Anwar is back

Video

Anwar, you have my utmost respect for "never say die" attitude.

Asian debt offerings facing a global crisis of trust

An expected deluge of Asian debt offers in September runs the risk of turning into a mirage as issuers grapple with a severe global crisis of trust.

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Mainlanders see prestige value in HK

Buyers have been known to view a HK$100m-plus property for 10 minutes and decide on the spot to buy it - in cash

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Cheap Chairs

Polygamy is the key to a long life

Want to live a little longer? Get a second wife. New research suggests that men from polygamous cultures outlive those from monogamous ones.

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Life is short. Have an affair to prolong life?

HSI Daily

Parabolic, MACD and Stochastic all pointing up.

HSI vs SIMSCI Relative Performance: Cash/Futures

SIMSCI tracks HSI very closely.

HSI vs DJIA Relative Performance: Cash/Futures

What do you see from this picture?

Govt defends A-G’s stand

Law Minister reiterates that 'not guilty in law' does not mean 'innocent'

This is a classic case of schizophrenic between the executive and the legislature.

When in parliament, the ministers discuss and set laws which are fair. They should not mix up their roles as "government" because otherwise you have a situation where you set laws OR not to set laws to make sure that the governing part is protected.

They should put on the hat of parliamentarians and comment on whether such a law would be fair or not. Keep the government outside parliament.

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Why Can’t Chinese Cars Compete Internationally?

Since the beginning of 2008, with raw material costs and oil prices rising constantly and “made in China” moving into cooler weather, the Chinese car market has caught a cold and domestic brands are the biggest sneezers.

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Time to track accuracy of analyst calls

IN RESPONSE to a call made last week in this column (BT, Aug 19, ‘Include analyst information in research reports’), a reader wrote in to say he would be compiling data pertaining to analyst performance over the next 12 months to see just how many recommendations actually achieve their target prices, and that once the study is complete, it would be offered for publication in BT.

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Libor Signals Credit Seizing as Banks Balk at Lending

Aug. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Most of the bond strategists and salesmen that Resolution Investment Management Ltd.’s Stuart Thomson talked to last August expected the credit crunch to be long over by now. Instead, money markets show there’s no end in sight, and it may even worsen.

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Lord Action

Power Corrupts:
Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely.

Axis of Evils

“An evil exists that threatens every man, woman and child of this great nation. We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homelands.”

Adolf Hitler / George Bush

Who really owns Federal Reserve?

I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is now controlled by its system of credit.

We are no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.

Woodrow Wilson - 1919

Giving people space to let off steam

Tight controls on politics and the Internet are being loosened, giving hope for multi-party democracy in a nation long used to the ruling PAP’s hold on power.

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Why the West is disappointed with Beijing Olympic 2008?

“Before the start of the Games, there were a lot of doubts about Beijing’s ability to host the biggest sports extravaganza in the world - pollution, hygiene conditions, transport and spectators were all concerns,” Mr Fok said. “But at the end of the day, these people witnessed the most successful Olympic Games ever.”

With no screw up to criticise, the West has to resort to the old human rights theme again. So predictable.

Interview with Jim Rogers

That’s one of the advantages of Singapore. The place has an astonishing amount of wealth and only 4 million people. So even if it started squandering it in 2008, which they may be, it’s going to take them forever to do so.

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China’s Excess Liquidity Trap

While this situation may sound positive, the associated imbalances in China’s economy are large and increasingly worrisome for China’s leaders. The way China deals with these challenges will have significant national and international implications.

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China’s the boss, and it’s not even close

BEIJING (AP)—The story line was in place even before they filled the pool inside the Water Cube. This was always going to be China’s Olympics to win, and there wasn’t a lot the United States or anybody else could do about it.

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Not time for bottom fishing

Stocks, bonds, properties are still in bear markets. They have at least one year to go before hitting bottoms. When they do, they won’t recover quickly. Investors should not hurry for bottom fishing.

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Foreign exchange reserves cannot be viewed as wealth

However, reserves are not wealth and they cannot be spent domestically.

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‘Made in China’ brand reaps Olympic dividend

BEIJING (AFP) - The Olympics had a negligible direct impact on China’s economy, but analysts say the near flawless organisation of the Games was a priceless 17-day advertisement for the “Made in China” brand.

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12 Ways to determine an Entrepreneur by Master Lynn Yap

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China plans new share sale system

(SHANGHAI) Chinese securities regulators, seeking to support the stock market, plan to introduce a new system for sales of shares made tradable by the expiry of lock-up periods, the 21st Century Business Herald reported yesterday.

The system is likely to be announced soon after this month’s Beijing Olympics, the newspaper reported.

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Strategist: Don’t buy equities yet

‘Technically, we’re in dangerous territory, having broken past previous index level lows,’ he said of Asian markets.

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Warren Buffett says 'game is over' for Freddie and Fannie

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two largest mortgage finance companies, "don't have any net worth," the billionaire investor Warren Buffett said.

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HSI Call F6VW

Hourly indicators look like preparing for run up.

China attracts more US college students

There are almost certainly at least 10,000 US students now enrolled annually in programs in China, up fivefold from a decade ago. China is the seventh most popular destination for US students, according to the Institute of International Education. But it’s growing so quickly that, if trends continue, it will soon pass countries like Britain, Spain and Italy and become the most popular.

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Li Ka-Shing says ‘worst is yet to come’ in global economy slump

(HONG KONG) Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, who predicted China’s stock market bubble would burst, says the ‘worst is yet to come’ from the global credit crunch.

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DBS Weekly

I think there's chance for DBS to test neckline at 16.40.

Singapore's 40 Richest

Is your name there? I am working towards it.

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How did Merrill Lynch miss the red flags?

A look at Merrill’s role in the transfer of large amounts of money on behalf of family members of Taiwan’s former president Chen Shuibian into Swiss bank accounts.

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Singapore’s Temasek Courts Disaster

The bull market tide goes out, leaving the lion city’s sovereign wealth firm gasping on the shore

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Hua Guofeng dies

BEIJING (AP) — Hua Guofeng, who briefly ruled China as communist founder Mao Zedong's successor but was pushed aside as a prelude to reforms that launched an economic boom, died Wednesday at the age of 87, state-run media reported.

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Don't codeswitch to Singlish, please

IT MAY seem like good manners to turn on the Singlish when communicating with a countryman who can speak only the patois, but think again.

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The Five Elements Industry:

Marc Faber comment on US of A

Dr. Marc Faber concluded his monthly bulletin (June 2008) with the Following:

"The federal government is sending each of us a $600 rebate. If we spend that money at Wal-Mart, the money goes to China. If we spend it on gasoline it goes to the Arabs. If we buy a computer it will go to India. If we purchase fruit and vegetables it will go to Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. If we purchase a good car it will go to Germany. If we purchase useless crap it will go to Taiwan and none of it will help the American economy. The only way to keep that money here at home is to spend it on prostitutes and beer, since these are the only products still produced in US. I've been doing my part."

FerroChina Neckline Breakdown

FerroChina broke the neckline support at 1.02. 1) ML has been selling down with huge volume from 1.18 to 1.03, 2) many positions bought 1.20-1.30 and 3) potential margin calls underway, don't rule out hitting 0.840.

SSE Weekly

My target for SSE at 2200 almost reached this morning at 2284. Almost everybody is saying China's economy will tank together with her SSE after the Olympic Games.

But I take an opposite view that SSE will recover after the Olympic Games. Perhaps, SSE is building a base around 2200 and start to move up next week when the Olympic Games end?

SGX neckline breakdown like Capitaland?

Once 6.26 broken, next support at 4.94.

Global recession will drive down energy prices by 30%

The probability is growing that the global economy – not just the United States – will experience a serious recession. Recent developments suggest that all G7 economies are already in recession or close to tipping into one.

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Early failures all part of the learning curve

Bad decisions teach us a lot, says fund manager Enoch Yiu

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Diversify your portfolio but choose carefully

Adding a different kind of investment exposure to a portfolio may help to diversify it, but the question is - what kind of exposure is good for that purpose? One good strategy is to find an investment with a “low correlation to the global equity market” - in other words, an investment that moves in the opposite direction to global equities. Fund houses are touting this quite a bit nowadays, but are these really good for diversification? Investors can tell from the corresponding correlation coefficients.

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Searching for the naked truth

The real problem with abusive short-selling

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Commodity prices likely to rebound

Crashing commodity prices have once again given ammunition to sceptics who believe the boom of recent years was a blip, but that view underestimates the demand and economic growth in the emerging world.

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Dr. Doom

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Hot Money Scapegoated for A-share Market Nosedive

China’s A-share market has plummeted over 10% in the week since the opening of the Olympic Games, and many investors are wondering if hot money is short selling A-shares. Since the middle of October last year, the A-share market has dropped by 60%.

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David Stevenson: Go on the defensive to avoid fate like Japan’s

A disturbing thought has been dogging me: we may not be about to enter a “normal”, cyclical bear market of 25 to 30 per cent losses, but may instead endure a bear market akin to Japan’s, where returns on equity are pounded down as successive waves of rallies are consumed in a wider sense of gloom and re-rating.

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Last week's rally still a fally?

CNBC Video

Hedge funds brace for more heat after record losses

Hedge funds are braced for more dire performance data after sharp reversals in commodities and financials last month pushed some funds to record losses - making the goal of positive returns for the year even harder to reach.

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Beijing 2008 Olympics

Highlights of the opening ceremony.

You can click to watch the video in high quality.

UN chides media ‘frenzy’ over Beijing smog

BEIJING - THE United Nations’ environment boss has rebuked global media for a 'frenzied focus' on Beijing’s pollution and ‘amnesia’ over past hosts’ similar problems.

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清明上河圖

Along the river during the Ching-Ming Festival

This painting was originally painted during the Northern Song Dynasty, 1085-1145. It was repainted again during the Qing Dynasty. It is measured 528cm in width and 24.8cm in height. It is considered as one of the Great Treasure of China and was exhibited in the Hong Kong Museum of Art last year.

Take your time and walk through this painting which stretches across some length. At each of the three white boxes, click your mouse within the box and you will be amazed.

View the painting here

You Can’t Control Animal Spirits

A regulator can never, and should never attempt to, control the animal spirits of the market. When markets are going up should a regulator stop them? How can a regulator “decide” that the market is too high? That it is just a bubble? They can’t -- no one can.

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FerroChina

This is my first attempt to use Fibo Fan tool.

Finish Strong

Life is 10% what you make it and 90% how you take it – Irving Berlin

View the video here.

HSBC warns on credit crisis in Asia

HSBC on Monday warned the credit crisis was beginning to hit Asia as the banking group signalled emerging markets would not be immune to a severe economic slowdown in the US.

Stephen Green, HSBC’s chairman, said the bank had seen signs of an economic slowdown in countries such as India and Vietnam, combined with rising inflation. Falling stock markets had hit demand for wealth management products in the region.

Gossips

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Memories...

S&P emails slammed mortgage debt products

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Analysts at Standard & Poor’s Rating Services warned against mortgage-related debt products in internal e-mails that, in one case, called the complex financial deals “ridiculous,” the Wall Street Journal reported in its weekend edition.

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Gossips

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Finding Joy

Turn on your speaker and enjoy here

Profits of Doom

The rise of the bearish analyst

TEN years ago it was easy to make your name as a securities analyst. Take a technology stock, think of a number, double it and then announce that as your price target. Time it right and your call would be a self-fulfilling prophecy, as investors worldwide would regard your views as a buy signal. Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley and Henry Blodget of Merrill Lynch ruled the markets.

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Disney Shanghai to include media deal

The joint venture agreement would give Disney a huge advantage over U.S. media rivals by allowing it to bypass foreign film import quotas and summer and holiday blackout periods, as well as television censorship, both imposed by the central government.

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Super-Senior Tranches of CDOs are Worth Much Less than 22 Cents on the Dollar: Another Ponzi Scheme of “Selling” Toxic Garbage with More Leverage

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Merrill relief another illusion in hall of mirrors?

U.S. bank stocks may be staging another suckers’ rally.

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Hopes that the Olympics would cure Chinese market woes have been dashed

Many investors who believed the Beijing Olympics would drive the Shanghai stock index to peaks rivalling the Himalayas have lost their shirts.

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Pandas

The Gambler by Kenny Rogers

You got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you’re sitting at the table.
There’ll be time enough for counting when the dealing is done.

Free Fall - Are You Prepared?

What do you want from us?

How China’s consumers will change the world

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Need some stock tips? It’s anyone’s guess but casinos seem a good bet

I have been trying to work out what is the next move for equity markets. I’ve been watching TV, surfing the Net and reading the papers. I’ve even started looking at the analyst reports that the bank produces. My conclusion is that there is an approximately equal number of commentators who think that markets are about to rebound as there are commentators who think that it has farther to fall.

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Why Has ‘China Bashing’ Become So Popular?

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Record 13,400 homes to be completed next year

Rents expected to fall, especially in prime districts and East Coast. Fiona Chan reports.

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Banks brace for more pain

Most banks did better than expected in the second quarter. But concerns about capital, credit and housing are likely to weigh on the sector for the rest of the year.

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Temasek Selling Merrill Lynch

One writer said, “Should we just move on? I do not think so. The patently huge mistake is not merely the result of recklessness but rather a systemic lack of accountability in making some of our largest investments.

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Angry Youth: The new generation’s neocon nationalists

On the morning of April 15th, a short video entitled “2008 China Stand Up!” appeared on Sina, a Chinese Web site. The video’s origin was a mystery: unlike the usual YouTube-style clips, it had no host, no narrator, and no signature except the initials “CTGZ.”

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Halfway through a bear market rally

Why a bear market rally not a bull market?

Valuations are cheap but should be cheaper.

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Lost in the new Beijing: The old neighbourhood

BEIJING: Historical cycles that took a century to unfold in the West can be compressed into less than a decade in today’s China. And that’s as true of Beijing’s preservation movement as it is of the nation’s ferocious building boom.

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Why have oil prices been falling?

Oil prices have risen to record levels in recent weeks, with traders in London and New York paying more than $147 a barrel for crude oil at its peak on 11 July.

But since then, prices have fallen on both sides of the Atlantic, dipping almost 13% to a low of $128.23 for a barrel for US light sweet crude on 18 July, and down 10% to $129.66 for Brent crude.

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World’s Most Economically Powerful Cities

What’s the world’s most economically powerful city?

If you picked New York or Tokyo, you’d be wrong.

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Special Makeup Effects

How emotional pain can really hurt

Love really does hurt, just as poets and song lyric writers claim.


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Raising the bar

A rare slip-up in court by Singapore’s elder statesman, Lee Kuan Yew

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What happens if oil prices rebound sharply?

The direction of change of international oil prices during the remainder of the year will, in our view, heavily influence the near-term fate of the global economy and international financial markets. Falls in global oil prices, of the kind we have seen over the past few days, clearly brighten the prospects for the global economy. Conversely, a possible return to rapid increases in oil prices could have a disastrously negative influence on global growth.

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House prices ‘will keep falling’

House prices in the UK and the US are likely to fall for another two years, the chairman of one of the world’s most powerful banks has warned.

Sir Win Bischoff of Citigroup told BBC Business Editor Robert Peston he expects it will take two years for the markets to “stabilise”.

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Pakistani bear market has investors raging in the streets

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Shark Surgery

Shark surgery

Can he switch a man and woman's lower body?

Expect More Crisis

IndyMac has failed. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been hobbled but kept alive by a government and Federal Reserve rescue.

All of this happened just weeks after President Bush and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson claimed that the worst of the credit crisis had passed. Don't believe anyone who tells you that the worst is over until the banks, insurance companies, investment funds and mortgage companies that hold securitized debts fess up to what those securities are actually worth. The problem isn't that the securities are illiquid, it's that the prices should be lower than the financial institutions are willing to admit.

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2 + 20, and Other Hedge Fund Math

MANY people would jump at the chance to invest in hedge funds, which have mainly been available to only the very wealthy. But a new study finds that the funds’ high fees make it unlikely that investors will improve their long-term performance by putting money into hedge funds.

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Singapore Property

A Hong Kong based Asia property analyst for a small successful private investment bank was asked if he should buy property in Singapore

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Qipao - a statement of Oriental beauty

SLINKY, elegant, chic (and often practical), the classic qipao was a symbol of trendy Shanghai. The old-fashioned formless dress was nipped, tucked and slit for liberated women, writes Fei Lai.

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Singapore's judiciary system is still third world standard

'If the prosecution allowed their own witnesses to see their statements, I can't see why they should deny it to the defendant.' - LAWYER EDMOND PEREIRA

Read "Judge slams CNB for complete neglect of duties" here.

Fannie, Freddie crisis not the last: Soros

Billionaire investor George Soros said that the crisis over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will not be the last, and noted that the broader credit meltdown will impact an already slowing United States economy.

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The mortgage lender illusion

It’s dispiriting indeed to watch the U.S. financial system, supposedly the envy of the world, being taken to its knees. But that’s the show we’re watching, brought to you by somnambulant regulators, greedy bank executives and incompetent corporate directors.

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Guilt & Innocence in the Criminal Legal System

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Battle for China

British experts and scholars held a heated public debate in London Saturday on some key issues of China’s recent development and called for a balanced portrayal of China.

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