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It has only been a mere 3 months since my last blog … but what a 3 months that is …. Within this 3 months, none of the investments banks in US are left standing. Who would have thought big investments banks like Leman Brothers, Morgan Standley, Merrill Lynch, etc would file for bankruptcy or needed white knights to inject cash. And Who would have thought AIG need cash so badly that it had to be bail out by the US government. But… fall they did, one by one … like a stack of dominoes.
Back in Singapore, the fall of these US banks spelled trouble for the local investors as well. The bone of contention lies with structured products (that are backed by Leman Brothers) sold by local banks. The structured products are super complex, involving swaps and options and what-not, piled upon the primary assets layers after layers like sugar icing on a cream cake. Nice to see, sweet to the taste, but if anything goes wrong, leaves you with a terrible migraine and excruciating heartache as what is felt my many people now.
As one would expect …. people are now out braying for blood. ” I have been mis-sold the product, cheated. Life savings gone!” they all cried in unison. Looking at the complexity of the structured products, it is not difficult to empathize with these people. Even a professor might take several hours or days to fully comprehend the complexity behind the product or to figure out what the actual underlying asset is. While my heart goes out to all the people who had invested and stand ready to lose their investements, I cannnot help but feel something is terribly wrong. While I try to pin point the problem, lets try to answer some simple questions:
1. Is there a chance that people are being mislead to purchase the products?
I would say … probably there is. Looking at the complexity of the product being sold, it would take a huge effort by the relationship managers to try and explain the product to the investors.
2. Are all the affected investors victims of mis selling?
I think not. in fact, to be more realistic, probably only a handful of them are. The rest I felt are more victims of their own greed and that is where the entire problem lies.
And why do I say so? Let me try to explain.
I believe at least 90% of the people would know the concept behind “Putting all your eggs in one basket”. If not for greed, why would someone, who is retiring, decided to put all their life savings into a product that they cannot even understand? This simply flies in the face of being rational and logical.
The money belongs to the investors. Ultimately, the relationship managers did not resort to using force or fraud to force investors in parting with their money. I am quite sure that if Lehman did not fail and these investors got their expected gains, none of these allegations of mis-selling would have surfaced.
Even without considering the above points, I am sure all of us knows the phase “if it is too good to be true, there much be a catch some where” or “there is no free lunch”. If the investors can take a step back and think about the question “Why is this product that I am investing in has the potential to generate so much higher return as compared to a normal fixed / time deposit?” or even stop and ponder “DO I truly understand what I am investing in?” I am sure the tragedy that is playing itself out now would not have occurred. Some how I have a nagging feeling that such questions had flashed across their mind at one point of another, but was summarily brushed and swept aside into the deepest recess of their mind by their own greed. Because after all, they are investing their life savings… something which they cannot afford to lose, i.e. the money that is going to sustain them for their retirement.
Lets wind back the clock to maybe a year back … economy is doing well, equity prices are rising, interest rates are all time low. Even if the RMs had dutifully explain the derivatives that are embedded within the structured products to the investors and carefully pointed out that there is a chanse that banks backing the assets of the products would fail and the the investors might not get their capital back. I can bet my last penny that with an anticiapted return of 7 to 8% per annum, there would still be people buying into the product, dispite not knowing a tenth of what the product is all about.
Finally I am back blogging … it has been a cool 2 months … and lots had happen and I am either too lazy to pen / type down my tots or too busy / preoccupied with other things ..
First things first … my trip to Hokkaido … it was a very much needed break !! I tell you .. the view is simply magnificent, breath taking, wonderful … the air is so fresh and crisp with the sweet sent of spring.. For one the trip is very much memorable as me and my wife drove the entire trip, taking in the beautiful scenery of the country site and city landscape on 4 wheels. I tell you .. the experience of going there on a coach and self drive is totally different … I will blog about it in time to come … very soon I hope …
Then after the trip …. my comp decide to give up on me … well .. .that was expected with it reaching 3 years old and after 2 plus weeks of total inactivity .. what to do … time to spend money … the most horrible thingy is that after I build up my system and installed it with WinXP and Ubuntu…. the colors on my printer goes bonkers. As you guys might know .. I am a photo enthusiast … the discrepancy between the colors of photos on my camera compared to the screen and to my computer print out totally drove me nuts .. For those who are grappling with a color managed work-flow / simply term digital dark room, you will under stand my headache and sleepless nights. (printer goes by magenta, yellow and cyan and screen is red green blue and to get them to sing the same tune is horrible for the uninitiated) Color spoofing simply refuse to work and I finally suspect that there is something wrong with my monitor and printer color profile. I simply had to get the color right .. but that is easier said than done … I wasted lots and lots of ink and photo quality paper print photos under different settings. Finally I decided to get a screen calibrator … set me back by a few hundred bucks .. but the money is well worth it ! I realise my current screen is too yellow and my print out cannot compensate the magenta and blue, etc. After the calibration, I began to see details on my screen like the outline of clouds or different shades of blue… something which I had not noticed before. And now .. my photo print outs are more true in their color … so that is one happy ending.
Third, a phone call which I had been waiting for 2 to 3 months finally came .. that had me worried for a while. Anyway that phone call means good news and I am on my way to a new job and hopefully a more balanced life style with more time to do the things I enjoy.
And that is where I am now …. happily taking a break before I commence my new job and well .. having this pockets of free time to do my blog and settle my photos.
See my next post regarding my trip to Hokkaido .. 🙂
Yes Yes !! finally I can see a break …. have been working back to back since I dun know when … It started off since last December involving a direct marketing company who is obsessed with Lions and call themselves the harmful UV rays..
then came …a short break … an overseas training trip to HK … weather not nice .. place a bit foggy .. did not develop nice pics and thus not posted here …
After the trip .. it was another round of intense work. This time round it involved a hospital caring for the needy …and we went deep into the records to try and uncover the dirt … and in the process discovered that ancient dust can be rather potent…
Immediately after that came another case which called itself a semi precious stone ..Sigh … is there no end to it? I guess not .. and so … I have decided to drop everything and go on a fly and drive trip to HokKaido. Nihon … Sakura … here I come !!
Wait for my pics … you will not regret it !
Xmas is definitely around the corner … you can hear it, see it and maybe even feel it … The shops have began their yearly Xmas decorations … maybe not as lavish as few years back .. but the decorations and lightings are definitely up. Every where you go, shops are blasting away songs that you will only hear during this festive period .. Sounds of bells jingling, songs like Rudoff the red nose rein deer etc are finding themselves on the air after a 11 months cold storage. And last of all, you may even start to feel the pinch in you wallets as you start to go around buying gifts for your dear friends or for the annual gifts exchange …BUT personally there is something seriously missing… for me at least ….. the festive MOOD…
Yes I can see the decorations and hear the songs … but the mood is not there … thanks to a certain MLM company … stupid company with stupid compensation plans all set to ruin my Xmas mood big time. Have been working hard trying to unravel the mysteries of the numerous inter-companies’ transactions, the ubiquitous yet completely baffling compensation plans …. and the list goes on and on …
Yea well … as you can see .. I do not have a general good impression of MLM companies … Passive income is well and good … but to earn it at the expense of others … nope .. that is not for me. The only form of passive income I can accept is you owning a big company and people work for you and you pay them wages … For MLM … you gain $ but there is no cost on your part … to me that sounds very very dodgy indeed.
Well … enough about the company … back to xmas … I was out shopping last weekend when I started to get a little bit trigger happy .. (with a SLR you cannot help but be trigger happy I guess) Here is the loot .. a picture load of Xmas trees …. And if I cannot make it on time for my next blog … Merry Xmas !! Yea I know it is a bit too early … but high chance I will not have the chance to blog again before Dec 25 .. Enff talk .. enjoy the pics ..
This is my favorite tree … the most dazzling and not to mention the most expensive. Introducing the crystal Xmas tree
The traditional yet ever golden tree ..I could not help but to take a pic next to it .. 🙂
Next we have the true blue tree ….
Then the most normal looking xmas tree
And of course … what is xmas without the giant holy laurel of leaves and mistletoes?
And here ends my field report … Xmas mood … come to me soon !!
“How do you feel relax?” my stress management course instructor asked the class. With our usual “hack care” attitude … the whole class did not answer her. I guess she must be feeling very stressed out then … but really what makes a person feel less stress? I guess that means different things to different people.
The most cliché answer would be the take a slow walk down the beach with seagulls (Which Singapore do not have) crowing and the wind gently brushing away at your skin. In fact, most relaxation CDs that you can purchase off the market will feature the sound of waves and seagulls (again). telling you to relax this muscles and that muscles and convincing you that you ARE relax … while it works for others … I certainly do not work for me …. I believe it only works for those people who rarely see the beach and if they do … it is for their holidays … You know those people who would lie all day at the beach to sun bath/read a book and simply while away their time.
But personally, listening to that only has a certain effect on me. I guess it is due to the close proximity my place is the east coast beach (approx 30 minutes walk)? I see the beach day in and out until its supposed calming effect has limited effect on me.
Personally what works for me are:
- Sitting around in Raffles place or near my work place, enjoying a cup of coffee, reading the news papers on a normal working day. The most important thing is you are not working that day … it can really bring relief to me watching busy / stressed people rushing around to get to work…and here I am having my leisure cup of coffee, without a care in the world. Pretty sadistic tots I admit. De-stressing at the expense of others… but I like it. And most importantly… it works.
- Doing the things I like to do best … and my interest are very varied … like playing around with my SLR camera, computer games, bringing my dog out for a run, spending time with my wife and etc …
- Getting hold of a really good book and reading it from beginning to the end at one sitting. I would be really zonked out the rest of the day …. But then it puts my mind off things that are happening around me (oblivious to my surroundings to be exact) and for that reason I am at peace with my surroundings.
- I dun know …I guess the list can go on and on and on if I really try .. but lets not waste brain cells on this … so what makes your day?
Recently attended a stress managmenet workshop conducted by a health company called Day Spring. The workshop is part of a package bundled together with an anger management workshop and a Yoga lesson thrown in at the end of the sessions. Guess this is part of my organisation’s way of showing care and concern for its employees welfare, well-being, work life balance and blah and the blah …(right …work life balance … tell me how to achieve it when half your bosses worked their asses off until the wee hours into the night and report for work at 830 everyday?)
Anyway .. halfway through the anger management workshop, I began wondering why am I here in the first place. Anger has never been a problem to me… the most I get extremely annoyed with someone (to the point of totally avoiding the person and perhaps throw darts at the person’s face or get a voodoo doll and start poking needles) … BUT seriously, never to the point of becoming fuming mad and having muderous thoughts. Really, there is no point in doing that as you will only poision your own mind and cause greater damage to yourself.
As a way to begin the lesson, the instructor got us to play a game. We were to pass a message through 15 to 20 people and see how distorted the message became. The mesage that was being passed was “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.” This message brought back very found memories of a song that I learnt eons ago (during my primary school days to be exect) and which I would like to share with all of you. The lyrics are beautiful and if one can learn to appreciate it (the lyrics I mean) the world can really be a better place, with lesser conflicts ..and lower oil prices thus, in a way, lower inflation.
Before I post the lyrics of the song here ..I must stress that I am a free thinker and this song is by no means a christian song. The God that it refers to in the second verse refers to the God that each and everyone of us worship in our hearts. He can take any form and any shape an I am not here to promote any religion or argue about the origins of any religion. So please, whoever is reading this, take the meaning as it is, which ever is closest to your heart.
This song (music and lyrics) is by Jill Jackson and Sy Miller, Circa 1955. The title is called “Let there be peace on earth”
“ Let there be peace on earth,
and let it begin with me.
Let there be peace on Earth,
the peace that was meant to be.
With God as our Father,
brothers all are we,
Let me walk with my brother,
in perfect harmony.
Let peace begin with me,
let this be the moment now.
With every step I take,
let this be my solemn vow,
To take each moment and live each moment
in peace, eternally.
Let there be Peace on Earth,
and let it begin with me.”
A friend of mine sent me this link some time ago. While I was mulling over it, I realised that what the author was saying was very true to the organisation behaviour of most companies today. Thus I thought it might be a good idea to share it here. It is a age old story about the Emperor’s new clothes.
The Emperor’s New Clothes – Providing Negative Feedback
By David W. Earle, LPC
May 6, 2007
In the fable of the Emperor’s New Clothes, a couple of con men convinced the king that they had magical cloth, which only the wise could see. The king hires these men to make him the most magnificent suit of clothes, declaring that anyone who cannot see this material was a fool. The king was insulated from negative feedback and played the ultimate price; complete and absolute public mortification.
As the fable goes, when the con men unveiled this magnificent suit made of this magical clothes no one wanted to admit all they could see was a half-naked king clad only in his boxer shorts, lest they be branded a fool. It took the honesty of a youth to exclaimed, “The king has no clothes!” before the rest of the kingdom was able to see the reality of the king’s shining nakedness.
Why was this noble taken in by these con men? Does this fable have meaning in today’s sophisticated business world? If so, then this question must be answered and the lessons learned. Fables survive throughout the ages because of the truth they tell. If the businessperson does not to learn this lesson, an embarrassing part of his anatomy, usually reserved for sitting upon will be exposed, metaphorically speaking.
In the parable, being discovered to be naked in public was embarrassing enough but when that small child brought down the veil of denial an even worse fate befell the king. Every one knew their leader was a fool! For now all the kings’ men, all the kings subjects, and even their horses knew their king was a dunce!
In retaliation for being made a fool, retribution must follow! For this public embarrassment of allowing their king to walk naked down Main Street, his trusted advisors would have their heads chopped off; for such is the life of a wise man.
Was the king correct in blaming his wise men, his trusted council for allowing this travesty to occur? After all he did hire them for their wisdom and they let him down. The question is how would the king have taken these advisor’s wisdom had they presented the naked truth to him? Did the king encourage the honest expression of diverse opinions other than his own? Not having the perspective of another point of view creates a very limiting and often disastrous perspective of reality. The attitude of integrity must be cultivated, for except with rare exceptions, this honesty is not freely given.
Feedback is a very powerful concept, which has been misunderstood and misused, but more often under-utilized. In order to see more of reality, everyone needs feedback from others and not just our own limited point of view. No where is the lack of honesty more apparent then in the workplace.
Much has been written about today’s management providing positive feedback to employees. Supervisors have been encouraged to validate and encourage their employee’s work performance, expounding in One-Minute-Management fashion; catching them “doing something right”. However one of the hardest things for many people to do is to provide honest negative feedback. Oh sure, bosses “chew out their employees” all the time and isn’t that feedback? It is true that being called on the carpet is a form of feedback but it is rather ineffective especially when considering today’s work force who seem to thrive when empowered and self-directed.
Today’s effective supervisor must be able to communicate negative feedback to their employees in a fashion, which is conducive to an even honest exchange of ideas, concepts, feelings, and thoughts. To be effective, this exchange has to be two-way and presented on a level playing field. The supervisor must want and create the atmosphere of encouraging what really needs to be understood.
On a basic instinctual level, the reason for this reluctance to provide honest feedback is fear. This fear is the dark cloud swirling around supervisors when confrontation concerning negative behavior is necessary. A performance appraisal is a typical example; ask a group of supervisors if they enjoy performance appraisals, most would respond with an emphatic “no”! Presenting honest response to anyone is usually not a pleasant chore and yet, how powerful it would be if both the employer and employee would provide honest feedback to each other in an atmosphere of understanding and acceptance.
Most people have a desire to be liked, to be part of the in-crowd. Despite some employee’s opinion to the contrary, supervisors are people too. Most people were raised to “be nice” even at the risk of honesty. Most have never developed the ability to present negative feedback in any other terms then in an attack mode. When delivered negatively, this feedback has the subtly of a falling anvil, usually causing the message to be garbled by resentments and anger thus failing in it’s basic efforts to be informative. Compounding that lack of communication is the hole-in-the-gut feeling of annihilation.
The successful business leader needs to be able to give and most of all receive negative feedback. Successful companies will continue to develop this ability in their workforce. Unsuccessful companies without the golden truth obtained from honest feedback, will continue to parade down the street naked!
OK .. to put things into perspective. For those who do not know where I stay, I live on an island known to all as the small red dot. This red dot, is famous for its variety of good food. There are things like the chicken rice, the curry fish head, satay, mee soto, roti john, roti prata … just to name a few. This is an island where people live to eat rather than eat to live … but that is a tale for another time.
The story I am telling today is about a small town somewhere on the east of this little red dot .. and this small town is call Bedok.
Long time ago, Bedok was a very peaceful town run by only 1 war lord. This War lord runs under a red, blue and white banner and is termed NTUC for short. This war lord has absolute control over the supply of food and grocery of the people staying in Bedok.
Not long after, another war lord can to vie for space and control. This war lord runs a orange and red banner and is call Emporium.. This warlord gains some grounds at first. However, it failed to notice the change in technology and the taste of the people and thus he died a natural death.
Over the years, other warlords with different banners, came and went, each trying to wrestle a piece of the territory from NTUC. Among which was Green and yellow Giant, Yellow and Green save and shop, etc. Save and shop was almost down and out … but he consolidated his strength and came back carrying a MacDonald’s color banner. He has been trying to save guard his land since.
Recently all hell broke loose when a super strong warlord who loves to sing broke into the scene. People flocked to him and called him affectionately as Sing Song. Now this warlord is competing with NTUC head on. The prices offered are extremely competitive and thus NTUC is bleeding and loosing territory every day.
Because both Sing Song and NTUC are fighting for the same dollar in my wallet, I did the most “uncle” thing I could do. I compiled a list of all the items that I would normally buy and went around checking prices from Sing Song and NTUC.
Trouble came when an NTUC auntie employee caught me inputting prices into my list. She came over and told me “I know where you are from. You cannot do that. Please note that taking down prices are strictly prohibited. You can use any methods but taking down of prices are strictly prohibited.”
I was literally at a lost of words … never in my 30 years of shopping had anyone told me that I cannot take down prices to make comparison … Oh my God .. where is my consumer rights and freedom? Can someone enlighten me if comparing prices at super markets is allowed?
Opps … Yes … I did it again …
For those who had known me long enough … this is my second attempt at blogging. This time round, I will only blog when I want to, when n I feel like it and I promise not to be a slave to the system … Well, as if that is not the case for my very first time …
And what happen to my very first time you might ask … I started with a lot of enthusiasm, zest and inspiration … I was blogging about the growing up process of my cute doggie you see … I blogged for 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month…. 2 months … half a year (dun really think my blog last that long)… and then something terrible happen … my enthusiasm, zest and inspiration dwindled as I lost focus and content to blog … after all the most noticeable change within a puppy is the 1st 4 to 6 months …. After which they remain constant …. Constantly cute and adorable and loyal. As a tribute to my previous pathetic attempt …. Here is the link … I sure do hope that link is still alive …(Actually the real reason why the blog had stopped is that I lost me password and have not been able to log in since … :X)
And HOW might this time be different? I wonder. Basically, nothing has changed … especially the limited amount of free time I have. (Perhaps now I do have more time, considering I do not need to chase after my little doggie collecting his poo in my house)
I had been thinking a lot (say about 5 to 10 minutes) about whether to start a new blog again. And well, perhaps I am bored by days of trying to write a logical and understandable repot and wanted to release some of my creative juices by doing some informal writing… or you can simply say the urge to write is born out of a whimsical moment but then at least I took the effort to start writing ….
A wise woman (my wife actually) once told me to develop a habit, you have to continue doing something for 7 days straight. Lets see how far this will take me … I will definitely not be blogging for 7 days straight … if not this blog will meet an end that is even more premature than the last …
Any one want to wager how long this blog will last?
Random Tots 