Prof Christopher Balding’s new blog address

[makapaaa]

[h=2]Prof Christopher Balding’s new blog address[/h]

June 8th, 2012 |

Author: Contributions

Dear TRE,

After having some mysterious parties “compromise” my old blog christopherbalding.com account, I am back with my new and ‘backup’ blog at:

• www.baldingsworld.com
• www.facebook.com/baldingsworld

I will leave it to your creative imaginations to guess who hacked/attacked my account, but everyone knows who is ultimately responsible. This represents merely a small delay and has done nothing but invigorate me for what lies ahead.

When someone cannot argue with the facts you have presented they attack you personally. It speaks volumes that they have not presented one fact or argument that addresses the facts I have put forward from their own data.

I am ready for what lies ahead and prepared let others decide the validity of my arguments. Are you?
.
Christopher Balding
Economist, thinker, and provocateur

* The writer is a professor of business and economics at the HSBC Business School at the Peking University Graduate School. An expert in sovereign wealth funds, he has published in such leading journals as the Review of International Economics, the Journal of Public Economic Theory, and the International Finance Review on such diverse topics as CDS pricing, the WTO, and the economics of adoption and abortion. His work as been cited by a variety of media outlets including the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. Prof Balding received his PhD from the University of California, Irvine and worked in private equity prior to entering academia.
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Editor’s note: Of course, it’s hard to prove that it was “they” who “attacked” Prof Balding’s site. We encourage Christopher to use Facebook to continue disseminating information for readers to read. It’s a lot harder for anyone to launch DDOS attacks to bring down an 800 lb gorilla like Facebook

In any case, TRE is always available to help re-post any of Prof Balding’s articles. His articles are generally thought-provoking and educational.
And to whoever is childish enough to have launched DDOS attacks to shut down Prof Balding’s site: Don’t waste your time. This is the Internet we are talking about. Information can always be moved, copied or relocated to zillion of places on the Net. In case you don’t know, the Internet was first developed by U.S. military in the late 60s in the midst of Cold War. It’s key objective was to develop a communication network that can withstand nuclear blasts and still survive to transmit information. Think about it...

 

[makapaaa]

[h=2]Balding’s Blog, Hair-raising development[/h]

June 8th, 2012 |

Author: Contributions



Do you love a conspiracy theory? Or do you like to say there’s no such thing as a coincidence? Monday saw the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. June 04th 1989.

There are a lot of things I could say about that. Those who read my Facebook page will know that I was in Hong Kong over the weekend meeting with The Democratic Party of Hong Kong amongst others. The Democratic Party were busy gearing up for a press conference about a peaceful demonstration they were preparing on the anniversary of Tiananmen. The overriding feeling this left me with (in addition to the terrible, unforgettable memories of that time) was that Hong Kong citizens enjoy more democracy than we do in Singapore. Not that they were allowed it but that they demanded it.
(skip)

Enter the conspiracy theories. On Monday the Shanghai Stock Exchange opened at 2,346. 98 and closed 64.89 points lower. It opened at the 23rd anniversary of the date backwards 4/6/89 and closed at 6/4/89. There can only be four explanations for this. Hackers, Manipulation ,( which would require enormous power, influence and wealth) , a pure albeit, eerie coincidence, or help from a being from another world or a deity. Take your pick. China responded by blocking the terms on the internet.

Whilst in Hong Kong I also met up with some economic think tanks as I am in the process of setting one up. Finally I spent some time with the HSBC Business school Assistant Professor Chris Balding. Originally he came to Hong Kong and then I went over to him in Shenzhen, China.

Those that read his blog will know that he wrote about meeting me. Why did I go over there? Well a few weeks ago I was alerted to some pieces he had written on his blog about our SWF’s Temasek Holdings and GIC. In fact my first response to Singaporeans who emailed me agitatedly was along the lines of, seriously? I’ve been speaking out about the lack of transparency in Temasek for three years specifically and calling for transparency and accountability in general since day one. In fact one of my first moves as leader of the Reform Party was to put the script,“ transparency plus accountability equals democracy” across the top of our website.
(skip)

Three months ago I wrote an article for Wired Online which was well received globally and quoted all over the world, popping up in articles from Yale professors to geek aggregators. The theme of that article was that the hi-tech island miracle we were promised back in the 80s had not materialised. No surprise to me. Totalitarianism and innovation cannot exist together.

In my role as leader of the RP I wrote a three-part response to the Budget – not reported anywhere because the Budget responses of non economists will always be so much more compelling . In particular I reported that the Budget was a model of opacity and that there were unexplained discrepancies. Part three has not yet been written because I am still awaiting the statistics that will allow me to write it.

Then along comes Chris Balding . So my first thought was that this guy had read about me in Wired (which brought me to international attention), seen this blog which is linked from Wired and seen my budget response. How could someone else be writing about discrepancies and Temasek when I was the only one in Singapore who had dared to bring it up. Let’s not even ask why the forum agitators and keyboard warriors stand to attention when one of the foreigners they spend the rest of their time deriding, points out some of what a son of the soil has been saying for three years.

To cut a long story short I met up with Chris and was convinced that he was indeed a bona fide academic and we had both independently, coming at it from different directions, reached the same conclusions, namely that there is something rotten in the state of Denmark. Maybe his final figures needed more work. But Chris has now gone into our SWFs in a depth that I would have loved to be able to do. More importantly he spends a lot of time in this particular subject, namely SWFs. Before meeting Chris I had believed that Norway was also secretive about its SWF and he showed me how in fact they are the poster boy for transparency. Chris had all the IMF figures and the accumulated surpluses were higher than the government ‘s own figures. He had done a lot of work and produced spread sheets which we pored over. It was an impressive amount of work and for me a pleasant weekend and some very fruitful meetings.

In the most simplistic laymen’s terms he has done with our SWFs what I did with the budget in part 1. He has taken the figures available added them up and found they don’t match.

There is one major difference between academics and politicians. If my ideas get out there and are picked up then I have done my job. For example, no one asked, “but what about productivity”, when presented with the GDP growth before I came along . Now they do. Academics live in a world of publish or perish. All those rankings you see of universities which manage to put NUS or NTU so high or laughably put LSE above Oxford and Cambridge are based on the number of papers published without regard to quality or originality.

Chris can and needs to publish. You need to read it. He is offered some protection from the State sponsored isolation and smear campaign that I am subjected to, by being an American citizen, but he has come up against the same wall I had namely lack of access to transparent figures and their explanation. I, as a Singaporean citizen with the credibility of my background, can ask our government for answers and try to achieve the missing figures we both need. It makes sense for us to work together on this as we have been doing now for the last couple of weeks.

Naturally all that anyone wants to know is, “So is there a huge loss and what does it mean?”

Well, I would like to finish crunching the figures and analyzing them first. That is if I can ever get all the figures. The key thing is that questions are being asked. It is necessary to ask them. I am not casting aspersion nor throwing out accusations. I just want some transparency about my money and yours. So far all I can conclude with some degree of certainty is :

1. 
   [*] Chris Balding’s scenario may be an extreme one but even a much more favourable one throws up several discrepancies and in particular why net assets and reported surpluses do not add up. The figures that I do have, show that net assets do not add up to the reported surpluses over the last 32 years even if compounding is already in there..
   
   [*]Government debt has been increasing rapidly with no explanation as to why the government is increasing borrowing. This is enough to worry me..
   
   [*]The valuation of unquoted assets in the balance sheet has tripled in the last eight years at a time when listed equity valuations have declined.​

I have therefore written to the MOF with some reasonable questions asking for clarification. At the same time I have been asking questions to try to ascertain whether our loan to IMF was fully constitutional. We need to know that protocol and procedures and indeed the law are being followed. Greece of course has rejected austerity plans and has benefitted all this time from all those iron bowl services you have never had.
Meanwhile let’s hope you haven’t gone without for nothing. To have given up so much freedom for prosperity is one thing but to have given it up for austerity is quite another.
What about the conspiracy theory? Today Chris Balding’s website containing his blog was suspended. He hasn’t found a satisfactory explanation. His service provider has informed him that his account was compromised and he has warned me that my emails to him will also have been affected. Meanwhile my open letters to MOF and the President and to the Press remain unanswered or even acknowledged. Eerie Coincidence? Or is the net that is used to isolate and silence me now tightening around Chris? You decide.
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Kenneth Jeyaretnam
*The author blogs at http://sonofadud.com/

 

[steffychun]

They should shut down Gopalan Nair's blog.