Investing for the Rapture

(Note for the humour-impaired: this post is not investment advice; this post is comedy. Carry on.) As you should all know from extensive news coverage, the Rapture will arrive at 6pm on Saturday, and God will take all of his chosen people up to heaven for the least alcoholic Saturday night ever. Those who choose to turn away from him, however, will be left on earth for six months of unrelenting torment (and Facebook-organised looting - 455,518 people attending!

Singapore Election 2011: He’s Their Helen Thomas

Earlier today, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong spoke (and begged for mercy from the electorate) at a People’s Action Party rally in Singapore’s CBD. One part of his speech seems to have been almost buried, but it’s pretty newsworthy - the PM seems to be carefully marginalising the man who ran the country for more than thirty years, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew. The PAP appears to be admitting that their venerated elder statesman is becoming a potentially massive PR liability:

Singapore Election 2011: Nomination Day

Update: Hi! If you enjoyed this post, I’ve got a series on Singapore’s election going up over the next week: Election 2011: the Redistricting Election 2011: Nomination Day (this post) Election 2011: He’s Their Helen Thomas …and there’s more to come. Today was Nomination Day. There’s only one day in the entire election cycle where candidates can register to get on the ballot for a Singaporean election.

Singapore Election 2011: The Redistricting

Update: Hi! If you enjoyed this post, I’ve got a series on Singapore’s election going up over the next week: Election 2011: the Redistricting (this post) Election 2011: Nomination Day Election 2011: He’s Their Helen Thomas …and there’s more to come. This is the first in a series of pieces on Singapore’s General Election, which was announced yesterday after a month of phoney-war campaigning. 2.4 million registered voters will go to the polls on May 7th, and - let’s not mince words here - the result is a foregone conclusion.

He’s right.

Even if you read nothing else this weekend, you must read John Hempton’s incendiary takedown of the SGX’s thwarted merger with the ASX. All I’ll add is that he’s absolutely right. Those dodgy S-chip listings that sucked up so much of Singaporean investors’ money in the mid-to-late-2000s (they were handing out prospectuses in Raffles Place as late as early 2008) are now collapsing or being suspended at the rate of one or two a fortnight.