Aug 5, 2011

Josh Brown’s article from yesterday on the “ETF Singularity” is a winner. …we now have Concrete ETFs, Rare Earths ETFs, Global Aquaculture (Fishing!) ETFs, ETFs that hold only metals that are the color white (look it up – WITE, I kid you not)… We need to make an ETF of all the loony swap-based ETFs that have been launched over the last few years. And we could call it the World’s Traded Fund, so its ticker symbol would be WTF!

Jul 29, 2011

The price of COEs - Certificates of Entitlement, the piece of paper that allows you to buy a car in Singapore - has reached new 14-year highs. The COE for cars with engines larger than 1.6 litres - so, basically, any car that doesn’t suck - now costs $72,500 over and above the 105% tax on cars and the cost of the car itself. (The last time COEs cost this much was just before the 1998 Asian crisis; I’m not saying history repeats, but it occasionally rhymes.

Jul 26, 2011

Via Barry Ritholz: Aussie comedians John Clarke and Bryan Dawe (of “the front fell off” fame) discuss Greece’s debt problem: JOHN CLARKE: Well, they can’t pay their debts, Bryan. I mean, Greece owes 160 per cent of what it produces. I mean, the task is a Sisyphean task. It’s rolling a rock up a mountain. _ _ BRYAN DAWE: So Greece is insolvent? _ _ JOHN CLARKE: Bryan, put it this way: if it were a private company, there’d be a fire there on Saturday at about four o’clock in the morning.

May 20, 2011

(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!

May 3, 2011

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: