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 Colonial victims seeking redress on the world stage (Source: straitstimes.com) Only the World Cup finals and third place match remain, and the former will feature the foretold (and maximally lucrative) baton pass between Messi and Yamal, this coming after England bottled it once again despite arguably outplaying Argentina for an hour, and taking the lead. While none of this is particularly new to England fans (including yours truly, if along with Brazil), the manner in which it happened was painful; Tuchel (the England manager) replaced some starters with defenders after going in front, which quite predictably was an open invitation for Argentina to attack them, moreover while led by perhaps the best offensive player of all time. The most damning indictment of this parking-the-bus strategy was probably that England managed just 12% of the possession between their scoring and Argentina's 85th minute equalizer, after which the Argies won it in stoppage time to spare them further misery. This had irate England supporters and pundits deride Tuchel as a "German spy" after the perceived cowardly botch, with world-renowned football expert TRUMP further observing that forcing Harry Kane on defence was "a little unusual" - about which GEOTUS is basically correct as usual. Tuchel would of course reject the criticisms (perhaps missing TRUMP's self-humility in making his statement) with some support from Klopp, insisting that his tactics were sound and that it was easy to condemn his decisions after the fact (and in his defence, it was not utterly impossible for England to have held out for about twelve more minutes - just not very likely), to which not a few fans retorted that they had complained during the game. To give some additional background context, part of the reason why England fans had been against going defensive after taking the lead, was that this was what previous boss Southgate had been known for, which brought the team no major successes. Additionally, England had been causing the Argentine defence problems, and from how Argentina had barely won 3-2 against both Cabo Verde and Egypt - ranked 64th and 24th respectively, with Egypt nearly going three up - it just made sense to put the likes of Saka and Rashford on to keep Argentina honest in leaving some defenders back. As it was, the manager piled on his own defenders instead, before later claiming that ball possession was not in the English footballing DNA, unlike for the Argentines (or Spanish, or Brazilians)  Malvinas or Falklands? (Source: bbc.com) The spice would continue after the final whistle, as the triumphant Argentina side then unfurled a "Las Malvinas son Argentinas" banner proclaiming the contested Falkland Islands as belonging to them. The islands have remained a sore point between the countries ever since a brief war in 1982, that ended with the United Kingdom retaining the territory. Argentina's claim has been getting increasing recognition in recent years, however, with the European Union meaningfully endorsing Argentina's naming in 2023, with China officially backing their sovereignty in the same year, possibly with an eye on their own analogous situation with an island off their coast. The display had a British minister call for a FIFA investigation given that it appeared to violate the rule against political messaging (never evenly enforced, by the way), only for the White House to stand up for principles in invoking the Argentine players' First Amendment rights to free speech - which are being increasingly curtailed in Europe, what with a proposed Digital Services Act potentially projecting control of online content onto Americans as well. This has to be especially concerning from how France and Germany are seemingly trying to ban conservative parties after they have become by all accounts the most popular options, which one hopes can be recognized as an obviously undemocratic power-grab. As Elon Musk has rightly noted, Le Pen is probably France's last hope. To expand on the above, the main driving force behind parties such as the AfD and National Rally has been their opposition to (current levels of) immigration, and to be frank there is absolutely nothing wrong with that - a country's immigration rate should be part of the political discourse. France for example receives about three hundred thousand new immigrants annually, and there is really no call to slander those who would desire a lower number as "xenophobic" or "far-right", no more than it would be right for somebody wanting a higher rate to label those happy with the status quo thus. The same goes for supporting measures against illegal immigration, because there is no country that allows unrestricted immigration to the best of my knowledge, and for good reason. Then, if there is some limit as to immigration, it merely follows that this limit should be enforced. Note that the point is not to be cruel - if a person wilfully overstays his visa, then he should just be informed of the law and told not to do it again (with biometrics taken for enforcement, as they would have been), and given a ticket to their original country... because otherwise what? China's answer to the White House MMA event [N.B. More technical discussion on A.I. and robotics advances soon!] [N.N.B. Some way yet to Real Steel though.] That said, for all its intensity, the football game did end with all concerned safe and sound, which is more than can be said for the many unhappy conflicts ongoing globally right now. This has led me to wonder whether they could have been resolved in a more civilized manner, say by duels or even arranged set-piece battles, to minimize unnecessary suffering and collateral damage. One of my favourite fictional examples would be the Battle of Tukayyid in the BattleTech verse, that had Terran (i.e. Earth's) defenders contract for a proxy war on a minor outlying planet, against the returning Clan exiles. But then again, maybe that is what we are already seeing with Ukraine and Iran...
 Pulling a card from one's sleeves (Original source: r/usmnt) With the Round of Sixteen of the ongoing World Cup almost over, the biggest controversy thus far - excepting perhaps the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announcing the possible development of nuclear weapons after their team's exit - would have to be Folarin Balogun getting his red card rescinded, allowing him to play against Belgium. Such a reversal for a key player would have been headline-worthy by itself, but what really poured fuel on the fire was the revelation that it had come after personal Imperial intervention by GEOTUS, who had pressed FIFA president Gianni Infantino to perform a review. Being a FIFA Peace Prize winner does render some clout! TRUMP's standing up for a minority birthright citizen would not be received well by netizens, UEFA and Belgium in particular, with the Belgian Football Association lodging an official appeal, and threatening to raise the matter to a FIFA tribunal if they lost. UEFA would moreover release a statement describing the FIFA decision as "cross(ing) a red line" and entirely unjustifiable. The affair would finally be settled on the pitch, with Belgium winning by three clear goals after some atrocious play from the hosts - and then paying tribute to POTUS with his dance. The U.S. team was by the way ranked sixteenth, so an exit at this stage is just about what could be expected anyhow. That done with (or at least until the CIA discovers that Belgium is pursuing nuke development), we might examine the whole saga in slightly greater detail. Firstly, was Balogun's foul a red card? From the replay, he did catch the opposition player on the back of his calf before landing his foot on his ankle, though it did look unintentional with comparable fouls not punished with straight reds, so one figures it at least debatable.  Guy didn't get his foot out of the way fast enough [N.B. In case you were wondering why they're both wearing pink boots, it's apparently due to consumer trend forecaster WGSN predicting Electric Fuchsia (pink) and Transformative Teal as the top colours of 2026.] (Source: aljazeera.com) Next, did FIFA in fact break its own rules, as accused by UEFA? UEFA's argument is that "...a minimum automatic suspension of one match following a red card is not a discretionary option", with the Belgian FA indeed citing Article 10.5 of the World Cup Competition Regulations towards an automatic suspension. Against this, FIFA cited Article 27 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code, which does clearly state that "...the judicial body may decide to fully or partially suspend the implementation of a disciplinary measure", in dismissing Belgium's appeal. Given this, going by the letter of the law, FIFA does seem entirely entitled to suspend Balogun's punishment at their discretion. Here, it might be pointed out - as done by some longtime footy fans, and later FIFA themselves - that UEFA are hardly strangers to overturning red cards either, and that they had conveniently kept quiet when FIFA let Cristiano Ronaldo (a European player) off the hook last year, using Article 27 too. As such, the UEFA-FIFA feud might best be described as "a corruptible force meets a morally bankrupt object" for mutual hypocrisy. Moving forward, the French FA is now appealing Olise's yellow card, and the English FA is considering that for Quansah's red. Well, it remains to be seen if President Macron and King Charles love their respective nations, as much as TRUMP did his... On a personal note, I have only managed to catch a single-digit number of matches in part due to the inoportune timings, some of which (e.g. Portugal vs. Spain, despite its pedigree on paper) I would have happily skipped had but I known. One does get the sense that the gap between teams is narrowing in general, for example with Cape Verde (population: just over half a million) giving probably-second-favourites Argentina a huge scare, before losing 2-3 in extra time. There just aren't many real surprises and secret weapons any longer, what with analytics being conducted on about any league worth its salt. And a last word on Ronaldinho - he's apparently just signed with Italian third division club Ravenna FC. Stunt or not, it will only add to his legend; maybe other stars have won World Cups, Champions Leagues, Confederations Cups, Copa Américas, Copa Libertadores and Ballon d'Ors (though not all of them), but have they also won a sixteen-kilogram pig in a Paraguayan prison tourney, after trying to enter with a fake passport?
While there has been the usual doubt over whether the stunt was staged, I personally have no doubt that Ronaldinho is able to do that, from past ample live evidence; the main question would be whether it took more than one take (now, about Stephen Curry's 105 three-pointers in a row... I dunno, man). While Ronaldinho may not be the best footballer of all time (and generally not even in the top ten in polls), or anywhere near the most effective (which should be heavily team-dependant), he might well be my favourite player (to watch). There may be more dazzling dribblers, more clinical finishers, more effective passers and cleaner strikers of the ball, but perhaps none that played with that sheer spontaneity and pleasure, at his level. And at the end, isn't that what's important, for a game? Nothing exists, all is becoming Like tea warmed, sipped, welcomed
 Unexpected collaboration of the year (Source: theonlinecitizen.com) About a week ago, Workers' Party secretary-general and recent leader of the opposition Pritam Singh addressed the India-Singapore Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (popularly known as CECA) in a Facebook post, denouncing the racism arising from its supposed (effectively) one-sided granting of (Bharat) Indian professionals access to local jobs*. This is clearly an entirely relevant topic for consideration, with race-based prejudice and xenophobia certainly unacceptable in Singapore's somewhat-fragile multicultural society. The far more interesting part was the concurrent mention of a recent sleeper hit movie from China, 《给阿嬷的情书》 (thereafter Dear You), which tells the story of a Teochew grandmother discovering the truth behind her long-running correspondence with her husband in Thailand. The original controversy over Dear You was due to the IMDA mandating that it be screened with a Mandarin dub, instead of its original Teochew, in line with Singapore's longstanding Speak Mandarin (and not dialect) campaign. This had some locals forced to cross the border to Johor to watch it undubbed, following which the authorities relented and allowed ten Teochew screenings, later extended to eighteen (and perhaps more) after overwhelming demand. There are several pertinent observations that might be made here. To begin with, Singh's referencing a suggestion that the "emotive Teochew blockbuster" is (PRC) propaganda may be somewhat of a head scratcher, given that his Workers' Party had basically survived mostly due to former leader Low Thia Khiang hanging on to the Hougang constituency as his base, after Indian political legend and previous head J. B. Jeyaretnam had basically been bankrupted by LKY** and other PAP members*** (but that one is totally not racist, ah!). It is somewhat difficult to understand how a Workers' Party chief can suddenly be against "emotive Teochew propaganda" given that he frankly owes his position to it to some extent - just sayin'. Didn't hear no complaints about dialects and ethnic loyalty then! Secondly, it has also been noted that there has generally been no issue with movies being screened in whatever tongue here, whether French, Spanish, Korean or Japanese etc.; indeed, various languages from India/Bharat have been freely represented in local cinemas, where one can take their pick of Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Telugu or Punjabi films (some of which, I gather, have to be touching cross-national family dramas too, such as Amitabh Bachchan's classic Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham), with entirely zero comment from anybody. Thirdly, it is also entirely unclear as to why a Teochew film would be accused of being China propaganda, given that their promotion of (Standard) Mandarin over the literally hundreds of spoken dialects has generally been recognized (by the CCP's detractors, at least) to be a political device towards unification. From this reasoning, would not allowing the movie to be played - but only in Mandarin instead - be considered as being biased towards the CCP instead? Moreover, if two elderly women exchanging letters qualifies as "propaganda", what can one describe Captain America smashing up ethnically-ambiguous mobs while being literally wrapped in their flag, as? While I had stated that China may have a lot to learn about effective propaganda ops some days back, let me just add that I still believe in fair play: it's just bad manners to directly call one's competitors out when they have put in the work to improve, and honestly this doesn't help one's own development!  Green appears their official shirt colour for some reason... [N.B. With the MBTI used for casting roles - perhaps a first?] (Source: nikkei.com) In any event, this grandma pen-pal flick has somehow been described by Lianhe Zaobao as possibly China's perfect propaganda film alongside a flurry of other denigratory articles, which might be a sign of arms getting seriously twisted on the media backend (refer discussions on the prior language-based divison in local media, from 2022 to 2023). This has extended to the deputy editor-in-chief of the SPH Chinese Media Group describing the movie as "cognitive warfare" attacking local multiracial identity, and Zaobao going as far as to suggest that it was part of United Front (统战) tactics. Wait, is this the bad old days of the 1950s Malayan Emergency revisited? This by the way comes as our Senior Minister emphasized in Shanghai that Singapore's relationship with China is purely transactional and based on mutual self-interest (for which he was pointedly referred to as a "former Singaporean political figure", despite still holding an official Cabinet post), which suggests that the tussle over control is spreading right to the very top. The mainland Chinese media has certainly picked up on the issue, with Global Times claiming a twisting of narratives, and accusing critics of "inner demons" by drawing a contrast to Coco; why, it is asked, is Coco celebrated globally as a touching and uplifting story representing "universal feelings" for seeking ancestral roots, while Dear You is panned for "hidden intent"? Then again, Great America is probably correct to be wary of the power balance in the region, from how the GOD-EMPEROR TRUMP has just requested an advance on South Korea's warship deliveries, with his Commerce Secretary raising concerns on whether China has acquired an extreme ultraviolet lithography machine from the Netherlands, both issues that had very coincidentally been raised here recently - but the U.S. angle will have to wait for once, even if this saga does smell like a classic Western-flavoured identity politics campaign.  Dialect was never a problem for this series either [N.B. The Mandarin title (英雄无名) translates as "Heroes Nameless", which is clearly not the same as the English title of Ah Boys To Firemen - and doesn't even have a specific relation to firemen in particular. It may however reference a famous Gu Long wuxia novel (英雄无泪), the comic adaptation of which has been referenced multiple times here.] (Source: r/singapore) As a final remark before ending off, it could be noted that India and China have historically been the two largest civilizations through much of recorded history, and have accounted for more than half of the global population as recently as 1850, and still comprise over a third of the world today. Quite incredibly, across all those centuries, there has been next to no conflict**** between the two peoples, save for a couple of border skirmishes in the 1960s that ended with a few thousand dead - which should honestly qualify them as super best friends considering what has been going on elsewhere. The Chinese Foreign Minister's call for continued dialogue has by the way just come after America's admission that they will not let India develop into a rival like China, but one supposes that it will be entirely up to India as to how they want to play The Greatest Game... [*On the Micron job ad discussed a while back, a follow-up probe has had the company deny authorizing it... which however does not appear to address whether actual recruitment had occurred through the posting.] [**Who was no stranger to using dialect for votes.] [***Quite ironically, the final straw was JBJ getting sued because he implied in the party newsletter that local Tamil MPs had not been sincere enough in their efforts to promote the Tamil language, so it appears unclear as to whether mother tongues (re: Teochew) should indeed be supported or not.] [****Some part likely due to geography, on which more next time.] [To be continued...]
 Come on now, don't you trust me? (Sources: GPT Image 2, aninews.in, Google Books Ngram Viewer) The past few days has seen much commentary on America's latest Iran deal and geopolitics in general, including a pair of well-written commentaries in the national broadsheet, one of which introduced the Sanskrit Arthashastra as a contemporary treatise to Sun Tzu's probably more-famous The Art of War (as discussed last June). The analyses are well-considered, and I would beg to differ on only one point, specifically the assertion that "what Trump had embarked on was not strategy but recklessness" - which I believe should be revealed to be not entirely accurate quite soon. Case in point, the statement was predicated on Iran being "poised to extract sanctions relief and the unfreezing of its dollar assets", but as explained here some weeks back, the purported US$300 billion reconstruction fund (and related concessions) was an obvious troll from the start. Even disregarding that the "deal" was an entirely non-binding memorandum of (mis)understanding towards kicking the football-shaped can sixty days down the road, the GOD-EMPEROR TRUMP (with some help from Israel and Hezbollah) has already pulled the football away with a public declaration that Iran would "not (get) ten cents" - but really, if The specific phrasing by GEOTUS may be notable for its apparent uniqueness, with the expression more commonly heard as "not a penny/dime". This intuition is supported by an n-gram search, with the "penny" version remaining the most popular despite TRUMP discontinuing production (possibly to help drop the penny for his unenlightened detractors), followed by the resurgent dime, and then the dollar. "Not ten cents" was not found in the corpus - and thus might be accounted another TRUMP original coinage - and likewise for "not a nickel" and "not a quarter", despite their quantity in circulation being comparable to that of dimes at least. Well, as explained last month: if TRUMP took/gave the ten cents, the (Iran) game would be over!  It was inevitable, once one understands how The Game is played - Singapore does have one of the highest average I.Q.s in the world (Source: r/singapore) More Coinages Revisited And to follow up on recent posts, it had been questioned as to why the section on Musk's fortune had began with "Unto Elon AI" when SpaceX is a rocket and space exploration company (i.e. it's rocket science!), surely? Upon double-checking, the SpaceX S-1 filing for its IPO clearly states that the space-related portion of its business, including Starlink, is responsible for less than 7% of its value (some US$2.43 trillion, as of today). Instead, the majority of its worth is projected to come from "providing AI services in space", apparently by sending cloud servers into orbit, making Musk's conversion of his Tesla Roadster into a satellite circa 2018 something of a test drive. So yes, "Unto Elon AI" is accurate. This does raise the natural question as to why AI SERVERS IN SPACE is necessarily so much more valuable than simply planting them on terra firma (and just transmitting the signals to space). In particular, Amazon's AWS is the largest cloud provider on Earth with a revenue of about US$120 billion last year, but SpaceX has already overtaken them in market value despite a storage capacity of approximately zero, with a price-to-earnings ratio of -61, and a price-to-sales ratio of about 138, on a revenue of US$18.7 billion and a net loss of US$4.9 billion. This compares extremely unfavourably to its peers (the likes of NVIDIA, Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon), all of whom are turning annual net profits from about US$77 to 132 billion, which has had pundits such as Michael Burry and Aswath Damodaran having qualms about SpaceX's valuation. It is not known as to what Warren Buffett (who was the world's richest as recently as 2008) thinks of it, but as Burry points out, SpaceX has just eclipsed Berkshire Hathaway more than twice over in just three days, with Elon Musk making more than Buffett's entire lifetime net worth in a single day. The acquisition of AI startup Cursor for US$60 billion (of stock) by SpaceX has done little to quell concerns thus far, with commentators realising that if SpaceX's current market cap of about US$2.43 trillion is entirely unjustified by conventional metrics... what is to prevent its market cap from ballooning to, say, US$10 trillion (or roughly a third of the U.S. GDP), given that the degree of absurdity would remain largely unchanged? As Elizabeth Warren and others have also noted, fast-tracking SpaceX onto the Nasdaq-100 index would further force buying by index investors such as hedge and pension funds, whatever the fund operators themselves think of SpaceX itself. Given this, we can only return to the explanation from last week, and revisit the original question of what SpaceX is: is it a rocket, social media or AI company? To this, the deeper answer would be none of the above; SpaceX is an Elon Musk company, with its main product being Elon Musk. Here, let us briefly reflect on the life and times of that remarkable African-American man, scion of an emerald mine owner, UPenn physics and economics alumni, PayPal CEO, Mars terraforming evangelist, electric vehicle visionary, and father of around fourteen. It was perhaps inevitable, then, that such a man would wind up as the funding mechanism for the United States of America, as an all-singing, all-dancing, living and breathing trillion-dollar coin...  Do you understand how much trouble we had to go through to pull this cash infusion off, without (most of) the market realising? [N.B. Musk *is*, indeed, essential to reducing federal expenses!] [N.N.B. Looks smaller-scale than expected though.] (Source: youtube.com, again; and GPT Image 2) [To be continued...]
 But circuses too - ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED? [Embiggen!] [N.B. UFC Freedom 250 and UFC A.D. 250 are very similar after all!] (Source: bleacherreport.com, GPT Image 2) With the GOD-EMPEROR's Birthday Games at the Imperial Capital just successfully concluded - entirely in keeping with America's Roman legacy - his ever-victorious legions are also executing a honourable withdrawal from Persia, to regroup for further conquests. Gentlemen, if you are of the opinion that things change... I am sorry to have to say that they really don't. As for the rest of today's update, it will be a brief personal reflection on the trappings of, if not wealth, then a moderate degree of affluence. Yes, I am fully aware that it's one of those touchy subjects, but the nice thing about being willing to court controversial topics is that it only gets easier to do. In summary, I have gone from sharing a room with my grandmother to the age of around thirty-two (which, on hindsight, was perhaps not the best signal), to more or less having paid off two properties - including a detached house in Bukit Timah, since we're on disclosure. If I had been a little more aware, I should probably have just done all this earlier; if I had been a little braver, I would have just renounced. But I was neither, so here we are. That said, I can't say that my life or habits have changed much. One of the greatest switchups from my younger self would be a reliance on private-hire vehicles (i.e. basically Grab) instead of public transport, which is more for saving time than any rejection of the latter. This might be a little sensitive, however, from how I recently absentmindedly asked an acquaintance whether he would like a ride (which I should perhaps have gotten earlier too), or take the bus - even the suggestion appears to have some implications, which I would honestly not have realised in my more innocent days.  Entirely sufficient [N.B. And multifunctional in a pinch too!] [N.N.B. That said, I'm considering the TRUMP Mugshot Collectible, containing a piece of the (Source: linkedin.com) Other than this, there's the accrual of credit card points, which I had never really bothered about, but I can well understand why people bother after experiencing business class seats for the first time* - being able to lie down for long haul flights does make the trip far more enjoyable. Oh, and there was a passing interest in watches - this being the only conventional accessory a guy is allowed - to the extent of attending a horological event, and compiling a list of potential acquisitions. If one takes the main function of a watch as being to tell time, however, it was all entirely meaningless. Firstly, about everyone has a smartphone nowadays, which has more computing power than the entire world had about 1980, and as such is capable of keeping time as synchronized from the best atomic clocks too. Barring that, the ubiquitous Casio F-91W is rated as accurate within half a minute per month - but possibly far better - lasts basically forever under normal conditions, and costs like twenty bucks. Upgrade to a solar G-Shock for two hundred dollars, and I daresay one's lifetime timekeeping needs are solved, casual dives up to a hundred fathoms included, especially since one's arm probably won't survive anything the watch doesn't anyway. But fine, it's fun to shake the Tag up once in a while, though I doubt I'll ever play the Authorized Dealer game to get dibs on a Rolex... and if you guys ever see me dual-wielding Pateks, you have my permission to smack me. And yes, on food. While I do think everybody should have the opportunity to visit Michelin-starred restaurants once in a while, and one can hardly fault their attention to detail and general put-togetherness as a class, it does get old rather quickly; usually, I'm entirely satisfied with getting my tummy (mostly) filled, and it can get awkward when the waiter introduces the lobster in such an intimate manner that one gets the feeling of having known it for a long time...  Do I need anything? Yes, lady, please stop blocking the light [N.B. After which he "borrowed" some cash to tip the showgirls.] (Source: instagram.com) In the end, I'd say that the true value of wealth is freedom... which includes the ability to do or say stuff without caring overly what others think of it. Sometimes, one just really wants to sit on the floor (or the grass), you know? [*On this, our Health Minister has apparently gotten a bit of blowback for flying First Class to Tokyo on official business, all the more after the DPM was reportedly in business class (and a car), and the Prime Minister and Senior Minister on budget airlines - but to be frank, it would be pointless to risk having them in nonoptimal condition for negotiations etc.] [To be continued...]
 Gotta keep one's post-Presidency employment options open [N.B. See Seedance video from March.] (Source: deadline.com) Following up on recent blog posts before World Cup season, we have the Iranian president reportedly offering his resignation due to not actually being in power (as asserted here in April), BYD sanctioned by America together with Alibaba, Baidu and a host of other Chinese firms due to supposedly being closely linked to the PRC military (with some implications of BYD's manufacturing dominance covered in the previous post), the U.S. now citing "self-defense" in striking Iran (ref. Hoppers) and their Secretary of State noting that Greenland only remained part of Denmark "for now"... though that last might be stretching coincidences a little too far. On Singapore, the latest Imperial Tariff rate appears to have been set at 12.5% due to not complying with (America's) international law on banning goods produced with forced labour, which may apply to one-third of local exports to them. About this, one personally reckons it far cleaner were the U.S. simply to announce that they are imposing tariffs to try and balance their trade deficit - which everybody sort of does anyway - rather than bother with contriving excuses. Foreign Affairs has in any case just attributed yuan undervaluation as a major source of said imbalances for Team Blue, with The Economist foreseeing an inevitable trade war between Europe and China. This was of course long posited as a likely consequence of the American tariffs last September by way of the Chickencoop Principle, with the world other than America necessarily having to eat larger deficits were the U.S. to reduce theirs - and Europe is indeed bearing the brunt of China's excess export capacity, leading to the German Chancellor proposing tougher trade measures; so much for free trade orthodoxy then, when you're not winning! Chinese officials have for their part been a broken record on repeating that they do not aim for a trade surplus, while (correctly) attributing such to China's moving up the value ladder, with some sniping at Europe's refusal to export advanced equipment like lithography machines - though frankly, it won't be long before China corners that market too, if they did.  Winner, winner, chicken dinner! (Source: mangatown.com) Anyway, China Daily has acknowledged the Chickencoop Principle in their own way by (accurately) stating that "...the notion that all economies can simultaneously enjoy trade surpluses is mathematically impossible" (i.e. we are certainly not going to be the suckers on running an aggregate trade deficit), but this neglects that all economies can theoretically run balanced trade with near-zero surpluses or deficits, following the old wisdom of "neither a borrower nor a lender be". As it is, Western manufacturing potential and expertise is withering away - with consequences to be explained very soon. Singapore has not been spared in the ongoing (if largely underadvertised) trade wars, what with rebadged mattresses from China coming under scrutiny, and local banks taking a beating on China's new regulations on outbound wealth flows. While one can't knock the government's initiative on seeking a free trade agreement with eight East African countries, this doesn't look like it will cover a fraction of the loss in trade were the big boys (i.e. Great America and China mostly) to impose themselves. Our long-suffering DPM Gan has received some relief in the form of some 1000 much-needed jobs from U.S. semiconductor firm Applied Materials*, a rare carrot in the current era of enthusiastic American stick-wielding that may warrant a sincere "thank you" to the reigning GOD-EMPEROR. It bears repeating that it does appear a seriously tough era to be a minister (or comparably highly-placed in the Singapore government), to the extent that one feels it only decent to tone down on the kopitiam-style criticism**, despite my naturally-contrarian sensibilities. The Defence Minister had for instance been panned for continually referring to his script in his address at the Shangri-La Dialogue plenary, but it does make sense to be extra careful about exactly what one says*** in an official capacity (well, unless you're GEOTUS), in the currently-tense geopolitical climate. Likewise for the comments on a Senior Minister of State for Manpower and Health returning to surgical practice, after originally resigning for family reasons - there might well be a net increase in his contribution to society there! Unto Elon AI, As Unto AdonAI just look at the people He gives it to." - Dorothy Parker [N.B. She might know a bit about that, being born a Rothschild.]  Maybe not *quite* richer than God... but the comparison is understandable (Source: GPT Image 2) The bumper SpaceX IPO from several days ago has provided a convenient staging point for the (macro)economics discussion to follow, beginning with how the offering of about 4.3% of the outstanding SpaceX stock at US$150 (up from US$135) on Nasdaq implied a company valuation of about US$2 trillion - which made founder Elon Musk the world's first U.S. dollar trillionaire. About a year ago, an interactive visualization of Bezos' wealth (US$139 billion then) had made some waves online for illustrating how humongous even a single billion is, and an update may be in order given how Musk is now wealthier than the next four multi-billionaires (Bezos now in fourth) combined. Perhaps more remarkably, Musk is also richer than approximately the poorest half of the global population (46%, to be exact), which comes to, oh, 3.8 billion people. This fact obviously makes absolutely no sense. Now, Elon Musk may be a pretty smart and accomplished fellow, a magnificent autist, and the world's top Diablo 4 player to boot, but has he really done as much for the world as roughly half of all living humans? This is a rhetorical question, by the way, to which the only resolution appears that money is not a very good measure of one's contributions; in fairness to Musk, he does have quite a lot of those in various domains, just perhaps not to the tune of a trillion bucks... but we will return to possible reasons soon. Perhaps he might consider reimbursing the local elderly lady who had spotted him six hundred grand in his hour of need? Switching now to the (inter)national level, one trillion U.S. dollars is also larger than the annual GDP of all but twenty-one countries (Poland being the twenty-first, with either Taiwan or Ireland next depending on one's sympathies), every one of which Singapore wants to be friends with, according to our economics-trained**** PM at the SPC Eminent Speaker Series, along with a call for national cohesion amidst "mutually assured disruption" between the U.S. and China. This apparently includes Russia, where he will be visiting for high-level talks in a few days, which may seem problematic for Singapore's supposed "principles" on the surface given their invasion of Ukraine - but then, pragmatism is a principle too.  What was the first cause here? (Source: x.com) And back to the implications of Musk's trillion dollars. As a reminder, Musk didn't sell SpaceX for a trillion (and change); he sold about 4% of the company, while owning about 46%. His fortune, then, is derived by extrapolating the per-share cost of the actually-bought shares, to the remainder of the stock. Clearly, if Musk were to attempt to divest all of his 46% on the open market, this would move the share price (almost certainly for the worse), resulting in a reduced amount of cold, hard cash. To further illustrate this issue with valuations, let us try a little game, for which you would need a trusted† friend (or pet) and a notepad. Firstly, create ten trillion NotePadCoins by tearing out two pages of the notepad, and writing "5 trillion NPCs" on each page. Rest assured, there's (probably) no law against this - call them "tokens" if you have to. Next, gift 5 trillion NPCs to your friend, while retaining 5 trillion NPCs for yourself. Finally, trade a dollar for one of your friend's NPCs. Now, from known market valuations, each of you own assets worth approximately five trillion U.S. dollars on paper, if admittedly with minor concerns about liquidity, so don't go wild with purchasing yachts just yet! This so happens to be basically Musk's favourite joke on two economists consuming poop to goose the GDP, and also describes the non-fungible token (NFT) craze/scam circa 2021 (remember them?), which has concluded with nearly all NFTs being next to worthless, Exhibit A being Justin Bieber's Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT that went from US$1.2 million in 2022, to (maybe) US$12000 today. To clarify, the mechanism seems fairly straightforward: NFT creators and insiders just listed and (re-)sold the NFTs for astronomical prices between themselves, as easily as one might trade paper NotePadCoins with one's pals (or pets). The real profit is made only when it circulates to an outsider/sucker, who injects actual funds into the ecosystem.  And he saith unto them - whose is this image and superscription? [N.B. Just in case it wasn't obvious enough...] (Source: nypost.com) And finally, for the main realization and hypothesis, consider some American monetary history. While the concept of a trillion perhaps first came to the fore of their public consciousness in 1981, when the national debt first crossed that mark, there had been a revival in late 2012, when the idea of minting a trillion-dollar coin to bypass the debt ceiling was floated by the Democrats, apparently with support from Krugman, The Economist and the New York Times. This possibility had regained attention in recent years from Rashida Tlaib and other congresspeople for funding purposes, and the conclusion seems to be that the Treasury does have every legal right to mint such a coin by the Coinage Act... as long as it is made of platinum. From another perspective, the minting is somewhat superfluous - the Fed can (and has) just perform Quantitative Easing (QE) by buying assets in open market operations. There are some differences, however, in that the U.S. Treasury would theoretically have (fairly broad) oversight over how to spend the spanking new one trillion dollars that just appeared in their deposit account at the Federal Reserve (effectively via Modern Monetary Theory). This would be expected to go towards paying down the debt by redeeming bonds, though the Treasury has bought currencies and equities in exceptional situations, such as for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in 2008. Both the trillion-dollar coin minting and regular QE have some major drawbacks, however. Specifically, a trillion-dollar coin would very obviously be "printing money", while QE relies on transmission through banks by lending (and creditors through borrowing), which may be ineffective if one or both remain unwilling (i.e. "pushing on a string"). Both are moreover likely to erode confidence in the U.S. dollar, in the longer run. The "proper" way then is to borrow via issuing Treasury bonds (debt) and/or tax the citizenry, but the former is getting out of control, and the latter won't keep a party in government for long.  World's richest man? You mean my butler? (Source: youtube.com) So we come to: if just printing money one way or the other is no good, allocation through the banks is unreliable, borrowing is unaffordable, and taxation entirely unpopular... how about manufacturing a useful craze in technology (yes, and artificial intelligence, for which a "circular economy" has been observed for some months now), and encouraging domestic organizations and consumers to Approachable video explainer [*They might hopefully give some consideration to locals, from how a recent recruitment drive for Micron Singapore reportedly explicitly invited only Malaysians to apply.] [**For example, I was considering penning a rebuttal against the proposed increase in ministerial salaries in February, only to realize that I had, to my shame, not been making less than them for the past decade or so, perhaps those with multiple portfolios and serendipitous property windfalls excepted. Given this, it just felt entirely hypocritical to complain, now all the more as the raise has been shelved due to Hormuz senjata.] [***This includes on recent anti-Indian social media posts, which the Law Minister was careful to state that there was no evidence to suggest that they were part of a coordinated campaign by any government, despite likely originating from a China-based platform. As said last month, China probably has a lot to learn about effective propaganda ops anyway.] [****Which extends to the "stylish retro mullet", as referenced in our explanation of the Grocery Store Analogy from last year.] [†Or not-so-trusted; it doesn't really matter.] [To be continued...]
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