIT 8 – 9 November 2016 Presentation for investor meetings in Hong Kong

Click to access 20161107_172614_C61U_P2DBY8KUFMS4XEEF.1.pdf

Slide 14 showed that Top 10 tenants contribute 36% of monthly gross rental income

From the perspective of Ownself Pay Ownself

3rd was GIC — 4%

5th was StanChart — 3%

6th was CapitaLand — 3%

10th was EDB — 1%

For the record Temasek owns 40% of CapitaLand and CCT, and about 20% of StanChart. But be be fair HSBC is the second biggest tenant of CCT contributing 4%.

Comparing WP “failures” to PAP “failures”

I agree with this fair, impartial Facebook post that compared the “failures” of the PAP with that of the WP and judged them by the same standards. I’d add that unlike the PAP, the WP did not have the machinery of the state on its side. If truth be told there were many instances where govt depts or agencies were perceived to be carrying on a witch hunt against the WP town council. Yes, I’m thinking of the NEA.

Luke Wong
16 hrs ·
Had been thinking what a ‘government’ supporter had said on Singapore’s ‘lost decade’.
Lagging infrastructure development (HDB flats, hospital beds), incompetence (over allocation of COE for an entire decade, ponding), indiscriminate and loose foreign worker policy and no accomodation planned for them. These were called “individual cases”, “policy miss-steps” and not “failures”, and had “no major impact” on the people. Singapore is not perfect, system by and large works.
By this yardstick, how can the PAP and its IB label the WP as incompetent and a failure over their alleged TC mismanagement. Has the TC finances and daily operations been affected? Have the people in the GRC suffered? (Have their wages stagnated and they lost their jobs like some did under PAP’s policy miss-steps?)
When do policy miss-steps finally cross the threshold into failures? When systemic cracks appear in a system that “by-and-large works” and lay the foundation for more “miss-steps”, failure is just round the corner. Recall their “learning” culture, “no-blame” culture (“staff confidentiality” and “industry norm”).
Venezuela was “ok” until the depressed oil prices turned their economy upside down and the country into a “failure” right?

Yes We Can

Have Economic Stimulus NYT Dealbook By Amie Tsang

Sell government bonds and pile into stocks that will benefit from a free-spending Trump presidency. That’s the verdict from global investors at the moment.

The financial crisis led to a wave of activism from global central banks to make money available. Investors followed their lead, loading up on long-term government bonds while growth was stagnant and political risk abounded. These investors now seem to be on board with Donald J. Trump’s promise to stimulate the economy.

They are also betting on the price of commodities important to the building business like copper, in anticipation of a pickup in government spending. Bank stocks have been bolstered by the belief that the industry will face less regulatory pressure. Higher interest rates would also help their lending margins.

This is not without its risks. If bond yields — which move up as prices go down— shoot up too sharply, investors in the stock market could get jittery and turn tail, leaving chaos in their wake. A sharp increase in bond market rates will also put pressure on emerging markets if investors are drawn by higher interest rates and a stronger American dollar.

Trumpnomics: Sounds about right this analysis

Possibility of stagflation. Short-term gain for long-term pain? That’s the view of economists at Goldman Sachs, who argue that Mr. Trump’s policies would offset any positive impacts over the long-run. – Bloomberg

NYT Dealbook

And no leh, Jeff, markets are not easily seduced. They are worse than hookers. They’ll change their opinions and analyses to vindicate the victor.

By Amie Tsang

Stock markets are easily rattled and they don’t like uncertainty. But they have been on the up since election results came in, so does that mean we are in for more of the same this week and in the long term?

We don’t know. But, Jeff Sommer says, it does mean that markets are easily seduced. The uncertainty around how Donald J. Trump could mean that the bar was set low for him — and the appearance of normality is enough to keep bears at bay. The Republican sweep of Congress also makes it less likely that there will be gridlock in Washington.

And then there are the campaign promises that could promote growth and corporate profits. (Some of them could do the opposite, too.)

Even if we knew how all of them were going to be enforced, it would be hard to know exactly what the result would be.

And markets have historically been bad at pricing in hard-to-predict seismic events. So what do we do?

“After so much inaccurate prognostication about what the near-term market effects of a Trump victory would be, having some modesty about our ability to predict how his policies will play out in the years ahead is very much in order,” Neil Irwin writes.

While this plays out, here are some of the battlegrounds that lie ahead.

Tax Cuts

Republicans want tax cuts and the president-elect wants tax cuts. But they don’t always want quite the same ones.

Mr. Trump has said he was determined to get multinational companies to pay their American tax bills every year. The sting would not be as great if he also cut corporate rates and allowed credits for foreign taxes paid.

House Republicans have been pushing for a territorial system, in which businesses are taxed solely on goods and services sold in the United States. But that encourages businesses to shop around for lower tax rates, ultimately shifting profits and jobs overseas — not ideal for a president who wants more jobs in the United States.

Mr. Trump is expected to insist on a deduction for interest paid on debt-financed projects, a provision dear to real estate developers. But otherwise, he may keep his ideas broad, leaving Congress to pin down the details.

The Federal Reserve

Mr. Trump has embraced criticism that the Federal Reserve is creating more problems than it is solving, and his advisers would like to rein in the institution. Mr. Trump could overhaul its leadership, filling a majority of the Fed’s seven-seat board with his nominees over the next 18 months, even replacing Janet L. Yellen, the chairwoman, in February 2018.

Fed officials have opposed increased congressional oversight, saying that would infringe on the central bank’s operational independence, and they are now facing the possibility of a harder push for changes from emboldened Republicans. From NYT Dealbook

Today the presidency, tomorrow yr CPF

This is what happens when voters keep on giving the PAP a two-thirds (and counting) majority in Parly: PM said in Parliament on 8 Nov that the government is intending to amend the Presidential Elections Act next January to ensure that the next President would come from a minority race:

“Every citizen, Chinese, Malay, Indian, or some other race, should know that someone of his community can become President, and in fact from time to time, does become President.”

He could say that government is intending to amend the legistation because the governing party has a two-thirds majority.

Today the presidency: tomorrow the age of CPF withdrawal goes up to 75 and then the lease of the pigeon loft in sky is cut to 55 yrs from 99? Yes, yes I know that CPF and HDB leases are not in the constitution, so there’s no need for a two-thirds majority.

My point is that allowing any party the power to suka suka amend the constitution is asking for trouble, serious trouble because with a two-thirds majority (and more) can give the government the confidence that really unpopular and unfair measures can be rammed through because come the next general election, with a GRC system and the PM in charge of the redrawing of electoral boundaries, the damage to the governing party can be contained, if the voters hadn’t been bribed off in the mean time, or if memories are short.

 

Simpsons’ 2000 episode tells us what Trump’s economic legacy will be

Bart To The Future, first broadcast in 2000, showed how the lives of the main characters might turn out.

A grown-up Lisa Simpson was seen as the White House incumbent, explaining to her staff she has “inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump”.

She then asks her secretary of state, childhood friend Milhouse Van Houten, how bad the country’s finances are as a result of Trump’s time in office. He replies: “We’re broke.”

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-37936369

Well his plans for massive infrastructure spending while cutting taxes sure look that the US will have a massive deficit wen he leaves office.

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21710013-congress-can-constrain-only-parts-donald-trumps-economic-policy-strap-up

And

Add in the infrastructure spending Mr Trump also wants, and the economy could get much hotter ..

For the record, his infrastructure plans (up to US$1 trillion) are a lot bigger than Socalist Bernie’s plan.

Update at 2pm: A wave of selling sweeping across bond markets resumed on Monday as investors continued to digest the impact of a Donald Trump presidency.

[S]ince inflation and interest rates are seen as likely to rise, investors are seeking assets with a more attractive return. With a Trump administration promising economic stimulus through spending and tax cuts, investors are worried about putting money into low fixed-payment assets, such as bonds.

Another day, another ass for Duterte to kiss

The,Philippines, along with Chile, Mexico, Turkey, and Russia, have a large burden of US dollar debts, which are becoming more expensive in local currency.

And the US dollar keeps on going from strength to strength since The Donald was elected president.

So after kissing Xi’s ass so that Peenoys can catch fish in Peenoy waters, he now has to kiss Trump’s ass to make sure US MNCs continue investing in PeenoyLand.

And he wouldn’t dare curse Trump. He might find his home nuked.

Update at 7.30am:

Btw, he’s already reordering from the US, 26,000 assault rifles for his police force. He cancelled the order last week.

PV46: Questions

How many trains were in use on the Circle Line when each breakdown occured? And was there any attempt to identify if there was any particular train or trains in use in all the incidents or most of them? Obviously we now know PV46 was in use in most of the 100 incidents. But how many others?

This extract seems to imply that there was no use of simple operational research techniques to narrow down the number of trains that could be faulty.

Meanwhile, engineers and data scientists from DSTA and GovTech studied data collected from train logs and incident reports, and found that almost all of the faults occurred in the proximity of one particular train, PV46

Other questions.

Where was PV46 manufactured?

In France? Or China?

Where were the electronics manufactured? China?

Where were the electronics fitted into train? S’pore? France?

Finally when did the LTA ask for help?

Part of the joint-press release by Land Transport Authority (LTA) and SMRT.

On Sunday, 6 November 2016, we tested if PV46 was the source of the problem by running the train during revenue hours. We found that PV46 indeed caused a loss of communications between nearby trains and the trackside signalling system, resulting in the activation of emergency brakes on these trains. Before PV46 was put into service on that day, no loss of communications was observed on any CCL train.

…

PV46 has been deployed for service since July 2015. Before being put into service, the train was tested extensively both at the manufacturing location as well as under local conditions. It is unclear at this point why the train’s signalling hardware has been experiencing intermittent failure. So far, no other train has been found to have the same hardware issue, but we continue to monitor closely.

Related post: Pile on the BS

Circle Line: BS piled on

Ownself praise ownself when it came to finding the fault that disrupted Circle Line rail services

Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen said the multi-agency effort to identify the cause behind recent disruptions to the Circle Line showed what combined collaboration could do for Singapore, when unconfined along departmental or organisational lines*.

Hello it took a very long time, didn’t it? The breakdowns (and delays) started in August and the problem was only a few days ago, in November.

S’poreans opted for a defacto one party state because we were promised efficiency. Didn’t get efficiency here, did we? We got one massive balls-up and a lot of bull.

————————————–

*He went on,

“It’s not possible for one agency to have all capabilities,” said Dr Ng in response to questions on the sidelines of the Republic of Singapore Air Force’s (RSAF) Exercise Torrent 2016 on Sunday (Nov 13).

“In this particular instance, the Defence Science and Technology Agency and DSO have experts in signals. GovTech – even though it’s very young, had experts in data analytics, very bright young minds, and the Land Transport Authority and the Ministry of Transport showed great leadership in bringing all these capabilities together,” said Dr Ng.

CNA.

UK’s Trump

He has the popular touch despite being a really smart toff. He was mayor of London for 8 years despite London being a Labour stronhold. He is credited for BSing enough voters so that Brexit happened.

“I am genuinely worried that he could become president,” he said. “I was in New York and some photographers were trying to take a picture of me, and a girl walked down the pavement towards me and she stopped and she said, ‘Gee is that Trump?’ It was one of the worst moments.”

BBC report

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson earlier this yr.

He has form insulting Trump. Last year when he was mayor London (his term of office ended in May this year.

— he suggested that Mr Trump had been “out of his mind” for suggesting a ban on Muslims entering the US; and

— He also told off Trump last December when the latter claimed that parts of London are “so radicalised the police are afraid for their own lives”.

He replied that Trump’s “ill-informed” comment was “complete and utter nonsense”, adding that crime was falling in both London and New York.

“The only reason I wouldn’t go to parts of New York is the very real risk of meeting Donald Trump,” Johnson said.

But he’s right to insist the UK  and Europe should be optimistic about the future following Mr Trump’s victory.

Mr Johnson said: “I would respectfully say to my beloved European friends and colleagues that it’s time that we snapped out of the general doom and gloom about the result of this election and collective ‘whinge-o-rama’ that seems to be going on in some places.”

Why Hilary and liberal elites are wimps

And deserve to lose.

If she had won, Pennsylvania and Ohio, local ang moh tua kees like Ariffin Sha, Donald Low and Kirsten Han would be strutting and sneering at the likes of me would didn’t like either candidate and tot that there wasn’t much difference between the two except that The Donald might start WW III, or nuke the Pinoys if Duerte insulted him, and that he was a lot more honest.

Let me explain.

This report appeared on the day of the election

Verified Voting is an organisation that tracks the use of voting machines, and their security, across the US. It’s a painstakingly put together dataset which gives you an idea of the complexity of the US voting system.

By using this resource, and combining it with polling data, Mr Bernhard and Prof Halderman were able to isolate key states with both poor voting booth security and a tight race.

They named the states most at risk as Nevada, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Colorado.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37902613

Now if Trump had lost Pennsylvania and Ohio, he’d litigate. Even if he didn’t, a billionaire fan would. All the liberal elites did is KPKB and riot.

 

Sci-fi story foretold Trump’s Triumph

The Foundation has become the dominant power in the galaxy, controlling its regions through its trading network. The existence of the Seldon Plan has become widely known, and Foundationists and many others believe that as it has accurately predicted previous events, the Foundation’s formation of a Second Empire is inevitable and unavoidable. The leadership of the Foundation has become dictatorial and complacent, and many outer planets belonging to the Traders plan to revolt.

An external threat arises in the form of a mysterious man who is known only as the Mule. The Mule (whose real name is never revealed) is a mutant, and possesses the ability to sense and manipulate the emotions of others, usually creating fear and/or total devotion within his victims. He uses this ability to take over the independent systems bordering the Foundation, and has them wage a war against it.

As the Mule advances the Foundation’s leaders assume that Seldon predicted this attack, and that the scheduled hologram crisis message appearance of Seldon will again tell them how to win. To their surprise, they learn that Seldon predicted a civil war with the Traders, not the rise of the Mule. The tape suddenly stops as Terminus loses all power in a Mule attack, and the Foundation falls.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_and_Empire

Emphasis mine.

For the “Seldon Plan” read  “liberal democracy” as defined by the “liberal” elites in the West.

For the “Foundation’s leaders” read “the Republican and Democrat establishments, the Hilary machine and other Western liberal elites including the MSM, the academics etc.” Sadly the last have have blind followers in S’pore.

I read this novel and the rest of the Isaac Asimov trilogy in 1977 after listening to the BBC radio series when I was in living in London after my law exams, waiting for the results.

Might interest, excerpts from long BBC article:

But for voters who cast ballots for Brexit and Donald Trump it feels like politics has finally listened to them. The “left behind” economic narrative does not account for the full variety of forces behind this new populism.

And

Claire Fox, the director of the Institute of Ideas, thinks the vitality of liberal democracy has been proved by the Brexit and Trump results. “We have to be careful of an anti-democratic response to perfectly legitimate democratic votes. Quite a lot of liberals are saying, ‘well, democracy is not working so well because people are voting in a way we don’t want them to vote’, which strikes me as a supreme irony.”

A suffocating political and cultural consensus has driven the backlash we are seeing now, she believes. “There has been arguably far less tolerance over the last 10 years for anyone who doesn’t agree with what a particular elite outlook is – and a silence or demonising of people who don’t go along with the narrative.”

Ms Fox cites public concern about immigration as a prime example and she also takes exception to the suggestion liberal democracy is being threatened by an ugly authoritarianism. “The whole of the establishment, from army generals to big business, lined up to say Brexit was a mistake,” she argues. “What’s authoritarian is employers turning round to their workers and saying jobs would be lost.

“We had an elite who thought they could call a referendum, mobilise everybody who should go and vote as they were told. That’s caused a massive tantrum amongst the elite who then have the nerve to say it’s the people’s fault for threatening democracy.”

http://www.bbc.com/news/37949669

What Trumphian markets are all about

At the moment, investors are betting that all the policies they like will become reality, while all the policies they dislike will remain campaign rhetoric. Maybe they are right. But it feels like a dangerous bet.

Last sentence of a gd FT piece titled:

Markets indulge in make-believe over a Trump presidency

The curious case of Wall Street fearing a Trump-inspired stock market rout, but then bouncing

US’s most liberal newspaper must feel sick reporting

The “liberals” have been calling a huge fiscal spending spree on infrastructure, and now the guy they love to hate is promising ehat the Democrats never delivered.

NYT must be ill.

 

The Trump Administration Could Test Whether Deficits Help the Economy

By NEIL IRWIN

Donald Trump appears likely to enact a fun-house mirror version of something many liberal economists have advocated for years.

And this must hurt

COMMON SENSE

Trump’s Victory Bodes Well for Investors — for Now

By JAMES B. STEWART

PAP never sleeps, Fintech shows why

Recently I reported that the authorities seem to understand what fintech is about and I quoted the FT in support of my point.

Here’s another quote from the same FT article which shows why the PAP is so formidable an opponent on the political arena:

In Singapore, Mr Galligan’s colleague, Christopher Wood, refers to “the threat of disruption from government-prompted efforts to promote a new digital economy — be it in fintech, ecommerce, data technologies, transport, cleantech or the so-called sharing economy in general”. Still, Singapore appears to realise that a government that defines its mission as protecting the interests of the establishment will merely accelerate the decline of that establishment. So far, its stance is paying off. “Supportive government policies and the strongest ecosystem in Asia have already spawned the early stages of a new economy,” Mr Galligan says.

Anti-PAPpists are wasting their time?

 

Triumphant: What the media “liberal” “experts” are keeping quiet about

(And media includes new media)

Trump did a bit better with blacks and Hispanics than Mitt Romney in 2012.

Women didn’t desert though there was a swing to Hilary. Predatory Trump better than a Liar and a Crook.

And while

Mr Trump ran as a champion of the country’s working class, but his support lay predominantly with those earning more than the country’s $56,000 median income. Mrs Clinton won 52:41 among voters earning less than $50,000 a year, according to exit polls. Mr Trump won narrowly among all income groups above that.

FT

The first two points show that the Democrats had a really lousy candidate.

The last point shows that Ariffin Sha is talking cock when he wrote

It’s funny how the people who would be most affected by Trump’s plans are the very people who voted for him. People, especially those who need the most help, do tend to vote against their own interests pretty often.

With deluded, uninformed young ang moh tua kees like him, the PAP is lucky in its enemies. With enemies like Ariffin, who needs friends?

The next Malay president?

First application in from FT.

Saw this on Facebook, and happy to attribute it.

“Liberal” ideas on “objectivity” and “diversity”

Here are two extracts from a BBC article by a self-confessed conservative who I suspect didn’t vote for either candidate. I reproduce these excerpts because our ang moh tua kees have similar attitudes (Think the FB posts of people like Kirsten Han, Ariffin Sha, Braema Mathi) to those desctibed below.

During the decade-long debate over same-sex marriage, I often argued with other journalists about our openly slanted coverage of the issue, which amounted to cheerleading for the pro-gay side. Don’t we have a professional obligation to tell the other side of the story? I would ask. Well, came the reply, do you think the media had an obligation to be fair to the Ku Klux Klan during the Civil Rights struggle?

And

The people who run newsrooms agonise over diversity. They will go to any length to increase racial, gender, and sexual diversity, but care nothing about viewpoint diversity. In one newsroom where I worked the only religious conservatives besides me were the African-American secretaries. Nobody there thought this was a problem. To the contrary, they believed that religious conservatives, among other undesirable demographic categories, were the problem.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37924687

 

Hope for anti-PAPpists yet?

What investors misunderstand about the politics of rage

A sense of political disenfranchisement, not falling incomes, is key driver of populism

The above is the title of a FT article (behind pay wall and published before Trump Triumphant) about “a broad-based rejection of centre-left and centre-right parties across richer countries”.

Well if

A sense of political disenfranchisement, not falling incomes, is key driver of populism

is correct, then the PAP’s strategy of spending more of our money on ourselves may not work because the problem is not just the lack of money but something deeper.

So anti-PAPpists put on yr thinking caps and go out among the people to find out more about their angst and concerns: don’t sit on yr brains.

S’pore govt blur if Trump wins

BBC reports:

The BBC’s Liz Corbin just received this response from a senior Singapore government official in response to a request for an interview:

“Not much use doing an interview now. Governments the world over will require time to ponder the result.”

Fintech: the reality behind the hype

It’s all about automating processes

At Goldman the number of people engaged in trading shares has fallen from a peak of 600 in 2000 to just two today … and another 200 software engineers who work on systems that, in effect, do the job on their own.

And

Goldman has mapped each of the 146 steps of an initial public offering in 51 charts that appear in proper sequence on a five-foot long roll-out. Costly, redundant steps are being cut or, once again, automated.

(Economist)

Based on what Tharman and the central bank say about fintech, they get the bit about automating processes as this MAS wish list shows: http://fintechnews.sg/3268/fintech/mas-100-fintech-problems-to-solve/

And it’s not only me who says that the authorities here get it about fintech

a list of fintech start-ups in Singapore compiled by CLSA using data from website Tech in Asia includes almost 180 firms. By contrast, a comparable list for Hong Kong would have fewer than half that number. Singapore’s local regulator appears “to be highly supportive of fintech and has a clear view of when and under what conditions it will regulate the industry”, says Jonathan Galligan, CLSA’s head of Singapore research.

FT

 

Some people never grateful/ Left out the “gragoes”

TOC shared this FB KPKBing.

Khan Osman Sulaiman
6 hrs ·
My community raised the issue of discrimination of Malays in RSAF.

My community raised the issue of allowing school children to wear the tudung.

My community raised the issue of allowing Hijabs in uniformed groups.

My community raised the issue of having a ‘halal kitchen’ in the navy ships.

My community raised the issue of having an independent MUIS.

My community raised the issue to legislate some form of discrimination laws.

Having a Malay president isnt the most pressing issue but yeah, it will be ‘given’ as though it’s what we need the most.

We can now celebrate the magnanimous gesture by the Gov.

Seriously, the post explains why the PAP administration had to give the Malays something even if it was only a peanut. Otherwise, they’d think the community was being marginalised.

And here’s another good FB post

Felix Cheong

I hope, at some point in our alternate universe of democracy, there will be a reserved presidential election for:

– Malay woman
– Chinese single-parent gay man
– Caucasian hot male

He left out the Eurasians. And Schooling won an Olympic gold medal for S’pore.

But then Eurasians don’t riot to misquote BG Yeo who said that of Christians. Anyway too few of them to form a rioting mob. Most left for Perth a long time ago

Trump’s right on this

Mrs Clinton’s appeal to celebrities has also attracted Mr Trump’s attention, as he spent recent days condemning Jay Z’s obscenity-laced raps and boasting that he didn’t need help drawing crowds to his rallies.

“I didn’t have to bring J-Lo or Jay Z – the only way she gets anybody,” Mr Trump said at a rally in attended by an estimated 11,000 supporters. ‘I’m here all by myself. Just me. No guitar, no piano, no nothing.”

Whether or not packing an arena with the help of a star is “almost like cheating”, as Mr Trump alleged …

http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37877872

Trump is good for US stocks, US$ too

Personal income-tax cuts would immediately stimulate consumption, which comprises two-thirds of economic activity.

Lower corporate tax rates, meanwhile, could flow straight to the bottom line, providing a further boost to many stocks. Moreover, corporations probably would be able to use more of the $2 trillion-plus they’ve squirreled away overseas under a Trump regime to buy back stock and dole out dividends.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-breakingviews-idUSKBN1322E3

Even twitter rows with foreign leaders iare good news

If that created the specter of military confrontation, then all bets would be off and geopolitical risk would skyrocket. Even in that scenario, however, it’s not as though the world can offer up a bounty of safe alternatives to the mighty U.S. dollar.

STTA kowtowing to a FT?/ Who’s the “bad” egg, David Sim?

Feng Tianwei will be able to continue participating on the ITTF World Tour circuit with the backing of the Singapore Table Tennis Association (STTA), according to a joint statement by the STTA and Sport Singapore (SportSG) on Friday night (Nov 4).

The statement also confirmed that the world no 5 will continue to be considered for selection to represent Singapore in international competitions, under selection policies to be revealed.

CNA

The decision to drop Feng from the national team had stirred plenty of debate online, what with defamatory allegations of her misdemeanours in the constructive, nation-building media and by the STTA’s deputy president, allegations that were subsequently denied by the STTA and the player. The STTA’s deputy president also took down his FB allegations, one of which implied that the STTA had told the MSM about her “misdemeanours”.

Given that she could sue him and the media (that he implied was briefed by the STTA on her “misdemeanours”) for defamation, could the decision to allow her to

— continue participating on the ITTF World Tour circuit; and

— be considered for selection to represent Singapore in international competitions, under selection policies to be revealed,

be the price of keeping her happy ie from suing?

In other words is STTA kowtowing to a FT that it’s deputy president, one PAP grassroot leader, David Sim, called a ‘”bad” egg’? See him no ak isit STTA?

Or is it to protect said PAP grassroot leader from the consequences of his behaviour? Better to kowtow to PRC FT, than for PAPpy to kanna sue?

What do u think?

 

Trump victory means US Treasuries are a cheong

Even though he’s threatened to default on them. FT’s reasoning

US Treasuries are havens. People buy them even on news that is ostensibly bad for the credit of the US. Treasuries’ prices rose in 2011 after Standard & Poor’s downgraded its credit rating. So victory for a man who says he might deliberately default on Treasury debt might lead people to buy more US government paper.

S’pore stock mkt is value for money?

Article talks of activist investors KPKBing

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-03/activist-investors-take-aim-at-singapore-buy-pray-hope-model

Funny the article doesn’t mention that lots of cos have a controlling shareholder that has more than 51% of the shares. Some of the riny ones even have a controlling shareholder with 75%. So there’s naturally a big discount to account for liquidity and governance issues.

 

“The Idiots — S’pore”: From PAP loudhailer to running dog?

So “The Idiots — S’pore” (or TISG as it used to call itself but now calls itself “The Independent”) is cleaning up its act: “We have reached a new checkpoint and we’re looking at how we can expand our editorials to cover a wider segment of society … asked founding editor Mr P N Balji and a veteran journalist, Mr Suresh Nair, to step in and to review the contents in the website.”

Rumour is The Idiots got told to clean up its act or else …. Well the words “a new checkpoint” and “review the contents in the website”, and stopping publication until the review is completed sure gives credibility to this rumour.

Looks like its loudhailing services* for the PAP administration were not appreciated and so two minders were appointed. I’ve written on Balji before (example). As to Suresh Nair this paragraph in http://www.writers.net/writers/83365 is interesting

Among his current editorial clients are NTUC Media, Petir (PAP magazine), North-East CDC and South-West CDC.

Whatever, I’m glad that time has been called on a publication that reasonable people can perceive as trying “to  promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Singapore”. Harry would approve.

Nemesis has caught up with Hubris. I had written a few months ago

A reader of this alerted me to the exchange to show the depths to which TISG will sink to. To me it shows the arrogance of TISG: telling Daniel Goh that he should comment on TISG’s wall because TISG has “1m unique visitors”. P Ravi and Kumaran Pillay (TISG’s publisher) like to say that TISG has the eyeballs that others are jealous about, hence the criticism about its journalistic and editorial standards.

On the issue of eyeballs and ad revenue from eyeballs,, I’ve calculated that the amount of revenue generated by TISG from eyeball advertising is “peanuts”.

---

Soul selling for peanuts

Based on a reported boast that it has 3.5m views a month, it would make about $9,000 in ad revenue a month. Based on some more reliable data that it has about 670,000 views a month, the figure comes to around $1700 (Detailed post coming one of these days and these numbers may be refined slightly).

Note I’m only guesstimating only revenue generated from eyeball ads. I make no comment on revenues from other sources because no data is available.

——————————————————————————————————————–

*TISG’s then lead editor, P Ravi, while rowing with various people recently (mainly from TOC allied people) on journalistic and editorial standards of integrity said (boastingly?) on Facebook: “Government and related agencies see us as a useful loudhailer.”For the context in which he said this, scroll down to almost the bottom until you see his photo, the text is somewhere below: http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2016/08/09/tisg-lashes-out-in-response-to-ncmp-daniel-gohs-remarks-on-its-article/.

China the paper tiger

New York’s banking regulator fined the Agricultural Bank of China US$215 million for a series of money-laundering violations and attempts to “mask” suspicious transactions. The bank is not contesting the fine.

As the Agricultural Bank of China of is owned by the Chinese state, this is as insulting to tChina as sailing a foreign warship sailing within 12 miles of a Chinese rock in the South China Sea.

And it isn’t even a US Federal agency that the bank is kow towing to. It’s a state agency that is giving China the bird and making it grovel.

What has RedBean and other China supremacists have to say?

Duterte the talk cock sing song Peenoy president should note that even China kow tows to a state agency.

The real reason why productivity is so bad

From young, S’poreans work hard but stupid, not smart.

Longest homework hours

1. Shanghai
2. Russia
3. Singapore
4. Kazakhstan
5. Italy
6. Ireland
7. Romania
8. Estonia
9. Lithuania
10. Poland
11. Spain

In Finland and South Korea, two of the countries with the best student performances according to PISA – the average time spent on homework every week was less than three hours.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37873805

(More on the Finnish way: http://www.bbc.com/news/education-37716005)

All the above countries in above table have more than six hours of homework a week. So no correlation or causation between hrs spent on homework and PISA result.

I repeat, from young, S’poreans work hard but stupid, not smart. Who to blame? Blame the PAP administration who is responsible for the education system.

Lim Swee Say (http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2016/11/02/lim-swee-say-improve-productivity-or-singapores-competitive-primacy-will-be-risked/) should have a word with the relevant minister of education.

Update at 7.45 pm: More evidence we work stupid from young

The OECD’s top 10 highest performing graduates

1. Japan
2. Finland
3. Netherlands
4. Sweden
5. Australia
6. Norway
7. Belgium
8. New Zealand
9. England
10. United States

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-37649892

We not on it

As BBC says

It casts a light too on how an efficient school system might not translate into success in higher education.

South Korea and Singapore, both high achievers at school level, are below average in the graduate rankings.

Thanks to Chris K for the info in update.

KPMG report on AHTC: Notice the deafening silence?

But first some other observations:

Obvious that Low is in now the front man in fighting the PAP administration. Auntie and her babi are silent having made a hash of things last time round, he can’t hide behind them.

Not that he is any better. In fact he sounds like he’s auditioning to join the PAP’s Comedy Club for failed comedians where Tharman,PM, Hng Kiang are the founding members.

Low said the latest  KPMG report on Aljunied-Hougang Town Council (AHTC) did not reveal more than what had already been set out in the Auditor-General’s report on 2015.

Err so can he point out where AGO report got ever say that

“While our work was not focussed on identifying potential criminal acts arising from theissues we observed, we are advised that, had the shortcomings … been committed deliberately, they could amount to criminal conduct, the
implications of which the Town Council should consider.”

And if similar how come instances are different from that of AGO report? He got read KPMG report mah?

Now as to the silence.

First there’s Auntie. How come she no say again, “Charge or sue us”? She said that last time.

And where’s Andrew Loh and the usual suspects who die die said WP is whiter than white?

Oh I forget Andrew Loh is PAPpy after realising that he has to pay “peanuts” for his by-pass because PAP so compassionate to poor gut like him even if he was anti-PAP.

But where are the others?

Got nothing to say isit? Because convinced that there are really irregularities?

Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”

Silver Blaze by  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

 

Why Duterte keeps cursing, dissing US

He’s frus because Pinoys more American than Americans while he personally hates America. Beecause he got buggered by an American Catholic priest?

Let me explain.

Filipinos hold a more favourable opinion of the US (92%) than even Americans themselves says the respected Pew Research Centre. And only 22 per cent of them trust China “very much” while  76% of Filipinos trusted the US “very much”, another poll says.

Bring on the hamburgers and Coke and forget the paos, siew mais and Chinese tea.

Taz why the US can continue to ignore Duterte and treat him as another talk cock sing song Peenoy macho man who should be made aware that even a US state can beat up a bank owned by PRC: NY state fines China’s AgBank US$215m over money laundering violations. Bank is paying fine.

And why China would be wise not to throw money his way, the way they did to Hugo Chavez. (Btw, they are regretting their decision to be generous to Venezuela).

Whatever when the hegemon is annoyed, Peeso collapses and US MNCs don’t invest.

 

Peeso collapses as Empire strikes back

Global funds have pulled more than $600 million from Philippine stocks since inflows this year peaked in August as Rodrigo Duterte cursed while talking about President Barack Obama and announced a “separation” from the U.S. during an official visit to China. Concerns that his outbursts may jeopardize investments in the nation’s more than $20 billion business outsourcing industry have forced his administration’s top officials to assure companies their interests will be protected as the leader builds new global alliances.

And

The last time the Philippine peso neared 50 to the dollar, the global financial system was melting down and the central bank raised interest rates to defend it. This time, it has been driven by the president cursing his trading partners and his finance chief accepting the declines.

Credit Suisse Group AG and Rabobank Groep predict the currency will weaken past 50 per dollar next year, a level last seen in November 2008. Pioneer Investment Management Ltd. doesn’t see the peso as a long-term, strategic investment. The currency fell to a seven-year low of 48.618 in October, and was Asia’s worst performer in the third quarter, when it fell 3 percent.

And

American companies account for more than 70 percent of the business-process outsourcing industry’s revenue, which is estimated at $22.9 billion this year, according to IT & Business Process Association of the Philippines. The industry is set to become a key foreign-exchange earner amid fluctuations in the amount of money remitted by overseas workers, which makes up about 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. Exports have fallen for 17 straight months.

While American companies will continue operating in the Philippines unless official sanctions are imposed, the peso may slide further should the president continue to surprise markets with his “unorthodox rhetoric,” according to Stuart Allsopp, head of country risk and financial markets strategy in Singapore at BMI Research, a unit of Fitch Group.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-01/duterte-seen-talking-peso-beyond-50-level-reached-in-2008-crisis

Facebook squeeze on anti-PAP sites continues

Facebook warned on Wednesday that revenue growth could slow next year sending its shares into a tail spin.

One way to increase revenue as the FT reports is to squeeze those who use it for free to attract people to their sites and hence to ads.

Facebook has 4m advertisers, but 60m businesses use Facebook pages for free. If even a small proportion of those could be persuaded to pay to promote their posts, prices would go up.

FT

As I reported earlier our two mainstream anti-PAP alternative media sites have been affected by FB’s recent tweaks in how it promotes stuff.

[I]t more favorably promotes content posted by the friends and family of users, not publishers (Our anti-PAP sites, like all socio-political sites are considered publishers or news sites by Facebook).

The squeeze continues for them when FB makes life more difficult for the freeloaders.

I’m sure Terry’s Online Channel (TOC) will sutvive because Terry and others there work for free or for peanuts, and because it has the goodwill of the influencers of the online community. But at the The Idiots — S’pore (TISG) which claims it’s out to make money, lots of it, even though it had to recapitalise itself last year, things are different. It has no goodwill left among the influencers after its xenophobic stuff or articles that were more fiction than fact.

The internet giveth and then takes away.

But internet taketh away then giveth too

In the US

The Neighborhood Bookstore’s Unlikely Ally? The Internet

By AMY HAIMERL

Mom-and-pop bookstores are emerging from the decimation of the last decade as they use social media to inspire a loyal customer base.

NYT Dealbook

And in India, Grofers is providing a grocery delivery service, relying on the traditional mom and pop (kirana) stores. And Amazon is testing such a system too in India. Meanwhile, 10i Commercial Services has a service enabling customers to place orders for goods not stocked locally, via a smart device belonging to a Indian local shop.

 

 

Might as well vote for the Donald?

Some economists believe that whatever the result of the election, a few longer-term signs point to markets taking a hit.

“Given that we’ve had a financial crisis of some sort about every eight years or so for the last several decades, it is hard to believe that we will go through the next four years without a hiccup,”

From NYT’s Dealbook

By Amie Tsang

Let’s say Donald J. Trump were elected president. How would markets and the economy react?

A Trump presidency, if nothing else, means uncertainty. And markets hate uncertainty.

So the first thing some investors would do is sell, right?

In reality, Andrew Ross Sorkin writes, it is hard to predict what markets would do. Some economists believe that whatever the result of the election, a few longer-term signs point to markets taking a hit.

“Given that we’ve had a financial crisis of some sort about every eight years or so for the last several decades, it is hard to believe that we will go through the next four years without a hiccup,” Mr. Sorkin writes. “If merger activity is a gauge of the market’s cycle, the recent spate of deals suggests we’re closer to the ninth inning than the first.”

It is also hard to track the immediate consequence of the election on the broader economy, no matter who wins. Big investments like blast furnaces and buildings are probably affected, one economist notes, but coffee and doughnut sales? They are probably safe.

An inconvenient fact for M Ravi’s groupies

There’s been the usual KPKBing by the anti-PAP activists and their cybernuts allies about M Ravi’s disbarment for another two years.

---

CJ Menon described Mr Ravi’s conduct as ‘reprehensible’ and ‘disturbing’, then asked: “Are we not going to hold a solicitor to the standards expected of him? … The whole thing may have been avoided if Mr Ravi had taken the doctor’s advice … Should we say because he has a medical condition, we punish him differently?”

And Justice Phang asked if Mr Ravi’s condition was being used as a ‘justification’.

“There is a wider public interest that cannot be ignored,” he said.

TOC

———————————————-

They say that it’s not fair that because of his behaviour when he was mentally ill, he’ll be out of action for four yrs since he was stopped from practising law because of his illness.

Sounds really unfair, put it this way.

But let’s face a sad fact that doesn’t help the cause of those who want an end to the PAP’s hegemony. The anti-PAP activists and the cybernuts can be just as disingenuous and economical with the truth as the PAPpists.

Why don’t anti-PAP activists and the cybernuts  tell us that in his autobiography (published before he had the relapse that got him doing whacko things that then got him into trouble) he boasted that he was not taking medicine prescribed by his doctor for bipolar disorder.

———————

The medicine prescribed for this mental illness has serious side effects and it’s a fact that people who suffer from bipolar disorder really have to be disciplined to take their medicine regularly.

Side effects

• Nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.
• Trembling.
• Increased thirst and increased need to urinate.
• Drowsiness.

Patients often try to avoid taking medicine because of these side effects that result from taking medicine for depression and maniac behaviour: these disorders are the opposite of each other, hence the term “bipolar disorder”. The medicine work againsy each other.

—–

PM Ravi boasted that meditation worked.

Well it didn’t did it? As the CJ pointed out, The whole thing may have been avoided if Mr Ravi had taken the doctor’s advice …

But he didn’t did he? In his book, he said he didn’t take the prescribed medicine, relying on meditation.

I’ve a friend who like me meditates. But because he suffers from mild depression, he still takes Prozac. Meditation helps those of us who suffer from high blood pressure. But I still take my SingHealth prescribed pills.

So let’s cut the BS that Ravi is blameless for his medical condition. He refused* to take his medicine and must accept the consequences of his actions, just like Amos and Mother Mary must accept the consequences of their actions.

Ravi, Mother Mary and Amos made their beds and must lie in said beds.

If Amos’s groupies want to blame anyone, they should blame Roy and New Citizen Han Hui Hui for Ravi going bananas.

---

*A good way to tell if Ravi again refuses to take his medicine is if he loses weight. Compare the pixs of him today with pixs of the time when he was ill. He was a lot more leaner. Another side effect of the medicine preceibed is weight gain.

ST on how rotten SMRT’s culture is

Must read this ST article as it describes how rotten the SMRT culture was or is. An excerpt

Truth is, SMRT must be accountable for many of its recent missteps, including one which led to the deaths of two young employees on a track early this year.

Just days after an embarrassing bus driver strike thrust the operator into the limelight in November 2012, newly minted chief executive Desmond Kuek admitted that the company had managerial, structural, cultural and systemic issues. Fixing those “deep-seated” issues, he said, was going to be a top priority.

Four years on, it is clear some of those issues remain unresolved. To be fair, no one person can effect profound change in an organisation of some 9,000 employees. A top-down approach rarely works. Change has to come from within, and start from the bottom. Management has to walk the talk, and be ready to join the troops in the trenches.

Many years ago, Lee Han Shih, a really brave and good SPH journalist (now a media entrepreneur), told me that the reporter who wrote the above report, was one of ST’s best. This report is more evidence.

PM contradicts himself: Strategies were wrong? Tailored messages?

Is PM growing old, forgetting what he said a week ago? Or is he really saying that the old policies have failed? Or BSing to different audiences, telling them what he thinks they want to hear?

Despite slowing economic growth, Singapore is “not in a crisis”, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Tuesday (Nov 1), calling instead for a longer-term strategy to continue growing and creating good jobs.

Mr Lee outlined the strategy in his speech at a dialogue with labour movement leaders, noting that Singapore’s growth is still positive despite difficult external conditions like slowing trade and sinking oil prices.

(CNA last night)

Speaking to a group of students at the Singapore Institute of Technology, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said on 24 Oct that he is confident the country is taking the right growth strategies to move forward.

“We are feeling the pains of restructuring, but not yet seeing the dividends of our hard work. But we are pursuing all the right strategies, and I am confident that given time these strategies will work for us.”

(CNA a week ago)

I’m sure regular readers can spot the contradiction, but for the cybernuts who will read this piece if TRE uses it, here’s the contradiction.

A week ago he said that he is confident the country is taking the right growth strategies to move forward, but last night when talking to his NTUC running dogs he talked about a longer-term strategy to continue growing and creating good jobs.

The 24 Oct remarks stated that the PAP administration had the right strategies in place, but the latest by talking about a new strategy implies that the right strategies were not in place.

Cybernuts beng pek mah?

The constructive, nation building media will not point out the contradictions. And neither will the mainstream anti-PAP alternative media because they cut and paste unintelligently from ST. More on the latter, later in the week.

 

Property is not a cheong says Nomura

Don’t believe the hype about a Singapore property pick-up, Nomura said, as it addressed some “half-truths” …

Not touched bottom yet leh despite

Singapore’s private residential property prices dropped 1.5 percent on-quarter in the third quarter, according to government data, marking 12 straight quarters of declines and the largest quarterly drop since 2009, during the global financial crisis.

[T]he first “half-truth” about the market’s next step was that the city-state’s private home sales had seen strong gains.

Second: signs of a demand pickup for prime luxury properties were overstated.

The third half-truth was that unsold inventory was low, especially in the suburbs.

Another myth was that the vacancy rate for private residential property had finally reached the peak.

[I]t was a half-truth to expect that the prime luxury segment had reached a pricing bottom. It noted that unsold inventory in the core central region was equivalent to more than 100 months of demand, with 76 percent more completions slated for the coming 18 months than in the previous 18 months.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/23/singapore-property-market-shows-superficial-signs-of-recovery-but-problems-run-deeper.html

And don’t forget that the economy’s really weak, even if it’s not yet in a recession.

Those who think property has bottomed out should consult M Ravi’s doctor.

Update at 4.30pm: CNA reports

Following surprisingly downbeat growth figures in the third quarter, a number of economists have cut back their expectations for Singapore’s economy, with DBS being the latest to do so.

In a report released on Tuesday (Nov 1), Mr Irvin Seah, a senior economist at DBS Bank, wrote that he now expects the city-state to log economic growth of 1.2 per cent this year, down from a previous forecast of 1.5 per cent.

For 2017, Singapore’s gross domestic product (GDP) will likely expand 1.3 per cent, given that the sequential decline in the latest GDP figures has lowered the growth trajectory, wrote Mr Seah. This is another marked downgrade from the economist’s long-standing forecast of 1.9 per cent.

…

After the GDP report, OCBC said a downgrade in its full-year growth forecast was “inevitable” and cut its full-year growth forecast for 2016 to 1.3 per cent, from 1.9 per cent. UOB similarly slashed its estimates to 1.4 per cent, from 2.2 per cent.

Economists at Citi were among the most pessimistic. Even after taking into account the likelihood of a rebound in fourth quarter GDP growth on a seasonally adjusted annualised basis to 2.6 per cent, Singapore’s economy will likely eke out a meagre 1.0 per cent GDP growth for the whole of this year, a step down from previous estimates of 1.5 per cent.

Despite the downgrades, these estimates still remain within the Government’s forecast range of 1 to 2 per cent for 2016.

STTA must discard the “damaged ball”

Or should be the “bad egg”?

When STTA dropped Feng Tianwei from the national team when it announced its new strategy for the next Olympics, she suddenly became a cybernut hero. She joined Harry’s daughter, New Citizen Han Hui Hui, Roy M Ravi  as another hero of the nutty anti-PAP mob. If she had been retained, the mob would have roared for her dismissal, and rightly so: she failed to perform at the last Olympics, was aging and so culling her was par for the course.

I had half-expected her sliming by the mainstream brudders of The Idiots — S’pore (Or TISG as it prefers to be known) because

— the word it seems was out on FB “According to sources, there are reports that the official stance is to keep quiet while using the media to smear the reputation of an individual, all according to sources.”; and

— the FT MP godmother of the STTA has no class. Remember she tried to claim ctrdit for schooling’s gold medal? And her rows with STTA coaches?

We did get the sliming. But what happened next was a real surprise:

On Thursday night, its deputy president David Sim shed more light on reasons for her sacking on his Facebook page, describing her as a national disgrace and a “bad egg”. 

TMG

He also seemed to imply that the MSM sliming stories came from STTA:

“if this is not true then STTA will not reveal this news n FTW can sue STTA n why not ask her to do it if she is innocent.”

I’ll let TMG continue (do read the link on Sim’s comments because thay are defamatory):

The STTA has distanced itself from Mr Sim’s comments, which he has since deleted. They were his “personal” views, it said yesterday. But it also took the opportunity yesterday to tackle one point which could be a legal minefield if left to stand: allegations that she had made false claims.

It said: “Regarding the recent media reports, Feng Tianwei was cautioned about the proper claiming procedure, but she did not falsify nor claim more than what she was permitted.”

Well this isn’t enough given that David Sim is the deputy president and given that he said

“if this is not true then STTA will not reveal this news n FTW can sue STTA n why not ask her to do it if she is innocent.”

He was talking about the “eggs issue” (she had it was alleged made illegal claims for eggs) and the leaking of the news by the STTA. The president specifically cleared Feng over her claims after David Sim made the allegations. She also  Sim’s comments were his “personal” views.

Someone is not telling the truth and it sounds like David Sim given that the STTA has disowned his comments, saying “personal leh” and he has removed them. He still could be sued btw by the FT gladiator. I hope she does. Hey cybernuts walk the talk, crowdfund her.

And how can STTA say it’s his “personal” views that STTA was behind the newspaper articles. The STTA deputy president is accusing the STTA of sliming the FT gladiator, and STTA is not denying this claim?

So he’s the bad egg that must be thrown out if STTA is to be ever believed again.

As Donald Low a tua kee influencer scholar put it as follows on FB

The STTA says his comments do not represent the association’s views. But that position is untenable.

He also said

This* is way more dignified and mature than the crap that has been coming from STTA’s Vice President.

He was referring to the FT gladiator’s statement written in Mandarin to the media on Friday (Oct 28) Feng  hadsaid: “I hope I have the ability to improve the table tennis scene in Singapore and to show everyone that the support from the Singapore Government will reap benefits.”

Well said Ma’am.

STTA should use her PR advisers to remake its image because there’s more bad karma to come the STTA’s way what with SunT’s ST article, “Ex-coach lifts lid on STTA’s rift with Feng”.

Best to flush away a “bad egg” (is it a “damaged ball”?).