Sunday, May 2, 2010

Shanghai World Expo throws open doors

Shanghai World Expo throws open doors

Visitors queue to enter the India Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo site in Shanghai May 1, 2010

May 1, 2010 (AFP) - Hundreds of thousands of people flooded into Shanghai’s World Expo Saturday at the start of a six-month showcase of culture and technology seen as the latest sign of China’s growing economic might.

Organisers have said all 500,000 tickets are sold out for opening day at the massive Expo park along the Huangpu river, where visitors will wander through the exhibits of 189 nations, as well as dozens of companies and organisations.

"Everything is very colourful," Cui Yan, a 23-year-old Chinese university student, said outside the Mexican pavilion. "The architecture is amazing."

"There are so many highlights — I’m worried I can’t see all of them on this trip," said Cui, who travelled from Ningbo, in neighbouring Zhejiang province, to be one of the first to catch a glimpse of the Expo pavilions.
A sea of people waited to visit China’s red inverted pyramid — the centrepiece of Expo park — with 50,000 tickets handed out within five minutes of the park opening.

Queues were long at all pavilions but by 4:30 pm about 200,000 people had entered the park — less than half the number of tickets sold.

Eager visitors used umbrellas to shield themselves from the blistering sun as they waited patiently, the long queues doing nothing to dampen their enthusiasm.

"I want to see the Canada pavilion first. So many of my relatives have emigrated to Canada and I want to get an idea of what kind of life they’re living," retiree Huang Huifang, 58, said as she ran towards the building.
Shanghai kicked off the Expo on Friday night with a star-studded music and fireworks extravaganza, signalling it would be bigger and brighter than the more low-key World’s Fairs in recent years.

Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, Hong Kong action film star Jackie Chan and Chinese pianist Lang Lang performed for thousands of guests including Chinese President Hu Jintao and about 20 other world leaders.

A record number of countries are participating in the event, which is expected to attract at least 70 million visitors — the vast majority of them Chinese, many of whom have never travelled outside the country.

Li Huahe, a 47-year-old telecoms company employee from Urumqi in far-western Xinjiang, said he bought his ticket months ago but could only stay a few hours before heading home.

"I woke up at 5:00 am and I have a 2:00 pm flight. I’m worried about the crowds. I want to see at least one pavilion today," Li said outside the Swiss pavilion, which boasts a chairlift that soars over a three-storey-high meadow.

Nations with an eye on China’s consumer market of 1.3 billion people are pulling out all the stops to attract the attention of Expo visitors.

"I really hope people will discover the attitude of the Netherlands. We want to have friendly relations with China," Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende told AFP as he surveyed the grounds from the top of the "Happy Street" pavilion, which aims to capture the feel and creativity of Amsterdam.

Denmark has made a splash by bringing its "Little Mermaid" statue out of Copenhagen for the first time, France has Impressionist paintings and India is bringing in a cast of Bollywood stars.

Li Kai, seven, was stunned when he was told the statue was real.
"It’s shocking. I thought it was fake. We should treat her well because she travelled so far," said Li.
The hamburger and ice cream cone debuted at past Expos and food is once again playing a major role in attracting Chinese visitors to pavilions.

Belgium was promoting fries with mayonnaise, Australia was serving meat pies and France featured champagne tasting.

"This is the first time I’ve eaten foreign specialty food, I will try more," visitor Yang Wei said, sampling Uruguayan barbecued beef.

In Shanghai, the spotlight will be on the cutting-edge design of the national pavilions, all embracing the theme of "Better City, Better Life".

Highlights include Britain’s stunning dandelion-like "Seed Cathedral", Spain’s "Big Basket" made of 8,500 wicker panels, and Switzerland’s pastoral pavilion.

Du Yuping, a 52-year-old steel company employee from Shanghai, came prepared for the queues with a folding stool.

He said he came to Expo park last week on a trial opening day and ended up waiting up to three hours to see one pavilion, but was pleased to see that operations were running more smoothly on Saturday.

"I want to visit Expo at least six times," Du said, sitting on his chair in the queue outside the Norwegian pavilion.

"I’m focusing on European pavilions today."

By D’Arcy Doran, AFP

Expo extreme

China, in its neverending chase after superlatives in all spheres, is offering the world the biggest fair we’ve ever seen.

IT is the biggest and most expensive party to which you have ever been invited, and almost certainly the oddest – with buildings shaped like rabbits and apples, Copenhagen’s famous Little Mermaid on show, and violin-playing robots to serenade you.

With Shanghai’s 2010 World Expo opened yesterday and set to continue until October, the city will welcome an estimated 70 million visitors to the US$4bil (RM12.88bil) six-month event, as hyped in China and Asia as it is mostly unknown in Europe and most of the West.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has described it as the fulfilment of a 100-year-old dream.

Some speculate that the Expo could have an effect at the highest levels of the communist power structure, with a triumph benefiting the so-called “Shanghai Faction”, the group of high-level cadres allied to former president Jiang Zemin.

Each of the tiny flexible rods that cover the ‘Seed Cathedral’ holds an actual seed to represent the diversity of nature and potential of life. Almost 4,000 people created a near riot rushing to be photographed in front of Britain’s amazing pavilion during a trial opening of Shanghai’s World Expo last month. – AP

Others say China will take this opportunity to improve fractured foreign ties. The country’s relations with the outside world have been strained of late, with issues like the value of the yuan, a fight over censorship with Internet browser giant Google and the trial of four executives of mining company Rio Tinto for bribery and commercial espionage casting a pall over the country’s efforts to present itself as a respected international player.

But for Shanghai itself, China’s only truly global city, it is time to celebrate and put the politics aside for a while.

She surely does so gladly: After Mao Tse-tung came to power in 1949, Beijing’s hardline party bosses never trusted the Shanghainese, correctly judging them to be more interested in money than Marxism. Purged of its banks and international trading houses, Shanghai was kept on a tight leash and fell into an icy hibernation for decades. Now, the city’s 20 million inhabitants are firmly back in favour.

And the city itself has had a makeover that has cost an estimated US$45bil (RM144.9bil) – more than Beijing’s pre-Olympics transformation.

In a matter of weeks the city unveiled three subway lines – Shanghai didn’t have a metro system 15 years ago and now has the world’s biggest underground train system. It also opened a new airline terminal and revamped its waterfront. The facelift for the latter, the historic Bund, alone cost US$700mil (RM2.254bil).

Even by China’s frenetic pace of construction, the speed has been incredible – Pan Haixiao, an urban planning expert at China’s Tongji University, estimates that without the event the changes would have taken three times as long.

Perhaps this expo of superlatives will resuscitate the once-grand tradition of international gatherings that began with London’s Great Exhibition in 1851, gave Paris the Eiffel Tower and drew tens of millions of Americans to the landmark world’s fairs.

A close-up of the delicate, lace-like exterior of the Polish pavilion that is inspired by traditional paper-cutting. – AP

“They were the entertainment event of the year wherever they took place,” says Prof John Findling, author of the Encyclopedia of World’s Fairs and Expos, who suggests they had the kind of impact the Olympics do today. In their heyday, he points out, they were not competing with television, theme parks or the Internet.

“Visitors were anxious to see people from exotic places, the latest in science, invention and fine art, and to enjoy themselves.... There was nothing else in the way of amusement that was like it,” he says.

These days, few can recall recent hosts – such 2005’s Aichi in Japan – and the events have less razzmatazz and a more earnest tone. Their purpose “is to allow a global dialogue on important issues facing the international community,” says Vicente Gonzalez Loscertales, secretary general of the Bureau International des Expositions – the world’s fair equivalent of the International Olympic Committee.

But few outsiders believe that the opportunity to discuss urbanisation – this year’s theme is “Better City, Better Life” – is why 192 participating countries are laying out jaw-dropping sums to appear in Shanghai’s expo. Instead, they point to the thousands of companies hoping to cut lucrative deals and find new customers.

“It’s the 21st century equivalent to the old tribute to the emperor – we’ve all always had to pay to play in China, but wind-up clocks and oompah bands are old hat so now we have to build pavilions, sponsor things, cut cheques to official charities,” argues Paul French of the Shanghai-based consultancy, Access Asia.

There is certainly excitement among many Shanghai residents: 200,000 people attended a trial run early last week and even on cold, drizzling weekdays this past week, inhabitants have been gathering to peer through the 3m-high fence towards the distant Chinese pavilion.

“We have waited 150 years for the chance to hold the expo in our country. Now we have succeeded in two big events: the Olympics and this,” says 77-year-old Wang Xinghua. “I feel even happier when people from other countries come to visit – it represents China standing up in the world.”

Nearby, Song Mi, 47, is expecting officials to clear away her sugarcane cart in case it gives visitors a bad impression – and probably rightly, she thinks.

“I’ve been counting down the days until the expo opens. I want to see everything,” she says. “It’s the biggest thing that’s happened in my lifetime.” – Agencies

By TANIA BRANIGAN

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Eventful fairs of yore

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Saturday, May 1, 2010

World joins China in celebrating Shanghai World Expo opening

Lighting show, fireworks staged for Expo opening ceremony in Shanghai

Spectacular fireworks explode over the Huangpu River during the opening ceremony for the 2010 World Expo held in Shanghai, east China, April 30, 2010. (Xinhua/Zhang Ming)

BEIJING, April 30 (Xinhua) -- With fireworks lighting up the night's sky and electrifying the city, the six-month 2010 Shanghai World Expo opened Friday night to music and dances in a 90-minute inauguration ceremony.

It was destined to be a moment crowded with glamour and splendor when China's metropolis of Shanghai was chosen to host the 41st World Expo almost eight years ago.

A total of 189 countries and 57 international organizations are participating in the event, the biggest number in the history of the exhibition.

Some 20 world leaders were present at the opening ceremony, including Chinese President Hu Jintao, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and South Korean President Lee Myung Bak.

Addressing the ceremony, the International Exhibitions Bureau (BIE) President Jean-Pierre Lafon said "Better City, Better Life", the chosen theme of the exhibition, must drive people to improve the quality of life for the citizens of both developing and developed countries as the majority of the world's population now lives in cities.

He hoped the Shanghai Expo would contribute to a social awakening so cities might become more sustainable, safer and more harmonious, adding that he wished the event a success.

Following Hu's official opening of the eagerly anticipated event, performances by China's famous pianist Lang lang, Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli and many other Chinese and international celebrities embraced the warmth of the audience present and those watching on TV around the world.

A boy and a girl orphaned in an earthquake that shook Yushu county in China's northwest Qinghai Province two weeks ago also featured, wearing traditional Tibetan costumes, when the indoor show came to close in the Expo cultural center on the eastern bank of the Huangpu River.

The ceremony launched a half-year opportunity for all participating nations and institutions to show their best to the world.

The fairy tale nation of Denmark brought the "Little Mermaid" statue out of the country for the first time.
Poland's presentation will focus on the economy and tries to show its image as a modern country, member of the European Union with good prospects of economic development, according to the Polska Times.

France, whose president is the first among the world leaders to come to China for the World Expo, has decorated its pavilion with famous impressionist paintings and Rodin sculptures.

French television BFM and iTele live broadcast the opening ceremony.

BFM's reporter at the scene called the event another festival following the Beijing Olympic Games, as the active participation of countries across the world made it global.

Fireworks and lighting show

http://english.cntv.cn/program/newshour/20100430/104833.shtml

Labour pain and power shortage

Penang's high-technology dreams hit by double whammy

THE evolution of the technology sector into a veritable hub that supports a variety of high-technology industries has hit a snag, prompting both the federal and state governments to race against time to clear the obstacle.

Known as the “Silicon Valley” owing to the establishment of US-based semiconductors companies such as Intel, AMD, and Fairchild Semconductor in the 1970s, Penang’s technological hub is now facing a shortage of workers and recurring power disruptions.

Having evolved from its semiconductor mould in the 1990s, the Silicon Valley has branched out to provide support for other technology industries in the light-emitting diodes, medical devices, aerospace, automation, and test and measurement devices sectors.

In an interview, Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng says that besides the scarcity of land, human resource is another constraint for Penang, as newly-promoted sectors - such as shared services and business processed outsourcing (BPO) activities — require large numbers of skilled workers such as engineers, scientists and accountants.

“Penang cannot produce sufficient numbers to cater to these requirements. We need to train and retrain new and existing human resources as well as attract new talents,” says Lim.

Last September, Lim said the state was unable to supply 1,000 engineers which had resulted in Penang losing some US$3bil in investments.

Penang Free Industrial Zone Companies’ Association president Horst Rosenmueller says about five years ago, the investments that poured into the state became more involved in product development and designing, and complex manufacturing activities.

“This led to a greater demand for higher skilled workers and more operators. At both levels, we are experiencing a severe shortage of employees, which poses a challenge to expansion and potential investments, should the problem persists,” he says.

Penang Foundry & Engineering Industries Association president Datuk Ng Chai Eng says the Federal Government lacks an understanding on the needs of the electronics sector.

“That is why the engineers that the education system is producing do not meet the needs of the industry. There are many local technicians and engineers today who can’t handle new range of computer numerical control (CNC) machines with more than five axes,” he says.

(A five-axis CNC machine refers to the ability of the machine to move a part or tool on five different axes simultaneously.)

The Penang’s ‘Silicon Valley’.

Regular disruption

The problem is not to be taken lightly. Driving home this point is Pentamaster Corp Bhd executive chairman C.B. Chuah who recently said that the lack of skilled engineers would eventually sound the death knell of the automated equipment manufacturing industry in Penang.

“China will overtake us in the automated equipment segment in two to three years because it has better engineers who can produce innovative equipment that are cost-effective to manufacture,” he says.

Last April, Institute of Engineers Malaysia president Professor Datuk Chuah Hean Teik had noted that Malaysia was facing a shortage of engineers, which would impede the country’s development.

He says there is a need to train more engineers before the situation becomes critical, adding that the country will need about 200,000 engineers by 2020. “Currently, there are only 60,000 engineers in the country. We should plan ahead and not wait until there is an acute shortage.”

Besides the labour-shortage problem, there is also the recurrence of regular power disruption in Penang’s technology hub.

Rosenmueller says many of the companies here experience power disruption at least once a month.

“The power disruption may not be long in duration, but it delays the production process and increases wastage, as the machine and the production line have to be re-started,” he says, adding that Penang will lose out in foreign direct investments from Japan if the manpower shortage faced by the manufacturing sector prolongs and energy supply disruptions by Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB) are not resolved.

Due to the global recession, the State Government had a total of only 104 projects with investments totalling RM2.17bil last year, RM1.45bil of which came from overseas. In 2008, total investments brought in RM10.2bil.

“From the 104 projects, 61 were new projects totalling RM1.37bil while 43 were expansion or diversification investments with RM796.9mil.

“The projects approved were expected to create potential employment for 8,696 people,” he says.

Despite the labour shortage, the state’s electronics and electrical sector recorded the highest investment approved in 2009 with RM608.29mil for 30 projects.

The chemical products and test and measurement equipment industries registered the second and third highest with RM445.40mil and RM303.52mil respectively. The state’s gross domestic product has grown from approximately RM1.3bil in 1970 to RM21bil to date. This increase is largely due to the expanding manufacturing sector that now accounts for 39% of Penang’s economy, with the services sector contributing 57%.

Penang has now 1,427 companies, of which 227 are multi-national corporations employing 202,000 workers, where 50% of them are in the electrical and electronics industry. Penang contributes nearly 25% to Malaysia’s imports and exports both in value and volume.

Seeking a solution

To tackle the skills-shortage woes, the recently-formed Penang Skills Development Centre (PSDC) has asked for RM55mil funds under the 10th Malaysian Plan to establish a programme for diploma and degree holders to acquire the hard and soft skills in engineering in the shortest time possible via a finishing school concept.

PSDC chief executive officer Datuk Boonler Somchit says engineers need to be trained for one to two years to become productive.

“This means the companies that provide such training to the fresh graduates during this period will lose productive work. There is a need to formalise a system for graduates to acquire fast-tracked training and experience in six to eight months,” he says.

“The PSC will provide children mentoring on how to make scientific and technological ideas commercially viable,” Lim says, adding that the state has also set aside a 200-acre land in Balik Pulau for an education hub to woo investments from the private sector to build schools to produce the next generation of knowledge labour.

“We believe we can turn Penang into a showcase for silicon and software valley of Malaysia eventually becoming both a sweat-shop of the manufacturing industry and a smart-shop of the services industry,” he says.

On the problem of regular power disruptions, Lim says he will seek a meeting between all parties, including the top management of TNB.

New direction

Due to scarcity of land, the State Government is also keen to attract high-end technology businesses involved in research and development which require relatively smaller land space or built-up space. However, these companies need to meet the requirement of providing world-class services, adhere to international safety standards and have exposure to a wide market.

BPO fits well into this. It is noteworthy that last year, hard-disk maker Seagate, test and measurement devices manufacturer National Instruments, and broadband communications and storage semiconductors provider PMC-Sierra Inc established their BPO and intellectual property headquarters at the RM100mil SunTech Tower in Bayan Lepas.

A report last year entitled “Exploring Global Frontiers” by KPMG pointed out that Penang was among the 31 sites in the world that could become alternative BPO centres to established Indian cities. The credit crisis had resulted in a new rush for outsourcing services and a number of new locations were emerging as viable BPO hubs, according to the report.

Penang’s strength as a BPO hub has attracted MNCs such as Intel, Dell, Motorola, Citicorp and IBM to set up such centres in Penang.

Besides BPO companies, the State Government’s aim to bring in high-value activities has led to internationally-known companies such as National Instruments (NI), Rubicon Inc, B. Braun, and Symmetry Medical to set up or expand their research and development activities.

NI (Penang) managing director Rajesh Purushothaman says it will develop its products from concept to be released in Penang, which include the hardware, software and firmware. “This is very similar to what we do in our research and development centre in Austin, US.”

Illinois-based Rubicon Technology Inc is setting up a state-of-the-art LED operation in the Prai Industrial Estate to perform a high-end manufacturing process known as post-crystal growth processing.

B. Braun is also investing about RM500mil to expand its research and development and manufacturing facilities at its plant in Bayan Lepas to undertake R&D activities in nano technology, information technology and digitalisation to improve its medical products such as needles.

Meanwhile, US-based Symmetry Medical Inc, the world’s largest orthopaedic product outsourcing firm, also plans to invest RM30mil over the next two years for the design and development of medical devices for the endoscopy industry.

By DAVID TAN
davidtan@thestar.com.my

EC president: Greece bailout will stop spillover

Barroso says China remains confident in the euro

BEIJING: A multi-billion-euro aid package for Greece will be hammered out within days and the bailout will prevent the crisis from spilling over to other countries, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said yesterday.

Speaking to reporters in Beijing, Barroso said he had discussed Greece’s troubles in meetings with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and that China remained confident in the euro even as sovereign debt worries ripple across Europe.

“I don’t think that China is lacking confidence in the European Union (EU) or the euro, on the contrary,” he said.

He also said Chinese leaders “never mentioned” any possible aid for Athens. Reports that Greece would sell bonds to China spurred market optimism earlier this year, but the Greek government subsequently denied there was any deal in place.

Visitors look at an art work featuring a projection of a Chinese renminbi note with a talking Mao Zedong at a gallery in Beijing. The Chinese currency has steadily appreciated against the euro since the end of last year.— AP

International Monetary Fund (IMF), European Union (EU) and European Central Bank officials are in Athens to negotiate the bailout and hope to wrap up a deal within days in an effort to avoid a debt default in Greece that could sink other fragile EU countries.

Barroso said they were “making solid, rapid progress” in drawing up the rescue package, reiterating that debt restructuring was not on option for Greece.

He also said the aid deal “will prevent further possible effects” of the crisis from spreading within the EU.
German politicians have said the aid package could be worth 100 billion-120 billion euros over three years, against an original plan for 45 billion euros of aid in 2010.

Greece has readied severe austerity measures demanded as a condition for the aid, providing relief to financial markets but drawing threats from unions of a mighty battle to come.

Union officials said the IMF asked Athens to raise sales taxes, scrap bonuses amounting to two extra months pay in the public sector, and accept a three-year pay freeze.

Greece’s debt woes served as a reminder of the need to address economic imbalances both inside and beyond Europe, Barroso said.

In the past, EU leaders have pointed their fingers at an undervalued yuan as a source of global imbalances, fuelling China’s massive trade surplus with Europe. But Barroso had a softer tone in public, at least after his latest round of meetings in Beijing.

“We are not putting pressure on anybody,” he said.

He added that it was natural that “the main global players discuss these issues of global imbalances, because we need to have a common approach, we need to restore growth globally.”

China had “clearly understood” EU’s message on currencies, Barroso said.

Beijing has effectively pegged the yuan at about 6.83 to the dollar since mid-2008, trying to cushion its exporters from the global economic downturn.

Tracking the dollar’s movements, the Chinese currency has steadily appreciated against the euro since the end of last year. — Reuters

Why Greece Will Default?

CAMBRIDGE – Greece will default on its national debt. That default will be due in large part to its membership in the European Monetary Union. If it were not part of the euro system, Greece might not have gotten into its current predicament and, even if it had gotten into its current predicament, it could have avoided the need to default.

Greece’s default on its national debt need not mean an explicit refusal to make principal and interest payments when they come due. More likely would be an IMF-organized restructuring of the existing debt, swapping new bonds with lower principal and interest for existing bonds.

Or it could be a “soft default” in which Greece unilaterally services its existing debt with new debt rather than paying in cash. But, whatever form the default takes, the current owners of Greek debt will get less than the full amount that they are now owed.

The only way that Greece could avoid a default would be by cutting its future annual budget deficits to a level that foreign and domestic investors would be willing to finance on a voluntary basis. At a minimum, that would mean reducing the deficit to a level that stops the rise in the debt-to-GDP ratio.

To achieve that, the current deficit of 14% of GDP would have to fall to 5% of GDP or less. But to bring the debt-to-GDP ratio to the 60% level prescribed by the Maastricht Treaty would require reducing the annual budget deficit to just 3% of GDP – the goal that the eurozone’s finance ministers have said that Greece must achieve by 2012.

Reducing the budget deficit by 10% of GDP would mean an enormous cut in government spending or a dramatic rise in tax revenue – or, more likely, both. Quite apart from the political difficulty of achieving this would be the very serious adverse effect on aggregate domestic demand, and therefore on production and employment. Greece’s unemployment rate already is 10%, and its GDP is already expected to fall at an annual rate of more than 4%, pushing joblessness even higher.

Depressing economic activity further through higher taxes and reduced government spending would cause offsetting reductions in tax revenue and offsetting increases in transfer payments to the unemployed. So every planned euro of deficit reduction delivers less than a euro of actual deficit reduction. That means that planned tax increases and cuts in basic government spending would have to be even larger than 10% of GDP in order to achieve a 3%-of-GDP budget deficit.

There simply is no way around the arithmetic implied by the scale of deficit reduction and the accompanying economic decline: Greece’s default on its debt is inevitable.

Greece might have been able to avoid that outcome if it were not in the eurozone. If Greece still had its own currency, the authorities could devalue it while tightening fiscal policy. A devalued currency would increase exports and would cause Greek households and firms to substitute domestic products for imported goods. The increased demand for Greek goods and services would raise Greece’s GDP, increasing tax revenue and reducing transfer payments. In short, fiscal consolidation would be both easier and less painful if Greece had its own monetary policy.

Greece’s membership in the eurozone was also a principal cause of its current large budget deficit. Because Greece has not had its own currency for more than a decade, there has been no market signal to warn Greece that its debt was growing unacceptably large.

If Greece had remained outside the eurozone and retained the drachma, the large increased supply of Greek bonds would cause the drachma to decline and the interest rate on the bonds to rise. But, because Greek euro bonds were regarded as a close substitute for other countries’ euro bonds, the interest rate on Greek bonds did not rise as Greece increased its borrowing – until the market began to fear a possible default.

The substantial surge in the interest rate on Greek bonds relative to German bonds in the past few weeks shows that the market now regards such a default as increasingly likely. The combination of credits from the other eurozone countries and lending by the IMF may provide enough liquidity to stave off default for a while. In exchange for this liquidity support, Greece will be forced to accept painful fiscal tightening and falling GDP.

In the end, Greece, the eurozone’s other members, and Greece’s creditors will have to accept that the country is insolvent and cannot service its existing debt. At that point, Greece will default.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.
www.project-syndicate.org , Martin Feldstein Copyright: Project Syndicate

The Greatest Show on Earth

Open Hearings in US reveal the degree of greed and fraud on Wall Street
Investment banks such as Goldman Sachs were self-interested promoters of risky and complicated financial schemes that helped trigger the crisis, said senator Carl Levin

Ladies and gentlemen,

Allow me to present the Greatest Show on Earth or How Wall Street brought the Financial Crisis on Itself. There is a cast of thousands, from the most famous to the most guilty. Never have so few made so much money from so many.

See how god’s bankers say: “Of course we didn’t dodge the mortgage mess. We lost money, then made more than we lost because of shorts.” Of course they are god’s bankers – they make money on the way up and make money on the way down.

See how the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) and the US Senate Subcommittee Investigating Financial Crisis summon almost every week the stars from Wall Street to show how they did it.

The Senate subcommittee chairman, Democratic Senator Carl Levin, said: “Investment banks such as Goldman Sachs were not simply market-makers, they were self-interested promoters of risky and complicated financial schemes that helped trigger the crisis.

“They bundled toxic mortgages into complex financial instruments, got the credit rating agencies to label them as AAA securities, and sold them to investors, magnifying and spreading risk throughout the financial system, and all too often betting against the instruments they sold and profiting at the expense of their clients.”

Senator Carl Levin holds up paperwork while questioning a Goldman Sachs official. — Reuters

Goldman Sachs’ 2009 annual report stated that the firm “did not generate enormous net revenues by betting against residential-related products.” Levin said: “These emails show that, in fact, Goldman made a lot of money by betting against the mortgage market.”

We must admire the United States for its high level of transparency and its willingness to go after the big guns. What these open hearings reveal is the degree of greed and fraud that Wall Street has perpetrated against the whole world in its pursuit of ever-growing profits.

Investors used to listen to these gods pontificate on the trend of the market and now realise that with proprietary trading, these gods are talking one book and trading also the other way. So if you believed them and bought the market up, they were probably selling the market down. This is known as “risk hedging”, but guess who pays when the market crashes?

The taxpayer bails the investment banks out and they are still laughing all the way to their golden bonuses.
April is the cruelest month, especially for Wall Street.

On April 7, the FCIC looked into the securitisation mess, beginning with the testimony of former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. On April 13, the Senate subcommittee started the first of four major enquiries, which “examined how US financial institutions turned to high-risk lending strategies to earn quick profits, dumping hundreds of billions of dollars in toxic mortgages into the financial system, like polluters dumping poison upstream in a river.”

Coincidentally, on the same day, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Goldman Sachs of fraud.

In the second hearing on April 16 on the role of the regulators, the subcommittee “showed how regulators saw what was going on, understood the risk, but sat on their hands or fought each other rather than stand up to the banks profiting from the pollution. Those toxic mortgages were scooped up by Wall Street firms that bottled them in complex financial instruments, and turned to the credit rating agencies to get a label declaring them to be safe, low-risk, investment grade securities.”

The third hearing on April 23 looked at the role of the credit rating agencies and the fourth hearing on April 27 considered the role of the investment bankers.

On hindsight, it was remarkable that the Wall Street bankers, who always had a good grip on what was happening in Washington, had clearly underestimated the public anger against them and their vulnerability.

The session on the credit rating agencies was most illuminating. There are three major rating agencies in the world that do most of the global credit rating business – Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch. Most investors rely on the credit rating agencies to assess the quality of their investments, particularly bonds.

With the arrival of Basel bank supervision rules in the 1980s, bank regulators also use credit ratings to assess whether the capital-risk weights are appropriate. Thus, if a bank were to hold junk bonds, then the capital requirements would be higher. Of course, pension and money market funds use the credit ratings to distinguish between safe and risky investments.

The result is that having a AAA credit rating was very helpful to borrowing at cheap rates, whereas a downgrade would not only increase the cost of funds, but also cut off liquidity as investors dump the securities and refuse to hold such downgraded debt.

In the last 10 years, the three biggest credit rating agencies gave AAA ratings to the residential mortgage backed securities, or RMBS, and collateralised debt obligations, or CDOs that fuelled the derivative market bubble. Between 2002 and 2007, these agencies doubled their revenues, from less than US$3bil to over US$6bil per year. Between 2000 and 2006, investment banks underwrote nearly US$2 trillion in mortgage-backed securities, US$435bil or 36% of which were backed by subprime mortgages.

At the heart of the problem is the inherent conflict of interest of the credit rating agencies, because they charged fees for a “public good service”. The Senate subcommittee called this “like one of the parties in court paying the judge’s salary, or one of the teams in a competition paying the salary of the referee.”

The investors thought that they were buying super-safe securities rated AAA. But in reality, 91% of the AAA subprime RMBS issued in 2007, and 93% of those issued in 2006, have since been downgraded to junk status. It was the collapse of confidence in the ratings, which led to the withdrawal of liquidity in the market that triggered the meltdown in 2008.

This is only the beginning of the dirt that is coming out of Wall Street. The show will continue.

THINK ASIAN
By ANDREW SHENG

● Datuk Seri Panglima Andrew Sheng is adjunct professor at Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, and Tsinghua University, Beijing. He has served in key positions at Bank Negara, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, and is currently a member of Malaysia’s National Economic Advisory Council. He is the author of the book From Asian to Global Financial Crisis.