Money, culture and the chase for Olympic gold

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Rio 2016 Olympic Games badminton mixed doubles winners - (from left) silver medallists Chan Peng Soon and Goh Liu Ying of Malaysia; gold medallists Tontowi Ahmad and Liliyana Natsir of Indonesia; and bronze medallists Zhang Nan and Zhao Yunlei of China. PHOTO: REUTERS

Although some countries offer financial incentives to its athletes, a genuine sporting culture may be the best guarantee of success at the Games.

SHOCK and awe just about sums up the stunning achievement of young Singaporean swimmer Joseph Schooling at the Rio Olympics.

His victory is classic David beating Goliath; he was the underdog from a tiny country that had never won an Olympic gold.

What made it all the sweeter and remarkable is that Schooling beat the mightiest, most decorated Olympian in history – American Michael Phelps who has won 23 gold medals – and set an impressive new record of 50.39 secs for the 100m butterfly event.

When news of Singapore’s first gold medal broke, it quickly overtook other stories emanating from Rio and became the talk of the world.

It eclipsed its Asean neighbours’ own Olympic gold successes: Vietnam’s shooter Hoang Xuan Vinh in the 10m air pistol competition and Thailand’s weightlifters Sopita Tanasan and Sukanya Srisurat in their individual weight classes and certainly overshadowed Malaysian diving duo Pandelela Rinong and Cheong Jun Hoong’s silver in the women’s synchronised 10m platform diving.

All are no small feats but there is a total of 28 sports in the Games, not counting those with multiple disciplines, and the most popular ones for a global audience are gymnastics, track and field and swimming, according to topendsports.com.

Among Asian nations competing in the Games, China and Japan are traditionally strong contenders in gymnastics and swimming although the Chinese gymnasts seem to be doing poorly this time around.

For most other Asian competitors, the sports they excel in tend to be the ones with less mass appeal like archery, shooting, judo, badminton and for some strange reason, women’s weightlifting.

Apart from the Thais, Taiwanese, Filipina and Indonesian female weightlifters have also won medals for their countries.

China remains the sporting powerhouse of Asia, sending its largest delegation of 416 athletes to Rio this year, but they have failed to defend their gold medals in sports they used to dominate like badminton and diving.

As for the glamorous track and field events, there doesn’t seem to be any Asian athlete who can challenge the likes of Usain Bolt.

Meanwhile, the other Asian powerhouse, India, with the second largest population in the world, has never done well at the Olympics, which has been the subject of intense debate among Indian and foreign sports pundits.

India also sent its biggest ever contingent of 118 sportsmen and women, and has so far won only a bronze medal in wrestling. Winning an Olympic gold medal is the Holy Grail of sports.

The pomp that surrounds the Games gives the gold medallists unparalleled honour and prestige. And the nations they represent go into collective convulsions of ecstasy and nationalistic joy, which make their governments equally happy.

That’s why many nations pour millions into sports programmes to nurture and train promising talents and offer great financial rewards to successful Olympians.

Schooling will get S$1mil (RM3mil) from the Singapore government for his gold medal. Vietnam’s Hoang reportedly will receive US$100,000 (RM400,000), a figure, according to AFP, that is nearly 50 times greater than the country’s average national income, of around US$2,100 (RM8,400).

Malaysia, which is seeing its best ever performance in Rio, thanks to its badminton players and divers, rewards its successful athletes handsomely under its National Sports Council incentive scheme.

An Olympic gold medal winner will receive RM1mil and a monthly pension of RM5,000; a silver medallist, RM600,000 and a RM3,000 pension while a bronze winner gets RM100,000 and a RM2,000 pension.

Taiwan, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand have similar monetary reward schemes. North Korea uses a carrot and stick scheme: huge rewards for medal winners and hard labour for the failed ones.

Several western countries have the same financial bait, including the United States, France, Russia and Germany, but at a lower rate.

Does it work?

The Technology Policy Institute looked for a correlation and was mindful of variables like country size and income, “since those are surely the biggest predictor of how many medals a country will win: more populous countries are more likely to have that rare human who is physically built and mentally able to become an Olympic athlete, while richer countries are more likely to be able to invest in training those people.”

The researchers found no correlation between monetary payments and medals and said it was not surprising in some countries. In the United States, for example, a US$25,000 (RM100,000) cash award would be dwarfed by million-dollar endorsements the athlete could get.

The researchers also set out to see if the results were different for countries with lower opportunities for endorsements. Their conclusion: “overall the evidence suggests that these payments don’t increase the medal count” either.

Rather, countries that do well are those with a longstanding sporting culture that values and nurtures their athletes long before they qualify for the Olympics.

That is evident in Western societies where sportsmen, even at the college level, are feted and idolised. In Asia, however, the emphasis is more on book-learning and earning prestigious degrees.

The BBC quotes Indian Olympic Association head Narayana Ramachandran as saying India’s sorry performance is more than just a shortage of cash or organisation.

“Sport has always taken a back seat vis-á-vis education. Most Indian families would prefer their children became dentists or accountants than Olympians,” he says.

But that attitude is surely changing as more Asian sportsmen and women go professional and are able to make a good living.

In Malaysia, its most popular sportsman, badminton star Datuk Lee Chong Wei, is highly successful with a number of endorsements under his belt.

For now, it is still the Western countries that dominate the Olympic medal tally table. But it’s only a matter of time before more Asian nations, once no-hopers at the Games, rise up the charts.

It’s already started. The Rio Games will go down in history as a watershed for Asean, with two member states – Singapore and Vietnam – winning their first gold medals. May it be so for Malaysia, too.

 By June H.L Wong Chief Operating Officer (Content Development) The Star, Malaysia.
The writer was the former group chief editor of The Star Media Group Malaysia. This is the eighth article in a series of columns on global affairs written by top editors from members of the Asia News Network and published in newspapers across the region.

Heartbreak again for Chong Wei, Chen Long takes gold

The medallists (from left): Silver medallist Chong Wei, gold medallist Chen Long and bronze medallist Viktor Axelsen on the podium at Riocentro Pavilion 4. - AZHAR MAHFOF / The Star

https://youtu.be/63BmkZeq2mo

RIO DE JANEIRO: Lee Chong Wei, the king of Malaysian badminton, will leave the Rio de Janeiro Olympics without the crown – and so will Malaysia without the coveted gold.

The 33-year-old lost his third Olympic final after going down 18-21, 18-21 to Chen Long at the Riocentro Pavilion 4 on Saturday.

It was indeed a painful end for Malaysia as it was the third false dawn. Earlier, Malaysia had also lost in the men’s doubles and mixed doubles finals.

Malaysia thus will return home with a total of four silvers and one bronze.

The other three silvers came from Chan Peng Soon-Goh Liu Ying (mixed doubles), Goh V Shem-Tan Wee Kiong (men’s doubles) and divers Pandelela Rinong-Cheong Jun Hoong (women’s 10m platform synchro). Cyclist Azizulhasni Awang contributed the sole bronze through the men’s keirin.

Both Chong Wei, playing in probably his last Olympics, and Chen Long went onto the court to loud cheers from their countries’ supporters.

Chong Wei, who lost to Lin Dan at the 2008 Beijing and 2012 London finals, looked tentative in the beginning to allow Chen Long to open up a 4-0 lead. But he recovered his composure to lead 5-4.

After that, they traded point until it was 7-7 before Chong Wei pulled away for an 11-7 and then 14-10 lead.

But Chen Long refused to go away and managed to level at 14-14.

Twice Chong Wei surged in front but Chen Long capitalised on the Malaysian’s mistakes at the net to lead 20-17. Although world No. 1 Chong Wei managed to save one match point, his failure to return a smash gave Chen Long a 21-18 win in 35 minutes.

Oozing confidence, Chen Long was always in front in the second game – leading 4-1 and 5-2.

But Chong Wei fought back to go 8-5 up. Chen Long then went on a smashing spree, winning six points for an 11-8 advantage.

The 27-year-old world No. 2 never looked back after that as he always had at least a three-point lead.

Everything looked lost for Chong Wei as Chen Long reached 20-16. The Malaysian saved two match points but then sent the shuttle out to lose 18-21 in 38 minutes.

For Chen Long, it was his first Olympic gold to add to his two All-England and World Championships crowns.

Chong Wei can only look in envy as he’s still without a world or Olympic crown. He also lost in three World Championships finals.

Chen Long’s gold was only China’s second at these Games after Fu Haifeng-Zhang Nan triumphed in the men’s doubles.

Earlier, two-time Olympic champion Lin Dan fell from grace in probably his last Olympic outing after losing 21-15, 10-21, 17-21 to Dane Viktor Axelson in the 70-minute bronze medal playoff.

Medals By Countries - Rio 2016

London 2012 Olympics - Medal Table

Rio 2016 Asia Regional Aug 21 Medal by Countries

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The global mahjong winner's curse

Like mahjong: The current world situation is like the Chinese game of mahjong which has four players with a limited number of chips. If one player is the persistent winner, he or she ends up with all the chips and the game ends.

Winners and losers in the global economy of 2025

 Winners and losers in the global eco

There is grave concern that the world economy is slipping into what Harvard professor and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers calls the global secular deflation. In simple terms, growth has slowed without inflation, despite exceptionally stimulative monetary policy. Larry’s view is that the advanced countries can use fiscal policy to stimulate growth, using massive investments in infrastructure. If needs be, this can be financed by central banks.

Central bank financing fiscal deficits is technically called “helicopter money”, named by the late monetarist economist Milton Friedman as the central bank pushing money out of the helicopter. Strict monetarism thinks that this would cause inflation.

The simple reason why the world is moving into secular deflation is that the largest economies are all slowing for a variety of reasons. Unconventional monetary policy applied since the 2007 crisis has brought central bank interest rates to zero or negative terms in economies accounting for 60% of world GDP.

Most economists blame current slow growth to “lack of aggregate demand” or “excess of aggregate production”. The rich countries are mostly aging and already heavily burdened with debt, so they cannot consume more. After the 2007 global financial crisis, the emerging market economies have slowed down, as demand for their exports have slowed. We are in a vicious circle where global trade growth is now slower than GDP growth, because the US economy is no longer the consumption engine of last resort. China, which has been a huge consumer of commodities, has slowed. Japanese growth has been flat due to an aging population. European growth has not recovered, partly because the leading economy, Germany, calls for austerity by its southern partners.

The Brexit shock threatens to weaken global confidence and send growth down another notch.

Former Bank of England Governor Lord Mervyn King famously called the global monetary order a game of sodoku, in which national current accounts in the balance of payments add up to a zero sum game. This is because in the global trade game, one country’s current account deficit is another country’s surplus. In the past, if the US runs larger and larger current account deficits, world growth is stimulated because everyone wants to hold dollars and has been willing to supply the US with all manners of consumer goods. This has been called an “exorbitant privilege” for the dollar.

The present global monetary order or non-order is a result of the 1971 US dollar de-link from gold, which gave rise to a phase of floating exchange rates and rising capital flows, which some people call Bretton Woods II. The old order, set at the Bretton Wood Conference of 1944, centered around a system of global fixed exchange rates, based on the US dollar link with gold price at US$35 to one ounce of gold.

But flexible exchange rates has resulted in a system where everyone seems to be devaluing their way out of trouble. Has the global secular deflation something to do with Bretton Woods II?

My answer must be yes. The reason lies in what I call, instead of sodoku, the mahjong winner’s curse. The Chinese game of mahjong has four players with a limited number of chips. If one player is the persistent winner, he or she ends up with all the chips and the game stops. Since the global game of trade cannot stop, the winner has both an exorbitant privilege (of being funded by the others) and an exorbitant curse (of bearing the loss if the others won’t or refuse to pay). To keep the game going, the winner has to give or lend the chips back to the other players, who play with the hope of winning the next round.

Indeed, if the winner is generous, the game can be made bigger, because the winner can issue more chips (defined as a reserve currency), which the others are more than willing to borrow and play.

The current world situation is that the Winners are the four reserve currency countries, the dollar, euro, yen and sterling, all of which have interest rates near zero or even negative. Until recently, the Winners blame China and the oil producing countries as having too high current account surpluses. But recently, after the huge European cutback in expenditure, Europe as a whole is the world’s largest current account surplus group of nearly 5% of GDP.

Herein lies the winner’s curse. The emerging markets should be able to stimulate global growth, but are unwilling to run larger current account deficits because they cannot get financing. The richer economies can stimulate global growth, but they are unwilling to do so, because they either feel that they already have too much debt or because they worry that stimulus would lead to inflation.

However, reserve currency countries have an advantage. As long as they are willing to run current account deficits, there will be little inflation because the world economy has huge excess capacity and surplus savings. If emerging markets run higher current account deficits, they will have to depreciate, which is exactly what Brazil, South Africa and others have done.

The winner’s curse is that if Europe is now unwilling to reflate and spend, the world will continue to slow. Indeed, in a world of greater geo-political risks, money is fleeing to the US dollar and the yen, causing both to appreciate.

What these capital flows into the reserve currencies when their interest rate is zero and they are unable to reflate imply is that the dollar and yen play the deflationary role of gold in the 1930s. As more and more mahjong players hold gold and don’t spend, the world global trade and growth game slows further. The mahjong winner’s curse requires the winners to stimulate and spend, bearing higher credit risks. That’s the privilege and responsibility of winners in the global game. If not, look out for more global secular deflation.

By Tan Sri Andrew Sheng who writes on global issues from an Asian perspective.

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How do we get out of the debt trap without printing more money?

The policy options open to major economies, including China, to reduce debt, before another global crisis hits

Pedestrians crossing in Tokyo. Quantitative easing stopped a debt implosion, but its initial success enabled politicians to avoid structural reforms, The result was slower growth from declining productivity, even as companies and governments continued to borrow. In short, we are in a debt trap! 

ALL of us are worried about growing global debt as a precursor to another round of crises. After the last global financial crisis, 2007-2009, global debt rose to more than US$200 trillion or US$27,000 for each person in the world.

Since 2.8 billion or nearly 40% live on US$2 per day, there is no way that the debt can ever be repaid. The bulk of debt owed by governments, banks and companies will be repaid by creating more debt.

If we are happy to create money, we should be happy to create more debt. Right?

Wrong. The right question is not the size of the debt or liability, but where is the net asset? Individually, we can always repay the debt if we spend less than what we earn, or invested in an asset that generates sufficient income to pay the interest.

Collectively, the government can always borrow to repay, because it can always tax to repay, if not principal, at least on the interest. Countries only get into trouble when they owe foreigners and cannot raise enough foreign exchange to repay their debt.

High levels of investment – and debt – are good for China’s economy

Charles Goodhart, Emeritus Professor at London School of Economics and one of the foremost thinkers on money and banking has written a series of important articles for Morgan Stanley, analysing the current debt crisis.

Emerging markets

The reason we ended up with more debt than ever is due to three factors since 1970 – the willingness of the financial sector to lend, the increase in global savings relative to investment and the demand for safe assets. Professor Goodhart attributed the structural increase in savings to favourable demographics in the last forty years – particularly as emerging markets like China increased their savings from growth in their labour force that engaged in international trade.

The increase in savings relative to investments created a global savings glut, which meant lower real interest rates.

The willingness of emerging markets to park their excess savings in advanced countries in the form of official reserves and the banks willing to extend credit at lower interest rates created the boom in financialisation. Lower interest rates encouraged speculative activity (funded by debt) rather than investments in long-term productive projects.

When the bust occurred, the advanced central banks wanted to avoid a debt implosion and added to the bubble by lowering interest rates and flooded the markets with short-term liquidity.

The quantitative easing (QE) stopped the widening of the crisis, but its initial success enabled politicians to avoid taking tough action in structural reforms. The result was further slower growth from declining productivity, even as companies and governments continued to borrow, affordable only at near zero interest rates. In short, we are in a debt trap – more debt, little growth.

China lacks urgency about its debt problem, IMF says

Negative interest rates are causing a major problem in the global economy

 Central banks charged with reviving growth using only monetary policy are now actively using negative interest rates and desperate enough to think about helicopter money.

Negative interest rates as a policy tool was invented by small countries like Sweden and Switzerland to discourage large capital inflows that created excessive currency appreciation.

But for the eurozone and Japan to try that would actually destroy their banks’ profitability, which is why bank shares dropped after these were introduced. If banks think they will lose money, they will cut back lending to the real sector further, negating the objective of QE to stimulate growth. Banks receiving QE funds faced the double prospect of being punished for taking credit risks and also the need to increase both capital and liquidity due to the tighter bank regulations.

Helicopter money

Helicopter money is not about central bankers jumping out of helicopters to atone for their mistakes, but about central bank financing a massive increase in fiscal expenditure – truly monetary creation on a large scale. If this happens, watch out for a rise in gold prices.

Prof Goodhart has carefully analysed the three options for deleverging or getting out of the debt trap. The first is to deleverge by swapping debt for equity, being tried by China.

This is feasible when the country is a net lender and both borrowers and lenders are state-owned entities. The second option is to use inflation to reduce the real value of debt. As the recent experience showed, getting inflation even up to target was tough to achieve.

The third option is to address collateral by inducing lenders and borrowers to renegotiate their debt or make the debt permanent. This is both painful and difficult and is unlikely to be adopted unless other options are tried.

China’s banking regulator moves to contain off-balance-sheet risk

In my view, the true result of the Bank of Japan’s negative interest rates is a tax on the older generation, because they are the ones not spending.

Japan tried Keynesian fiscal spending, which failed to sustain growth but created a huge debt overhang.

The Japanese older generation and the corporate sector keeps on saving because they are worried about the future, not surprising given an aging population and sluggish demand for exports.

So if you can’t increase the inflation tax, or corporate taxation to reduce the fiscal debt, use negative interest rates to reduce the value of savings of retirees and the corporate sector. Only Japanese savers would not revolt under such inequity.

For countries that have net savings and large public assets, like China, there is a fourth option to get out of the debt trap, and that is to re-write the national balance sheet. Most foreign analysts who worry about China’s debt overhang forget that after three decades of growth, the Chinese state has also accummulated net assets (net of all liabilities) equivalent to 166% of GDP.

That can be injected as equity into the overleveraged enterprises and banks if and only if the governance and return on assets can be improved under better management.

In the short-run, a clean-up of the over-leveraged enterprise sector and local government debt, embedded in the official and shadow banking system, will help sustain long-run stable growth. How to do this technically will be explained in the next article.

By Tan Sri Andrew Sheng who writes on global affairs from an Asian perspective.

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The alchemy of money

Former Bank of England governor claims that for over two centuries, economists have struggled to provide rigorous theoretical basis for the role of money and have largely failed.

The Bank of England in the City of London.

MONEY makes the world go round, so you would have thought that economists understand what money is all about.

The former governor of the Bank of England, Lord Mervyn King, has just published a book called The End of Alchemy, which made a startling claim that “for over two centuries, economists have struggled to provide rigorous theoretical basis for the role of money, and have largely failed.” This is a serious accusation from a distinguished academic turned central banker.

Alchemy is defined as the ability to create gold out of base metals or the ability to brew the elixir of life. King identifies that the main purpose of financial markets is to help real economy players to cope with “radical uncertainty”. But as we discovered after the global financial crisis, financial risk models widely used by banks narrowly defined risks as statistical probabilities that could be measured. By definition, radical uncertainty is an “unknown unknown” that cannot be measured. It was no wonder that the banks were blind to the blindness of financial models, which conveniently assumed that what cannot be measured does not exist. Ergo, no one but dead economists is to blame for bank failure.

When money was fully backed by gold, money was tied to real goods. But when paper currency was invented, money became a promisory note, first of the state – fiat money, supported by the power to impose taxes to repay that debt, and today, bank-created money, which is backed only by the assets and equity of the bank. The power to create “paper” money is truly alchemy – since promises by either the state or the banks can go on almost forever, until the trust runs out.

Today national money supply comprises roughly one-fifth state money (backed by sovereign debt) and four-fifths bank deposits (backed by bank loans and bank equity). Banks can create money as long as they are willing to lend, and the more they lend to finance bad assets, the more alchemy there is in the system.

A good description of financial alchemy is provided by FT columnist Prof John Kay, whose new book, Other People’s Money, is a masterpiece in the diagnosis of financialisation – how the finance industry traded with itself and (almost) ignored the real world. For example, Kay claimed that British banks’ “lending to firms and individuals in the production of goods and services – which most people would imagine was the principal business of a bank – amounts to about 3% of that total”. How is it possible that “the value of the assets underlying derivative contracts is three times the value of all the physical assets in the world”?

The answer is of course leverage. Finance is a derivative of the real economy, which can be leveraged or multiplied as long as there is someone (sucker?) willing to believe that the derivative has a “sound” relationship with the underlying asset. There are two pitfalls in that alchemy – a sharp decline in leverage and a fall in the value of the underlying asset – which were triggers of the global crash of 2007, as fears of Fed interest rate hikes tightened credit and questions asked about risks in subprime mortgage assets that were the underlying assets of many toxic derivatives.

Unfortunately, as we found to everyone’s costs, the banking system itself became too highly leveraged relative to its obligations, without sufficient equity nor liquidity to absorb market shocks.

The real trouble with financialisation is that central bankers, having not taken away the punch bowl when the party got really heady, cannot attempt anything like even trying to move in that direction without spoiling the whole party. Any attempt to raise interest rates by the Fed would be considered Armageddon by those who have huge vested interests in bubbly asset markets. Instead, central bankers like Mario Draghi has to continue to talk “whatever it takes” to continue the game of financialisation.

King’s recommendation that central banks reverse alchemy by behaving like pawnbrokers for all seasons (having collateral against all lending) can only be implemented after the next and coming crisis. Central bank discipline, like virginity, cannot be replaced once lost. The market will always think that in the end, it will be bailed out by central banks. In the end the market was right – it was bailed out and will be bailed out. In the game of playing chicken with finance, the politicians will always blink.

If we accept that radical uncertainty lies at the heart of finance, then money makes the world go around because it provides the lubricant of trade and investment. Without that lubricant, trade and investment would slow down significantly, but with too much lubricant, the system can rock itself to pieces.

The dilemma of central banks today is also globalisation. In addition to the Fed controlling dollar money supply within the US borders, there are US$9 trillion of dollars created outside the US borders over which the Fed has no control. Money today can be created in the form of Bitcoins, computerised digital units that tech people use to trade value. But Bitcoins ultimately need to be changed into dollars. So as long as someone will accept Bitcoins, digital currency become convertible money.

We got into a monetary crisis in which bad money drove out good. The reason was because the financial sector, in collusion with politics, refused to accept that there were losses in the system, so it printed more money to hide or roll over the losses. Surprise, surprise, there was no inflation, because the real economy, having become bloated with excess capacity financed by excess leverage, had in the short run no effective demand. So inflation at the global level is postponed.

But if climate change disrupts the weather and create food supply shortages, inflation will return, initially in the emerging economies, which cannot print money because they are not reserve currencies. In time, inflation will come back to haunt the reserve currency countries. But not before the emerging markets go into crises of inflation or banking first.

Money is inherently unfair – the rich will always suffer less than the poor.

In medieval times, only those with real money could afford alchemy. If it was true then, it remains true today.

Tan Sri Andrew Sheng writes on global affairs from an Asian perspective.



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Modern finance and money being managed like a Ponzi scheme !

Ponzi schemes and modern finance

Andrew Sheng says when the originator of a scheme to pass on debt to others is also ‘too big to fail’ – like America – then the global economy is heading for some painful restructuring

The dilemma today is that the US is the world’s largest “too big to fail” debtor, with gross international liabilities of US$31 trillion, equivalent to 40 per cent of global GDP. Photo: AFP

THIS global financial crisis is not over, as the volatile start to the New Year showed that 2016 may be a precursor to the 10th anniversary of the 2007 sub-prime crisis, which itself evolved from 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, after which the US Fed cut interest rates and started the rapid financialisation of the US economy.

READ MORE: Don’t listen to the ruling elite: the world economy is in real trouble

Two terms came out of the crisis that we see almost everyday, but have not been explained well by modern financial theory. Most economists think of them as aberrations that are at the periphery of normal economic behaviour. In fact, “Ponzi schemes” and “Too-Big-to-Fail” are at the heart of individual and social behaviour which go a long way to explain what is happening today.

A Ponzi scheme is a scam named after American Charles Ponzi. The term Ponzi scheme started in the 1920s from an American Charles Ponzi, who thought of selling an idea in making money from arbitraging the value of international reply coupons in postage stamps to a larger and larger investor scheme where he made money by getting new investors to pay for promised high returns to old investors. Of course, this is the “borrowing from Peter-to-Pay-Paul principle”, where the music stops when everyone want their money back. Ponzi schemes should in principle collapse naturally because it is of course impossible to pay unusually high returns. By this time, the founder would have run away to the Caribbean with a lot of OPM (other people’s money).

 

A foreclosure sign tops a “for sale” sign outside a property in northwest Denver in this 2007 photo. The number of homeowners receiving foreclosure notices hit a record high in the spring, driven up by problems with subprime mortgages. Photo: AP

The securitisation (packaging) of sub-prime mortgages into CDOs (collateralised debt obligations) and turbo-charging these into CDO2 (creating a highly leveraged synthetic financial derivative) and selling these to investors with a AAA credit rating was a 21st century Ponzi variant.

In simple terms, this is like selling a box of rotting apples, getting a rating agency to say that the box is worth more than the individual apples, with a guarantee against losses by adding more (rotten apples). In the end, the investor is buying a box of rotting apples, in which all his savings have been eaten up by those who sold the boxes (the derivatives) in the first place.

There are two fundamental elements of Ponzi operations – the promise of very high returns (false expectations) and the widening of the investor circle. Variants of the Ponzi scheme can be found in asset bubbles and pyramid schemes, in which more and more investors (new suckers) are enticed in until they are the ones who bear the final losses. Like the game Musical Chairs, the ones who did not get out when the music stops are the losers.

Actually, Ponzi schemes work by the originator taking profits by selling (or passing) his losses to all his investors – the more suckers, the bigger his profits and the more people to share the losses.

Technically, a Ponzi scheme is sustainable if the new funds that come in actually deliver good returns, but because the Ponzi promises a return higher than anyone can actually deliver, most Ponzis end up as fraudulent schemes.

READ MORE: Bank woes bode ill for world economy as talk of another global financial crisis gains traction

 

Under globalisation, the smaller reserve-currency countries like the euro zone and Japan can engage in quantitative easing, because instead of getting inflation, their currencies depreciate against the dollar. Photo: Reuters

But the Ponzi element in modern finance should be understood with another phenomena – the Too-Big-To-Fail (TBTF) dilemma. We all know that if we borrow US$1,000 from the bank, we are in trouble if we can’t pay, but if we borrow US$1bil from the bank, it is the bank that is in trouble. Thus, if a Ponzi scheme reaches the scale of TBTF, it has to be “rescued” somehow, because if everyone had bought the Ponzi product, everyone ends up being the loser.

This is the essence of modern money. Advanced country central banks can engage in quantitative easing (QE or printing money in whatever way you want to call it) to bail out banks that are losing money, because their banks are TBTF. The difference between QE and Ponzi is that the QE interest rate promised is near zero to negative, but the escalation of scale is the same. I call these Qonzi schemes.

In theory, in a closed economy, if you print too much money, you would get higher inflation. This is why the Germans are very much against the European Central Bank’s QE measures.

However, in a world with excess production capacity, you would not get into high inflation, because there are many more people in the emerging economies who are willing to hold reserve currencies like the US dollar, euro and yen. Under globalisation, the smaller reserve currency countries like the eurozone and Japan can engage in QE, because instead of getting inflation, their currencies depreciate against the dollar. The losers call such action “beggar-thy-neighbour” policy.

In other words, currency depreciation countries gain by passing “losses” to others, because they gain competitive trade advantage. But if everyone depreciates at the same rate, the whole world ends up with more deflation. Remember, when the Ponzi music stops, all losses are crystalised. As Warren Buffett used to say, when the tide goes out, you know who has been swimming naked.

READ MORE: Chinese scramble to safety of US dollar as yuan weakens and forex reserves drop

  Rail cars and oil tankers sit on railway tracks as water vapour and smoke rise from a steel plant in the distance in Tonghua, Jilin province. The city's once-vaunted state-run steel mills have slipped inexorably into decline, weighed down by slumping global markets and a changing economy. Photo: Bloomberg
 

READ MORE: The crisis in markets shows how our financial and political leaders have failed since 2008

The dilemma in the world today is that the US is the largest TBTF debtor in the world, with gross international liabilities of US$31 trillion, equivalent to 40% of world GDP (gross domestic product). In a world where interest rates are near zero, the threat of the Fed increasing interest rates causes capital flight into the dollar. But a dollar that also yields near zero interest rate, with the inability to reflate due to political constraints, plays exactly the deflationary role of gold in the 1930s.

Hence, a strong dollar is deflationary on the whole world. As geopolitical tensions rise, flight into the dollar causes its own deflation. The latest US net international investment position is a deficit of US$7 trillion or 40% of GDP at the end of 2014, sharply up from US$1.3 trillion in 2007. A strong dollar in which the US would run larger even current account deficits is clearly unsustainable for the US and its creditors.

During the Asian financial crisis, countries with net liabilities of over 50% of GDP got into crisis. But the US is the TBTF country in the international monetary system. Further QE will not solve this dilemma. The only solution is painful structural adjustment by all concerned. This is why investors are all so downbeat.

Consequently, I see no alternative but a coming new Plaza Accord to ensure that the dollar does not get too strong, with a concerted effort to have global reflation. Otherwise, watch out for more “Qonzi” schemes.


- Andrew Sheng writes on global issues from the Asian perspective.

Money, money, money ... Love of money is the root of all evil !

Lets not use Money as an all-powerful weapon to buy people

ONE can safely assume that the subject of money would be of interest to almost all and sundry. ABBA, the Swedish group, sang about it. Hong Kong’s canto pop king, Samuel Hui made a killing singing about it. Donna Summers, Pink Floyd, Dire Straits, Rick James and quite a few more, all did their versions of it.

Is money all that matters? The ‘be all and end all’ of life?

This will certainly be a fiercely-debated subject by people from both sides of the divide; the haves and have nots. Just last week, my 12-year-old asked if the proverb Money is the root of all evil is true. Naturally, like most kids of his generation, he would not have a clue as to how difficult it is for money to come about. Or why, when it does come about, it has the power to make and break a person. To a Gen-Z kid, the concept of having to ‘earn’ money is somewhat alien. Simply because everything he ever needs and beyond is ‘magically’ provided for.

Forget about teaching this generation to earn their keeps, just expecting them to pick up after themselves is a herculean ask. But we are not here to talk about that, instead, is money really the root of all evil? Perhaps, the proper answer would be ‘the love of money is’.

Let’s see what sort of evil comes with this love of money. Top of mind would be corruption, covetousness, cheating, even murder, just to name a few. These, of course, are of the extreme.

What about at the workplace? How does the love of money or rather the lure of money affect the employment market? Let me take on a profession closer to my heart, the advertising industry. Annually, our varsities and colleges churn out thousands of mass communication and advertising grads. Of these, only a handful would venture into the industry. Where have all the others gone?

A quick check with fellow agency heads reveals that many have opted to go into the financial sectors as the starting packages are somehow always miraculously higher than those offered by advertising agencies. A classic case of money at work. For those who have actually joined the ad industry, some get pinched after a while because of a better offer of ... money, and more. (As if this is not bad enough, the “pinchers” are often not only from within the industry but are clients!)

The fact is there is absolutely nothing wrong in working towards being the top of one’s profession and getting appropriately remunerated for it. The problem starts when money is used as the all-powerful weapon to ‘buy’ people. Premium ringgit is often paid to acquire many of these hires, some of whom, unfortunately, are still a little wet behind the ears. Paying big bucks for talent is all right, as long as the money commensurate with the ability and experience of the person.

Case in point is if an individual is qualified only as a junior executive with his current employer, should he then be offered the job as a manager and paid twice the last drawn salary? All because some of us are just so short on resources.

Now, hypothetically, if this person was offered the managerial post anyway, would he be able to manage the portfolio and deliver what is expected of him? Would he, for instance, ask what he needs to bring to the table? After all, he has suddenly become the client service director and draws a salary of RM20k a month. Does he actually need to bring more new businesses, or what? We can call ourselves all sorts of fancy titles but the point is we have got to earn it. As they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Having served on the advertising association council for the past nine years and presiding over it the last two, it concerns me greatly to see the how money is affecting and somewhat thinning the line of qualified successors to the present heads.

The lack of new talents coming into the ad business is increasingly worrisome. Though it may look a seemingly distant issue to most clients, they must now take heed. The agencies are business partners and if there is going to be a dearth of talents it will surely affect the clients’ business in the near future. So rather than pinching the rare good ones from the agencies, would it then not be in the clients’ best interest to instead remunerate the agencies so to secure better and higher standards of expertise? Food for thought, eh?

Pardon me for being old school. I am a firm advocate of the saying that one should not chase money. First learn to be at the top of your trade and money will chase you. Then again, we are now dealing with and learning how to manage the present generation. A generation of young, smart, fearless, and somewhat impatient lot who may not be as loyal as their predecessors. A generation that loves life and crave excitement. Adventure is in their blood and ‘conforming’ is a bad word. And money, lots of it, makes the world go faster for them.

As elders, we need to look hard and deep into how to inculcate the right value of money in this new generation. These are our children. They are the future. If we make no attempt to set this right and instead keep on condoning the practice of over-remunerating them, we will be in trouble. The fact that Malaysia will soon have to compete in the free-trade region further allows money to flex its muscles more. I shudder to think what would happen to our young ones if we keep on mollycoddling them with the wrong idea that they ought to be highly paid just for breathing.

Folks, my sincere apologies if I have inadvertently touched some tender nerves but a wake-up call this has to be. For our dear clients, think about the proposition to review your agency’s remunerations – upwards I mean. This, over taking people from the industry, will save you more in the long run.

For those of us in the agencies, let us keep polishing up our skills and not let money be the sole motivator. If you are good, others will take notice. Work hard, the rewards will come. Just exercise some patience.

I leave you with a saying that one Mr Jaspal Singh said to me when I was a rookie advertising sales rep with The Star eons ago: “Man make money, money does NOT make a man”. (Or woman, of course.)

Till the next time, a very Happy Deepavali to all.

God bless!

 By Datuk Johnny Mun, who has been an advertising practitioner for over 30 years, is president of the Association of Accredited Advertising Agents. He is also CEO of Krakatua ICOM, a local ad agency.

American banks need further capital topping

It is important that stress tests are being conducted to asses the health of US banks, some of which are so large that they pose a systemic risk to the world's financial sector - EPA

 Fed's stress tests unveil flaws in planning process

LARGE US banks have lagged in terms of stress tests conducted by the Fed, pointing to possible further capital topping.

The Fed said in a paper released recenty that banks participating in regular “stress tests” had flaws in their capital planning processes, such as being unable to show that they considered all of the relevant risks to their businesses, said Reuters.

The paper pointed to problems such as modeling techniques that did not address bank-specific risks, loss and revenue projections that could not be replicated, or problems with governance of the planning process.

It is important that stress tests are being conducted to assess the health of US banks, some of which are so large that they pose a systemic risk to the world’s financial sector.

It is a tedious process but there is no choice; it is on the Fed to come up with increasingly sophisticated tools to conduct these stress tests.

It is not only in terms of stress tests that the US banks are lagging; progress has been slow in terms of adopting the Dodd-Frank Act.

Four years into the 2008 financial crisis, financial reform is still creeping along.

This is despite the collapse of a 100-year old bank, Lehman Brothers.

In fact, President Barack Obama had recently met with Fed Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and other regulators, where he received an update and he also urged them to fully implement the Dodd-Frank Act.

Banks are said to be resentful of the Volcker rule that prohibits proprietary trading.

China has set up an agency to co-ordinate among other things, monetary and financial regulatory policies and help regulate financial products where jurisdiction overlaps.

It also coordinated information-sharing and statistics, an announcement on the Chinese government’s Web site said.

Withdrawal of stimulus packages, tightening of monetary and regulatory policies have impacted the financial sector severely.

Hence the timely setting up of such an agency which has no decision making powers; nevertheless the members of this advisory scheme have considerable weight.

The entity would be led by the central bank and would include representatives from banking, stock market and insurance regulators, as well as the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, said the International Herald Tribune.

In its aim towards sustainable financial reform, the Chinese Government hopes that this agency will help smoothen a lot of the hiccups on the way. This agency will have plenty of work ahead, considering the size of the Chinese financial sector.

Despite a 28.4% year-on-year decline in revenue from continuing operations to S$7.38mil from S$10.31mil, the Singapore Exchange is proposing to reduce the standard size of securities traded from 1,000 units to 100 units, and one unit eventually.

Besides improving liquidity and retail interest, the exchange hopes to make the larger, more well-established available to investors.

This will have positive implications for Malaysians trading on the shared platform.

With the change, the minimum needed to buy a SS$10 stock falls to S$1,000, or 100 units of S$10.

Currently, eight out of the 30 stocks in the benchmark Straits Times Index (STI), a collection of the most stable and liquid stocks, trade at S$10 or higher.

In view of capital outflows experienced by emerging markets, this is a timely move to capture back some of the investors’ money.

Contributed by Plain Speaking by Yap Leng Kuen
Columnist Yap Leng Kuen hopes to see more measures aimed at preventing outflows.

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Malaysian man rescued daughter from sex trade

MALACCA: A man had to storm into a house and put up a fight with two men to rescue his 13-year-old daughter from prostitution.

He received a phone call from a woman, believed to be the landlady, who informed him that she had seen two men bringing in other men to the house where the girl was.

He then stormed into the house and found two men inside in the house. The two tried to stop him from rescuing his daughter.

He shouted at the top of his voice when the two men tried to assault him and neighbours came to help him to get his daughter away from there.

Now, with the girl under the care of the Welfare Department, all the father now wants is for his daughter to know how much he loved her and to explain to her why he did what he did.

“I also want to ask her why she got involved with drugs. I told her so many times in the past not to mix with bad hats,” he said in a choking voice yesterday, adding that he had been unable to sleep ever since the incident.

“I can’t believe this is happening. I am still very traumatised.”

“My girl said that she was also into drugs and received RM20 per sex session from her boyfriend, who also brought her to hotels,” he added.

“I broke down when I saw my daughter and also felt embarrassed when I was told by one of the neighbours that she was among several teenagers involved in prostitution in the area.”

Asked about how his wife was handling the situation, he simply said she was “very disappointed” and refused to talk about what she was going through.

The father said the incident on July 26 was the third time the girl had run away from home.

“My heart sank when I received a tip-off from an anonymous person that my daughter was soliciting for clients at a house in Taman Peringgit. She is my favourite. I love her so much that I never raised my voice or hand when she was mischievous,” he added.

The 46-year-old father of four said his daughter excelled in her studies until she joined the wrong company after her UPSR examinations adding that she was also good in sports and had won several tournaments.

The businessmansaid he would never forgive those who prostituted his “darling daughter”, who had run away from home for the first time with her 26-year-old boyfriend in October last year after he had held a dinner to celebrate when she scored 3As in the UPSR.

Police managed to track her down after he lodged a report and a medical examination revealed that she had been raped.

She ran away again with her boyfriend within hours of being found. This time, the couple went to Ampang, Kuala Lumpur.

The family went looking for her again and the father accessed her Facebook account and found out that the daughter’s boyfriend had posted on his account that sexual services were being offered – with his daughter’s details.

He added that he managed to get his daughter back with some friends although the boyfriend managed to escape.

She ran away for the third time in June – and then came the call from the landlady.

Meanwhile, Malacca police have launched a manhunt for a 26-year-old man, who purportedly pimped the girl to nine men.

Malacca police chief Senior Deputy Commissioner Datuk Chuah Ghee Lye said a 36-year-old client has also been charged under Section 376 of the Penal Code on Aug 2 for allegedly having sex with the girl adding that they were hunting for the remaining eight men.

By R.S.N. MURALI  The Star/Asia News Network

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Youngsters lured by power, money and glamour !

Crime Watch !

Crime Watch...

(1) Today I passed by a building which has an ATM machine. There was an old man looking at me. Suddenly, he called me. He said he didn’t know how to read, so he gave me his ATM card and asked me to help him withdraw money from the ATM machine. I answered ‘NO! If you need help, ask the security to help you.’ Then he said ‘never mind…’ and continued to find other people to help him… REMEMBER: ATM machines have CCTVs. If you help him he will later claim that you have robbed him or stolen his ATM card. Besides, his ATM card could be a stolen one. So please be careful of these tactics. (2) Suddenly your house lights go off. From your window you find that your neighbours still have their lights. So you go out of your house to check the Meter Box. But once you open the door, a knife will be pointing at you and preventing you from closing it. This is when you will be robbed and injured. REMEMBER: Even though your electricity suddenly goes off, DO NOT open your door immediately. Look around to see if there is anything unusual or if there is any noise around. (3) This is another incident. You may have heard about it before; it is about a lady who saw a kid crying by the roadside. When she spoke to the kid, the kid told her he was lost and wanted her to take him home. The kid even gave her a paper with his house address. So she took him home. But when she rang the door bell, she had an electric shock. Later when she woke up, she was naked in an empty room. REMEMBER: Being such a compassionate and helpful person might not be a good thing these days. Girls, please be careful. DON’T BE TOO KIND! (4) One day, there was an old lady outside my house holding two packets of sweets. At first I thought she was our neighbour and wanted to give us these packs of sweets as a gift. But then when she spoke, I realise that she was foreigner. I could not understand what she was talking about. I guessed she must be asking for money. I sensed there was something wrong and immediately closed the door and ignored her. Later, I found she and an accomplice robbed someone else down the road. (5) I was at the ATM machine to withdraw some money. Behind me, there was an old lady. She asked me whether I was able to withdraw my money because she said she had problem with the machine. Suddenly a small girl came up beside me. The small girl was tugging and squeezing in front of me. I thought she was just naughty and playful. But then, the small girl placed her hand inside the tray of the ATM machine where the money was being dispensed out; ready to take away my money. I sensed something wrong and immediately pushed her away. Later I realised that the small girl and the old lady worked hand in hand together. She was trying to steal my money while the old lady was trying to distract my attention by asking me questions! REMEMBER: BE VERY CAREFUL when you are at an ATM machine and be alert. Look out for anyone suspicious around you! (6) My parents are retired and stay at home most days. One afternoon, a young stranger went to their house and said his motorcycle had no more fuel and the petrol station was too far away, for him to push his bike there. So he asked my parents for an empty coke bottle to buy some petrol. He said he will pay RM2 for the bottle. So my mum gave one coke bottle to him. He really took out the money from his pocket, but it was a RM 100 note. He told my mum he had no small change and asked my mum to give him the change. Luckily my mum was smart. She just told him to take it for free. REMEMBER: obviously that note isfake! Who would want to pay for RM2 for an empty coke bottle! It’s very OBVIOUS that that stranger was a trickster. (7) This happened in Bali . A newly married couple was having their honeymoon at the hotel. When both were in the changing room, the wife suddenly went missing. The husband was very anxious and went around finding her. He asked the hotel staff to help him find her. Then he thought his wife was just playing hide and seek. So he went back and waited for his wife. After a few hours, he decided to call the police. Three weeks passed and there was still no news about his missing wife. So he went back and was very disappointed and sad. A few years later, he came back to Bali , to watch a ‘FREAK SHOW’ in an old house. He saw a dirty and rusty metal cage. Inside there was a lady without limbs. Her body including the face was full of scars. When he had a closer look at her face, he was shocked to find out that she was his missing wife caged there and used for begging. (8) This happened in Shanghai . A few years ago, a lady reported to the police that her cousin sister was missing in the shopping complex. But after five years, one of her friends found her cousin sister begging at the road side on one of the streets in Bangkok , Thailand . The worst thing was that her cousin sister had no more limbs and her body was tied to a lamp post with a shackle (metal chain). (9) Let’s just shorten this story. DO NOT open your house door when you hear the sound of a BABY CRYING! It might be a trap! Women in the house must be alert to this form of trick. The police said it is the work of a robber or murderer using the recording of a crying baby to attract your attention. This normally happens at night and when you are alone in the house. (10) I read an email that was sent by my friend. Her friend, known as A, went to Luo Hu Commercial City with 2 friends, B and C. Luo Hu Commercial City is known as the Shenzhen counterfeit goods distribution center. There are many people there. It’s also near to the Shenzhen train station and Hong Kong ’s Luo Hu Port. C went to the toilet at the shopping centre while A and B waited outside. After waiting for a long, time they felt uneasy and went into the toilet to look for her. When they went in, there was nobody inside. Both were scared and they called C’s phone. There was no reply. So they reported to the police. The police asked them whether they had seen anybody suspicious going into the toilet. Both said there was none and it’s impossible to bring a person out of the toilet without them noticing! Then A remembered seeing a cleaner pushing a trolley in, and then coming out of the toilet. The police told them that were not the first time such a thing happened there. The police suspected a gang of criminals who were always attacking women in the the toilets of shopping complexes. They use cleaners to kidnap people to harvest their organs for sale. REMEMBER: please be careful when using the toilet. Do not go to the wash room ortoilet ALONE (especially if you are female)! Please at least have a partner with you.