Had Mr. Newton be living in our exciting era, he would still have discovered gravity... But of course, given the hectic pace of the 21st century, and given that there probably wouldn't been so many apple trees these days for the apples to fall onto his head, he would have discovered gravity the 21st century way...
On today's ST headlines:
"Oh, What a Week
- Global markets lose US$6 trillion in panic selling,
- Governments pump in at least US$6 trillion to little effect."Newton would also have figured out very easily that whatever that goes up, will come down eventually...
And it was in my studies of A-level physics, too, that there's such a concept called "conservation of energy"... Put simply, there's a finite amount of energy going all around, and energy is just being transferred from one form to another...
And this concept was similarly learnt when I did my Accountancy course in NTU... That was the time of the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, and it was at that time that I realised the world economy is but a "zero-sum game"... The amount of money is finite... What this means is that when someone is making obscene amount of profits, some losers out there are bleeding in their banks...
For all those who are studying Economics or any financial management courses right now, this is an excellent opportunity to see for yourselves what your books have been trying to tell you... Our financial markets are, in a nutshell, trading on perceived values and perceived networth... What's valuable and worth something today, can be whitewashed overnight... Once the market confidence is lost, values depreciate...
And that's the reason why I didn't believe in such a system, and that's the reason why I had to get out of that kind of system... A system driven by a pure pursuit on the concept of money...
But having said that, I do accept, and admit that I'm quite impressed with this entire concept of economics... A man-made creation, invented out of necessity... A necessity as a result of human-nature... If some alien colonies were to study our human civilisation, I'm sure they'd be impressed how the human-race rise and fall together with their stock markets...
Oh, and btw, Singapore is officially in a technical recession as declared by MTI yesterday... it seems each round of economic crises or recession is taking a shorter turnaround time to repeat itself...
And interestingly, a few other noteworthy pieces of news these last couple of weeks laid the ground for what's probably to come in the near future...
1) Electricity price is going up... amidst prices of oil falling... (Newton would be confused too)
2) AIG executives were spending US$400,000 at a spa resort, amidst the US taxpayers pumping in US$85 billion of rescue package into the company.
3) Starbucks was found to leave their water taps running continuously, as a company policy to prevent bacteria from accumulating in the water pipes, so that coffee-drinkers like you and me would be drinking cleaner coffee... How considerate of them... so now we know who is paying for the millions of dollars worth of water bills each year... (and did someone say something about the zero-sum game?)
4) Lehman Brothers CEO was interrogated after the collapse of the bank and was asked if he felt was fair that top executives in his bank were paid gross amount of bonuses a few days before they filed for bankruptcy... Well, he explained and clarified of course... cos' everything in business is justifiable... his system is in place and his system is working, he claims... But the bank collapsed anyway...
Oh... really... what a week!
