FT: US democracy has little to teach China vs The China Syndrome
Asia's new aristocrats
My Experience working with Candidates from India. Yes, this is from a Google Cache.
Logitech and some other things
Swashbuckling versus risk: a comment on marketing small hedge funds
The Phantom 15 Million
Notes of a Native Tiger Son, Part 1
Tunisia and Gordon Tullock
In Tunisia, a lesson in benign neglect
"Wire" creator responds to top cop's criticism
The Chinese send hoards here to Singapore to study how to make a successful economy. They've been sending for several years. I got introduced to the wing of one of the government's buildings full of offices and cubbies to house the Chinese.
ReplyDeleteso the Chinese tried to emulate Singapore's growth recipe. Singapore is building like crazy. The Chinese copied. Singapore has filled the buildings with citizens, and expats. The Chinese don't have nearly enough citizens who can afford the buildings, and if you're an expat living in China, well, frankly, I'm sorry for you. So many of the buildings went unoccupied.
Now, Singapore has a housing bubble. There are so many expats, the locals can't afford a home (sound familiar?). so the government fixed it last Friday. As of Friday, if you sell a property < 1 year of owning it, you must pay income tax on 50% of the sell price or value, whichever is more.
Housing speculation stopped like it hit a granite wall. I'm told that after only a day, prices are dropping. There are two buildings being constructed just opposite where I live, and today they came to one and removed it's crane (there's a lot more crane work here, BTW)
So what are the Chinese going to do with no locals or expats to fill those empty buildings and mini-cities?
Bloomberg said commodities were dropping in China. FCX said the same thing in their financial report, and their stock dropped like a flying monkey.
I'm wondering if it isn't India who will lead us out of this worldwide recession we seem to be mired in.
@Rock,
ReplyDelete"I knew abroad once". Ha! a good one.
In another news - "Irish PM Cowen resigns as party leader:WSJ". marketwatch.com
Wonder how the market will react on Monday.
ICan
@Rock,
ReplyDelete"I'am wondering if it isn't India who will lead us out of this worldwide recession ...". On a joking spree are we?
Ask my father, and he would say, "Fools and their money...".
My own opinions is Ems are just WallStreet toys - easy money supply in Japan, EU, and the U.S. Remember it was Jim O'Neal of Goldman Sachs who coined "BRIC". India has a plan to pay it's deficit- sell a very small(10%) of their share in state owned corporations like Coal India.
Take away the Punch Bowl of QEs and see what happens!
ICan
Re, the U.S. budget chart -
ReplyDeleteTake away the discretionary spending, and you are in surplus. Not that easy though. All those vested interest -
ICan
@Rock,
ReplyDeleteBTW, appreciate your "eyewitness" report on what's happening at ground zero Ems. If that place slows, Canada is in trouble.
ICan
Excellent linkfest emmie! So glad to have you back :)
ReplyDelete@Emmy,
ReplyDeleteThose links look delicious.
Just read the one about Indian candidates. Very good, I must say. Just our experience. My Uncle, my father's older brother, was one of those candidates several decades ago. He received his post-grad degree from UBC in Vancouver in Chemical engineering and went on to work for Kimberly Clark in Canada. It was damn hard(and rewarding) for all of us who follow. All of my father's siblings followed and married in Canada. My father who stayed back to help my grandfather was the last to join. We came at the beginning of the eighties, when Volcker start tightening - 22% interest rates on home mortgages. That was not fun way to grow up. But my father too end up doing really well. The opportunities were there, I am not sure now.
ICan
Emmy,
ReplyDeleteGreat link fest, a cold winter day's reading. Thanks.
Rock,
ReplyDeleteThanks for those observations. So interesting and useful. You could write your own blog about life in Singapore!
ROck - yes! Fascinating stuff! I had no idea that's how things worked in Singapore. A 50% tax, wow! It's amazing what a government really can do when it wants to put a stop to something.
ReplyDeleteAgree with you on China, the construction of thousands of buildings that stay empty can't go on forever. Have also read that the quality of the buildings being put up in China is very poor.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-china-visit-0123-20110121,0,6385631.story?page=2&track=rss
ReplyDeleteNot surprising given the Chicago connection in the administration.
Our orange cardinal was no where to be seen at our feeders for the past week or so and he just reappeared this morning. We thought he was dead.
ReplyDeleteFunny how seeing a small bird can raise your spirits.
Best Muni-Bond Manager Says Whitney Call Overblown
ReplyDelete“The baby has been thrown out with the bathwater,” said Fitterer, who runs the $2.3 billion Wells Fargo Advantage Municipal Bond Fund from Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. “For every bad story there are hundreds of good ones.”
"Investors have pulled money from mutual funds that buy municipal bonds for 10 straight weeks, spooked by rising interest rates and warnings that defaults will escalate. Fitterer used the selloff to buy what he sees as bargains, including debt from Illinois and California, which have the lowest state credit rating from Moody’s Investors Service."
We have picked up some individual issues during this sell off. I would not buy any of the muni bond funds, though.
"Thor said...
ReplyDeleteOlberman is no longer with msnbc. Wonder what that was about.
January 21, 2011 11:35 PM"
Just another case of our corporate masters trying to suppress the truth-tellers!
Not bad Andy - see, not being a complete ass isn't that hard now is it?
ReplyDeleteNice quote of the day. Thanks to whomever changed it.
ReplyDeleteIf any of our authors want to post a "Quote of the Day", feel free to do so. It would be fun to see other's favorite quotes.
The Borowitz Report:
ReplyDeleteBREAKING: Worst Persons in the World Celebrate #Obermann's Departure #oreilly #murdoch #limbaugh #palin #hannity
Pretty funny.
dss, libertarians are repubs who distanced themselves from W., they didn't give a shit about balancing the budget until obama became prez. they're just the same old, some old mean right wingers. the TBP state bk thread is full of them. BR actually surprised me when he said he was a libertarian, but he seems to be a true Javits liber, not those Neal Boortz libers/regulars who comment on his blog.
ReplyDelete@the small picture,
ReplyDeleteThank you for clearing that up, I know that many think that BR is a socialist, but I think he is more of a pragmatist.
Most Libertarian concepts (if you can call them that) are based upon the world being full of 100 person villages where people build their own homes, pave their own street, build their own bridges, grow all of their own food, and never import any oil as there are no need for cars in their villages.
In these Libertarian fantasy lands, there are no public schools, no police, no firemen as we educate our own children, our guns will more than take care of any criminals and our buckets of water will put out any fires. No unions, no pensions, no courts, no IRS.
How silly.
@the small picture,
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting!
thx, i posted this idea over at TBP a few years ago, i didn't want to join that crazy bk thread yesterday, but it was quite interesting to read. or repeat this theme again.
ReplyDeleteretirement is just a dream, another scam we've been sold. in the history of the world, there has been no society or civilization where a mass of people (a middle class) was able to work until their 60s and retire for 30 years. for one thing, humans didn't use to live that long. there was not enough wealth created in the working years. remember that when social security was created, it was suppose to sustain people for only few years, not as a retirement fund ... anyway, the greatest generation, those guys who came back from WWII, then worked in one income households and retired, were an outlier, a blip in history. for every American living large, there are hundreds and thousands of chinese, indians, africans, etc. living in poverty.
the majority of people will not able to retire, even without the great recession.
libertarians and their silly god Ayn Rand. i read the Fountainhead. loved it. then got out of college, entered the real world.
ok, off my soap box and back to the salt mine.
Small picture - true! My grandparents retired at 60, grandpa lived to be 88 and my grandma was 94 when she died two years ago
ReplyDelete@small picture.
ReplyDeleteVery true, the middle class is really an mid 20th century creation which looks to be on the way out a little more each year.
It is a good thing that the next generation professes to be some what anti-materialistic (unless it is an Apple product) because they are finding out that it is difficult to achieve financial independence.
Re poorly-constructed buildings in China, I know some people who returned from a recent trip to Shanghai, and the ceiling in their hotel bathroom actually fell down.
ReplyDeletevia IKN: Has the World Run Out of Spare Capacity?
ReplyDeleteBig hits from the "small picture.". Keep 'em coming.
ReplyDeleteApple just sold it's 10th billionth app. Sheesh
ReplyDeleteAnyone seen that new show "Heavy"? 100 Million Americans are seriously overweight. What the hell has happened to us?
ReplyDeletethanks Manny, dicha ever have drinks with Harry Wanger?
ReplyDeletefat bastidges. it's been happening for a long, long time. after the Nasdaq crash, it was B2B, B2C (not business to business or busines to consumer but) back to Boston, back to Cleveland for me and many people in the SF Bay Area. a friend flew out and drove with me back to the East Coast in 2001. everywhere we stopped on the drive, we noticed a lot of fat people, especially fat kids. too much video games and computers, not enough of playing and working outside (as i sit on my couch posting this from my laptop). and all the processed foods and fast food. Mickey D franchises starting spreading out in the late 50s. i bet you can track the US weight chart since then. we're now exporting fast food along with toxic mortgages and derivatives.
that is our economic problem. do we manufacture and export anything of value that is not toxic? the best american company, Apple, has its phones and computers put together in Chinese sweat shops. (google only employs 20,000 people and have the engineers in Silicon Valley come from overseas)
well, i got my refurbed iPhone 3G last year from at&t for 50 bucks. all is well i guess. but i'd rather pay 200 bucks for it to have been made in America.
@Thor:
ReplyDeleteNow see, I can't write. So Dss is wrong.
The tax is on 50% of the sale price. In Sing, the tax is a flat 9.8% over the first 160,000, and 17% on everything after that, up to infinity as far as I know.
There is no such thing as capital gains tax here, so it was a big change to have 50% of the sale price of a home added onto your income.
So let's say you make 100K and sell your investment property after 6 months for 1,000,000. Your tax would be:
15500 + ((1000000 * .5) - (160000 - 100000))* .17
= 15500 + 74800
= 90300
You would need a HUGE return on the 1000000 home to be profitable. So that means that there will be no investors buying flats or homes, it will be purchased only by those who are either willing to rent it out for years (not likely) or people who want to live there.
No more expats will buy because an expat may get the yank to go back home in 2 months. (expats can't buy a flat here and not live in it).
It effectively squashed investment in homes.
They do almost the same thing in the US by using borrowing rates: in order to borrow money if you aren't going to live there, you pay 2% more, so if the mortgage rate is 3.5%, you pay 5.5%. I know, I just financed and went through this. But my trading account is making more than the 5.5%, so it's worth it to me.
@Asia's aristocats:
ReplyDeleteMy next door neighbor, the Sultan of Johor; see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibrahim_Ismail_of_Johor
and scroll down to the "Allegations of Criminal Misconduct"
"In the 1980s, he was convicted of shooting dead a man in a nightclub during a feud, but was quickly pardoned"
Nice neighborhood, eh? Believe me, I didn't know before I moved in.....
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete@Dss
ReplyDeleteUnder "swashbuckling..." (I forgot the quotation marks so I had to repost the comment)
http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2011/01/swashbuckling-versus-risk-comment-on.html
"It's just not good enough to just buy small hedge funds. When you don’t understand either (a) the custody or (b) the strategy don’t do it...... Of these the first requirement - custody - is by far the most important. If the fund has genuine third parties holding the assets and doing asset valuation at least the returns are real."
You are much more knowledgeable in funds than I. How do you know "genuine" versus "unreal"? I'm not sure, but by the time I see a prospectus for a fund, isn't it old news?
@Emmanuel117:
ReplyDeleteGreat links. Had lots of enjoyment reading them.
I wonder about the Phantom 15 million. Nobody mentioned Roe vs. Wade, or the dropping crime rate:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/24/AR2010052402210.html
Isn't it human nature when you feel safer to struggle less?
@Rock,
ReplyDeleteI am not sure that I understand your question.
@Dss
ReplyDeleteI'll try again. See, I'm not so clear.
The article says "Don't buy small hedge funds when you don't understand the custody of the fund's assets". I think. I think that's what it said. The article didn't say what was "good custody" or "bad custody", only that you should understand "the custody" of the assets.
My question is, how can I as an investor, understand "the custody" of the assets? I think that this is defined in the prospectus of the fund (although frankly I never looked because until this article, the issue of "custody of the assets of the fund" never crossed my dim brain). I believe the prospectus is sent to print on some date, printed, then used for some period of time after that date to distribute to investors. At some date later than the date it was sent to print, the fund managers may decide to change "the custody" of the assets of the fund.
So my question to someone who knows funds is: How can I as the potential investor of a fund, know at any given instant of time who has "the custody" of the fund's assets?
I recommended to Mutt some funds, based on performance, but I never gave a single thought to "the custody" of those funds assets.
Green Party's exit leaves Cowen coalition in disarray
ReplyDeleteIreland’s Green Party says it will leave PM Brian Cowen's governing coalition, forcing in all likelihood a snap election for troubled EU nation.
I wonder if this is going to make any difference to the debt slavery the current government signed the Irish citizenry up for. Or more likely TPTB will sit the new government down and tell them just how it's going to be.
If you are referring to hedge funds, the average investor would not qualify:
ReplyDelete"Hedge funds are limited to individuals who are both "accredited investors" and "qualified purchasers.” To be an accredited investor you must have and income of at least $200,000 per year or have a net worth over $1,000,000. To be a qualified purchaser you need to own at minimum $5,000,000 in qualified investments."
Mutual funds use custodial banks, hedge funds use Prime Banks as their needs are much more complicated than a simple buy and hold mutual fund.
Custodian Banks
Hedge funds use Prime Brokers as custodians.
Prime Brokers
I think he was referring to the fact that a fund not using a custodian would be a red flag. (Ponzi scheme) I think that the change in custodianship is less important than the fact that there is one present.
I am not sure if that answers your question but I gave it a try.
Re, "Asia's new aristocrats":
ReplyDeleteMost(99%) are same-old-same-old ones. The likes of Ambani brothers(Mukesh being the 4th riches person in the world, according to some list), Tatas, Mahendras, Oberais etc were oppotunistic leeches from the British rule who had no qualms about the British rule and then after the independence, became govt. backers and closed India to foreign business for their own good. They were their to catch most of the foreign fund inflows againg when globalisation thingy started. Majority of their money is probably stashed away in Europe somewhere. Insert any nation from the world except a few western countries.
"Let them eat dirt" is their mantra.
ICan
"well, i got my refurbed iPhone 3G last year...for 50 bucks...but i'd rather pay 200 bucks for it to have been made in America."
ReplyDeleteI have to toss the "bullshit" flag on that comment.
i challenge the bullshit flag. is it for paying 50 bucks or for rather paying $200 for a refurbed?
ReplyDeleteGood reads from http://www.ft.com/
ReplyDelete"Inflation: markets unsettled but how big is the risk?".
"America must brace itself for turbulence"
"Apple faces pollution storm in China". Why just Appl? What about their own industries?
ICan
From ritholtz.com
ReplyDelete"Is China an 'enormous tail-risk'".
"The stock market @oil". Effect of higher oil prices on stock market.
ICan
@small pic: No drinks with the Wanger.
ReplyDeleteDamn, the Pack look very sharp. Could be a blow out.
ReplyDeleteGorgeous day here in Socal. Thermometer reads 78. Manny - I see it's currently 12 degrees for you :-)
ReplyDeleteWhich reminds me - I remember last year you mentioning that there are some streets where the ice gets really thick because the plows don't come through. If that happens this year you hafta take a pic for me!
Nice try, Caleb. Jay, consider an attitude adjustment.
ReplyDelete@emmy,
ReplyDeleteThey did the best they could with what they had to work with.
@Dss:
ReplyDeleteThanks for the explanation. I got it completely, and now I see why "custody" is number one in importance.
Um, Go Patriots?
I couldn't listen to the Bears game because (CBS? I forget) the internet radio is for some reason not transmitted to Sing. But I did listen to the Steelers whomp the Jets. They almost choked and I was on the edge of my couch, but they made it happen.
I'm wondering if I will be able to hear the superbowl or not. Probably not. That's OK, I'd hate to hear the Patriots lose.....
@ICan
ReplyDeleteNo kidding. I think India is not pooing in their living room *nearly* as bad as China. I had a quick trip there (china), and I think I noticed it getting worse in the month I was away. China may become the next and world's largest lifeless desert.
It didn't take us Californians very long to completely pollute all local underground water supplies in Silicon Valley and Woodland Hills areas. for hundreds of years. Looks to me like China's copying that, too.
@Manny,
ReplyDeleteGreat article on China. Those hedge funds do the best on the due diligence front as they have their own money in the funds.
Crazy day at the salt mine. :(
ReplyDelete