Investment Losses

Any of us who have delved into investments would likely have made losses at some point in time. I have certainly made substantial losses in my personal investments, running into 5 digits (small change to some, but not inconsequential to yours truly).

Having made losses, we ought then to take heart and learn from the mistakes but very often, we go into a denial mode, unwilling to admit that we had made huge errors of judgment, but instead, justify to ourselves that, just because we had made some very good investments in the past and present, that means, hey, we are totally immune from making any stupid mistakes now and in the future, and well, the present loss is just a paper loss.

Well, the auditors (not even those creative types) would certainly call a spade a spade. Were it not so, the world's biggest banks and institutions could have basked in their past glories, instead of "going on their knees" to beg for government bailouts.

$50 billion is surely not a small sum. It is enough to build 10 integrated resorts, or 10 MRT lines - Singapore's first MRT line (the East-West line) costs just $5 billion. The CIA World FactBook estimates Singapore's GDP at $193 billion in 2008. So, $50 billion is roughly equivalent to the total value of all final goods and services produced by the entire nation over a period of 3 months. And that's a lot of blood, sweat and tears.

Many Americans are familiar with jokes advising them not to trust their politicians and lawyers. I just googled and readily found this one:

A quote attributed to one of America's founders, John Adams (the 2nd President of USA), in the play 1776: "I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace, two men are called a law firm, and three or more become a Congress."

And that was 200 years ago when Americans were supposedly more God-fearing, honest and upright.

Well, now the world should learn never to trust American bankers and their genius accountants, who readily cook their books and manage to hide super-huge losses right under the supposedly sharp noses of shrewd, hard-nosed and discerning sovereign investors, as well as "independent" auditors not worth the fat fees they charge, not to mention the "independent financial advisers" engaged to conduct due diligence prior to pumping huge dollars into these "troubled assets" (trust the Americans, or rather George Walker Bush & team, to come up with such cock-and-bull euphemisms).

As one mayoress of a small Norwegian town which lost millions of their town council funds investing in CDOs and structured deposits, ruefully said, "Never trust a man in Armani suits coming to sell you super-duper too-good-to-be-true investment products", or something to that effect (from the 'House of Cards' TV show produced by CNBC; catch the preview at http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1024219334). Because of these losses, the town have had to close down a few schools and old folks' homes, and retrench a few firemen.

As Ron Weasley in those Harry Potter books would say, "Bloody Hell!" to the Americans and their unbridled greed!