Moral Hazard

Daily classes from morning to the evening , limited parking lots annexed with blazing hot weather is an endurance test for every students at any point in time. Honestly, with this worrying attitude of procrastinating, entering classes early is a rare occasion for me. 

Well, this post is not mainly about grumbling on how typical college life would be. Perhaps it is on what I found when I was browsing through the news feeds on Times Mobile (It is what I normally do when I find the subjects in class particularly boring and unmanageable, pardon me for that). I stumbled upon a short article commenting on moral hazard.

The term moral hazard you will quite likely find it more often used in the financial world. Moral hazard is defined in the books as a situation where there is a tendency to take undue risks because the costs are not borne by the party taking the risk yada yada yadaaa. 

Don't get the idea? Let's put it in a simple way, just imagine a rich kid getting $50 bucks for his daily expenses. This kid wouldn't bother to save a tiny bit of the 50 bucks everyday coz he knows his parents will give more if he runs out of money. (Please enlighten me if there's a better example than this)

 

"I want my $50!"

Here's an extract from Times on JPMorgan Chase & Co and its CEO, Jamie Dimon ;

(For those who may not know, JPMorgan Chase is an American multinational banking corporation dealing largely in financial securities, investments and retail banking. If you want to know more you are welcomed to utilize the good function of Google.)

"....What if the loss had been larger? What if JPMorganChase were teetering on the brink of failure? Well, we would have to bail it out, of course. The financial system simply could not handle the collapse of one of its six largest institutionsof higher earning ; the economy would once again crash.

The term of art when a bank reaches the size where it is too big to fail is moral hazard. That means bankers will tend to act less responsibly if they know the government won't allow them to go under, if there are no real risks in risk...."

This article was referred to the loss this corporation made in the very sort of proprietary casino gambling that led to the financial crisis 2008. Okay, if the terms are getting too jargon, you may not bother more. 

What I'm trying to say is moral hazard is not an attitude we would only find within the confines of office spaces and men with black suits. We all have it too, and unknowingly, we could have done it in our everyday life ; being irresponsible.

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Never measure yourself by another people's yardsticks

- brotips #1520

Family first

- brotips #1429

Mentality + Confidence = Your future

- brotips #1431

Keeping these three tips in mind from now on.

Noise

3 or 4 years backs, I had my ears set only on a few genres of music, those times my taste were predominantly conquered by the likes of hujan, meet uncle hussain, the strokes and some others to name a few. Before those time? Don't ask.

I went along with time, and yes, time changed me. I slowly practised the principle of being a universal listener, slowly adjusted my ears to a wider range of music (except justin bieber's). It would never dawn on me that I can actually favoured post rock songs.

These are a few bands, I should say, worth listening to :

1. LCD Soundsystem

2. P.G Lost

3. The Rapture

4. The Evpatoria Report

5. Eksi Ekso

They are not comparable to the likes of snow patrol, coldplay or muse of course, but like I said, they are worth listening to.

Narcissism

Social network ruins the very foundation of human cohesiveness. Dorsey realise it, Zuckerberg too. What seems to be the good old days of going out mingling with our friends and their friends, are now at the tip of the keyboard.

Along came cyber ethics and morality where we forgot to question ourselves, that, how appropriate is it to flaunt ones' obscene pictures or simple yet, giving away scrutinizing details of ourselves to billions of internet users out there?

How about safety and security? How can we be sure that we are safe from the subtlest form of defamation threat imposed by the internet and its worldwide users? No one can be sure. At a click of a button, we could put someone's life into utter shame, or level them as the godlike figure equivalent to Obama himself.

Let's say, one of the norm nowadays where, teens posting videos on youtube, or pitures on facebook hoping to get the highest views or whatsoever. They believe high views pertain to their popularity in school where most cases have lead to defamation of others.

This is a society that puts no virtual barriers to internet freedom, and worse, without control in the wrong hands.

Ambiguity

The future is ambiguous. It is vague and uncertain, cruel to those unprepared.

Financial strategies and family planning are not topics somebody my age would love to talk about for 3 hours or more at the mamak. On the contrary, we do.

A sit down with these future CEOs taught me a lot. Terima kasih rakan - rakan.

So, for the next 10 years i have carefully drawn out my plan (Mind me if you think its bullshit)

Plan 1

Finish acca by the age of 21

Plan 2

Find a place in Pricewaterhousecoopers singapore

Plan 3

Work my way to Pricewaterhousecoopers london

Plan 4

After 4 - 5 years return home and apply for a post in Exxonmobil

Plan 5

Get married and get fat

The end

Legacy, digitally.

His brainchild becomes our inheritance. One of them is the advent of digital age.

"Somewhere within the first paragraph of Jobs' legendary accomplishments should be his ability to get major record label executives to agree on terms for selling their music digitally. Jobs knew that 99 cents was the ideal price point for mp3s, and he worked his way into their good graces with three strategies, according to Knopper. First: charm and steely-eyed determination. Second: Apple's relatively small market share compared to Windows made the labels believe the platform could work as a test market. Third, of course, was the tens of millions of dollars Apple was promising to dump into marketing. Labels were going to be able, Jobs promised, to ride the lengthy coattails of Apple's revolutionary new gadget back to a promised land of profits. This is Jobs' true genius, compressed: irresistible persuasion disguised by a cult-creating approach to aesthetics."

- Pitchfork (Oct 6th, 2011)

Rest In Peace,

Steven Paul Jobs

(February 24, 1955 - October 5, 2011)

Untamed

Two years ago, Gallup did an analysis of what made a country grow. They decided it is talent. They noted that in the 1980s, economists projected that Japan and Germany would overtake America. They did not. The reason? America was attracting talent from all over the world. So whether China will be the most powerful nation will depend on whether it can attract foreign talent and retain its own talent.

We must attract and retain talent. Talent does not mean only bright academics. Talent includes football stars, tennis stars, singers, rock stars, whatever. Then we have vibrancy. A country grows by building one city at a time. A city grows by building one sector at a time. They analysed four categories of talent : innovators, entrepeneurs, mentors, super-mentors. Americans beat the others because the Americans have all four types. They have developed a culture that brings in the talented.

- Lee Kuan Yew