BWS Capital Partners, LLC

Giants of Asia: A Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew

By Thomas Plate

Reviewed by Alec Salemon

Get your LKY IQ up.

That’s what I’d say for those who are lucky enough to get their hands on this first installment of the “Giants of Asia” series. In this first issue, Prof Tom, rings true to his journalism vein and goes above and beyond to bring the conversation to the reader’s living room.

I have never met Dr. Lee Kuan Yew (LKY). Nor have the majority of the readers of the book. Prof Tom, however, made me feel like I was the invisible audience, the proverbial fly-on-the-wall, during the conversation between him and LKY. The book is as close as it gets for readers to get the uncluttered and unfiltered look at the life, the experiences of LKY, in other words, the human that is LKY.

More often than not, LKY’s reputation (and successes) has clouded the human side of his life. As great as his achievement as a statesman in building a nation from the ground up, previous books fail to successfully journal the person without dry academic descriptions or confusing political jargon.

As someone who grew up in Indonesia, I thought that LKY’s effects and contributions were amply felt throughout the region. The author offers plenty of insights even to an insider such as myself. LKY’s friendship with Suharto and his continuing support throughout Indonesia’s transition during the economic crisis in the late 90’s were a constant reminder to the importance of Singapore and ultimately, who LKY is, to the stability of the South East Asia Region.

This book is different. It is lively, descriptive and…doesn’t feel like a book. Reading it feels more like attending a storytelling session. My eyes were never tired as each chapter was told in such a way that it never fully quenched my reading thirst for the night. Stopping and bookmarking was a challenging effort with this book. Just couldn’t put it down.

The narrative is full of vivid jargon and expressive interactions that bring out humor, touch-ability and light-heartedness to an otherwise taxing exploration of one of Asia’s most revered political figure in the 20^th century.

“Lee is like an autocratic Alfred Hitchcock folded into a trim figure of Ang Lee,” Prof. Tom brings about the liveliness of the conversation through a descriptive narrative of such.

The book successfully gives the reader enough background information in understanding LKY through some of the neo-utopian beliefs that the Minister Mentor harbors through comments such as “I work on the basis that men and women first work for themselves and their families and only then will they share a portion of it with the less fortunate.”

This first volume is peppered with class, and the author’s self-deprecating humor brings a heavy dose of humility and un-pretentiousness to the reader. The book just seems to get me.

The author does not shy away from pointing the ever so-elusive weakness of LKY. “He (LKY) is a roving resource of well-considered ideas and perspective, a Chinese Master, valuable to us even when he is wrong…” Subtly indirect yet pointed that brings about respect to the subject. God knows we need one when we talk to a figure as revered as LKY.

The documentary was gracefully concluded the topic with enough reference to the previous chapters to help the reader put it all together and come away smiling. “…I mean, in a certain way, Singapore has been one big public policy laboratory – for real issues, in real time.” Well put.

Bravo!! Another quality work from a true journalist.

Alec Salemon is one of the Managing Principal of  BWS Capital Partners. BWS Capital Partners is a private investment company with offices in Los Angeles and Jakarta, Indonesia. BWS focuses its business in providing the needed capital to private companies and public projects in the US and the ASEAN region. For more information, please visit www.bwscap.com.

Today’s economy is a double bottom line economy. That is to say that today’s economy is a very social one where the market demands value before giving out its treasure (a.k.a profitability for your business). You have to “give back” first before receiving anything. It is the reverse of the traditional model to where profitability drives your philanthropy endeavors.

Take Toms Shoes, Google and Zappos as excellent examples. These companies are turning the tides in corporate social responsibility by including social needs in their strategic thinking. They consistently delve deeper into the granular level of the individual and the issue of happiness or contentment of the people that work with them, for them and their customers. They are not merely following a trend, nor creating one…they are molded by the trend…the market is the trend and the market demands such thinking.

So, give back first before asking. Give and you shall receive.

Everything in this world is a sales job. You either have physical products that you are selling or you have yourself to sell to others as a service or a set of expertise.

To sell means to get commitment from your customer. To get the commitment, you need to pitch and it is, more often than not, a brutal process that one has to go through from a ‘Hello’ to a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’.

Here’s the most devastating answer you, the seller, can ever get: a ‘Maybe’ (and its often-used cousins such as: ‘I’ll think about it’, ‘I’ll get back to you’, ‘Let’s talk about it later’, etc.)

A ‘Maybe’ is the worst answer you can possibly get because:

A ‘Maybe’ means nothing in the whole scheme of things.

A ‘Maybe’ means ‘get off my back’ from the customer to you.

A ‘Maybe’ means a promise or a hope to you, the seller. Ninety five percent of people in the world are satisfied with a promise because a promise requires no follow up and puts the ball back on the customer’s court. It buys you more time to slack.

A ‘Maybe’ requires more resources to maintain than a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’. It requires follow up to get to a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’. It doubles the work for less of a reward.

A ‘Maybe’ tempts you to give-in to get to a ‘Yes’. It is a subtle arm-twisting maneuver for some.

A ‘Maybe’ puts you back to square one.

A ‘Maybe’ gets you stuck temporarily with that one customer. Your opportunity cost increases significantly with each ‘Maybe’ you get.

A ‘Maybe’ is more expensive than a ‘No’.

A ‘Maybe’ is even more expensive than a ‘Yes’.

A ‘Maybe’ stops your momentum. When you stop, you are a sitting duck.

A ‘Maybe’ brings a false contentment. It stops you from continuing to fight for the customer.

A ‘Maybe’ teaches you nothing, nil, nada, zip. It tells you that you might be right or wrong. It is a fifty-fifty chance either way.

Kill the ‘Maybe’ by really talking to your customer. Talking to your customer involves a little bit of speaking and a whole lot of listening as well as delivering the promised performance. Too much speaking will definitely bring the ‘Maybe’ option back onto the discussion table. Avoid it at all cost.

My advice: get your ‘Yes’ or your ‘No’; either way…get on with it. Stop wasting your time with a ‘Maybe’.

Pretty typical and anticipated comment, in my opinion. The language is full of measure to give the market some sort of assurance the the tightening is still a bit way in front than originally thought. The new housing data is a bit unnerving but it should not be the only measuring stick for the housing market because it is a small part of the equation. Statistically, it might be insignificant, yet it might be the preview of what’s to come. As the home tax credit and the MBS purchase programs are being wound down, housing might still have long way to go to start trudging along the normal trend line.

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Brit Hume: “Tiger Woods will recover as a golfer. Whether he can recover as a person, I think is a very open question, and it’s a tragic situation for him. He’s lost his family. It’s not clear to me whether he’ll be able to have a relationship with his children. But the Tiger Woods that emerges once the news value dies out of this scandal, the extent to which he can recover, it seems to me, depends on his faith. He’s said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith, so my message to Tiger would be: ‘Tiger, turn to the Christian faith, and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world’.”

This little comment had quite an incendiary effect throughout the non-Christian world. The funny thing is that true Buddhist practitioners, such as myself, are much less offended by others who think that Brit was proselytizing.

It is hard to stand for either side. Some Christians think that the comment is harmless and factually correct or appropriate, the non-Christians thinks the comment to be highly offensive and arrogant; the right wingers think of the comment is a harmless misstep and was blown out of proportion by the left wingers; the left wingers use this moment as another highlight of how misguided the rights are.

I, for one, think of nothing about the comment. It is hard to argue, nor to defend a position against someone who is not educated in the topic you are trying to defend. Brit’s lack of knowledge about Buddhism does not make him a bad person nor make him right. So what is it then? Nothing lost, nothing gained, really.

I think that every religion and spirituality offer the same exact bullet point guidance toward liberating oneself from the grip of unrestrained social misconduct. The problems always lie in the various interpretations (or misinterpretation for that matter) of the message. It’s like putting together bookshelves from IKEA. Do you put the top shelf first or the bottom one?…both are correct and both will get the job done.

There is one thing for sure, that anger or relieves over such comment will amount to non-productivity. We can’t control what people say, think, like and believe. We can’t control the cloud in the sky, the squirrel on top of the tree or the puppy right across the street. Why bother getting upset over others who are misguided but mean no harm?

Every religion teaches forgiveness and understanding. This is an excellent opportunity for everyone…right or left, Christian or non-Christian to practice those two pillars of our humanistic value.

America is losing its middle. On the eve of Bernanke’s confirmation, I would like to air out some of my standing concerns on the tulip craze of our current market uptick that seems to have everyone chiming in melodiously on the back of our middle class families. The stock market has been on a steady climb for the last 11 months and most investors believe that we are heading to a better and brighter day where the air is clean, the birds are singing and green shoots are springing up everywhere. The euphoria is well-intentioned yet prematurely conceived, IMHO. The economy has yet to address several of the angry elephants in the room with transparency and a conclusive ending. Ignore these issues, and we are at the risk of pushing forward with a core-less recovery. For America, a core-less recovery is as good as no recovery.

The first of these behemoth mammals represents our national GDP growth rate. GDP growth rate, one of the most important gauges of our economic health, has been anemic while debt growth has been exceedingly proactive. The GDP debt ratio has declined considerably in the last 10 yrs. Our current oversized debt burden is such a diarrheic drain to the nation’s coffer; the government has to sell one of its limbs to plug the leakages. The question of “to tax or not to tax” has been changed to “tax everything and anything that is moving.” As some politicians like to say: “We have to pay our bills and “sacrifices” have to be made.”

The Fed is represented by another pachyderm. The Fed has recently been successful behind the eight ball in dealing with the real concerns of the country. Feds’ adamancy of misinterpreting information is as impressive as its ability to cause the crisis. This has lead the Fed to the often, option-less policy of necessity rather than policy of choice. It has to turn a blind eye, for example, to the mounting asset bubble thus jeopardizing their reputation as inflation hawk by keeping the rate low. However, the alternative is worse. In lieu of sacrificing their inflation reputation, the Fed can opt to settle with high unemployment in the foreseeable future; a more devastating option. The lower rate is also needed for the Fed to exit from all of those mortgage backed securities (MBS) that it has bought in the past. Increasing the rate will chase the buyers away; a suicidal move. Without buyers, the Fed is left with dead fish on its hand. No matter which angle you are looking at this, it’s a Hobson’s choice for our Santa-look-alike Chairman of the Fed.

The biggest long-nosed mammal of the group represents our mortgage market. Comfortably curled up in the center of the ongoing housing market bloodbath is FHA. FHA is now responsible for almost 40% of all loans made in the country. Along with such huge responsibility, their capital ratio is at an alarming 0.5%; well below the mandated 2% level. That’s a 188:1 leverage!! Dear reader, the cavalry is not coming for FHA. The only one that is coming is our uncle Wen (Wen Jia Bao that is) to collect his coupon payments.

With the issues above still hanging over our conscience, I can’t help but think the contrary to the latest market run-up. The stock market’s current gain has overvalued the S&P 500 to the point that they have to censor themselves from disclosing their own P/E ratio which was recently clocked at more than 140. Yikes!!

Closer to the ground floor, companies are noticeably struggling with capacity utilization rate that keeps on trudging downward while asset inflation is lurking around the corner. The continued high unemployment rate and the increasing pressure businesses are facing to cut their expenses will soften the consumer demand further. Only 25% of surveyed businesses expect to hire in the coming months. Some businesses are wary of being vilified for looking out for their own survivability that they post job openings with no real intention of hiring. These businesses are playing the game or socio-political posturing. No work yields zilch consumption, simple, really! With no consumption, these businesses would not be able to make enough revenue cushion to make any pricing adjustment to prepare for the coming asset inflation. Alas, their margins will be squeezed like Florida oranges on a hot summer day.

Sadly, the people who are responsible for this crisis are back in the driver seat to drive us out of the woods (the Fed). The middle class of America has to bear the brunt of their learning-on-the-job errors and are expected to do so in the foreseeable future. More than 70% of our middle class families occupy the region where business failure, increase taxation and unemployment effects are felt most. While outsourcing services and the wave of skilled foreign workers are coming into the market and enjoying much income improvement, the domestic labor force is faced with declining earning power and worth.

Blame no one but the reform that never materialized within our labor market. US dominance in the world economic scene has caused a significant neglect for the necessary transitory labor cycle/evolution from manufacturing to skilled service to naturally occur. When some keystrokes can put an assembly line in China into motion, what chances do we have here? Alas, the externalities around the American family do not improve proportionately with the effort being put in (read: income and opportunity gap). They are earning less and less in the face of increasing living expenses and taxes.

The good news is that Americans are well-known for their resilience. The average American household is not the one that expects handouts and free assistance from their government. While banks and financial institutions might feel entitled for such spinal infusion of economic forgiveness (and a truck-load of our hard-earned tax money), the rule on the street of the USA is fairly different. There is no family or neighborhood that is too big to fail and demands a bailout. This very resilience will ensure the labor market shift to materialize and to be at the core of the coming recovery. The headache we are going through now is the push that we need to close the seemingly insurmountable gap between economic reality and expectations for our middle class champions. Adaptation requires full support of our government and fellow citizens alike. Without the proper retraining and reeducation, we are in danger of losing our middle class, the aces up our sleeves. They are the “cream filling” of our Twinkies nation. Without them, we are a country with no middle, a donut country.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukah, Happy Kwanzaa and Happy New Year 2010 to you!

Two weeks ago, I had the privilege to speak in front of the students of Blair High School in Pasadena for their after-school program on entrepreneurship and personal development in time of crisis. The event was hosted by NFTE (National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship) or creatively spelled Nifty and the local chapter of YMCA. The event was started late in the afternoon and it was my first opportunity to speak in front of a group of people under the age of 18.

I must admit, this speaking engagement was more intimidating than all of my other public speaking engagements in the past. Reading the guideline for speaking, provided by Nifty, some items grabbed my attention (and gave me shivers all over my body). Nifty “forewarn” speakers to push through the discussion even if student(s) SLEEP (!!!) or started to tease each other during the discussion. What am I getting myself into?!

I could not recall the time when I prepared myself (mentally) so rigorously before a simple speech. As I stood anxiously in the corridor of the school, in front of the classroom, I could hear the conclusion of the introduction as my name was called. “Here it goes”; I put my mental armory on and I jumped in head first. Splash!! Expecting “cold, icy water” (stares); instead, I found warm welcome and engaging smiles. “Hey, this is no swimming in the English Channel. This is more like the pool in my local gym.” All my psychological defenses went down and I regained my senses. Perception is reality and truly, Blair High students have changed mine.

I came to the school to speak about four main items on the issue of entrepreneurship and personal growth. I introduced the students to the meaning of entrepreneurship, the mental preparation that goes into being a successful entrepreneur, the path of going there and lastly, the meaning of success itself. I believe that understanding these four items can help students frame their mindset around legible milestones in advancing their entrepreneurial dreams.

Entrepreneurial spirit starts from the wish of taking control of one’s life. This control often translates to owning your own business and working for yourself. There are few exceptions where entrepreneurial spirits are groomed and fostered in an employee-employer type of settings. In this setting, employees are encouraged to contribute to the growth of the company through each employee’s own authentic and unique ways. Google and Zappos are the biggest examples that I can think of. However, this type of entrepreneurial environment is rare and difficult to apply. Without the right internal corporate culture, one will end up with a Chimaera-ish* company that has no clear direction of its growth.

One of the most interesting questions that were lobbed by one of the student was the issue of interacting with others while retaining control of one’s life/entrepreneurial dream. And I quote: “How can a control freak gain any customer for his/her business?” My response was directed toward understanding the true meaning of the control itself. While taking control is the biggest part of being an entrepreneur, sensibility and inner-confidence put the right kind of “control” in place. With the right combo of these three elements, an intelligent entrepreneur can grow by putting the right kind of relationships around them.

The discussion lasted for about an hour and I happily report that yours truly, survived the onslaught and learned a lot from the experience. The students re-introduced an old-new classic component of a great discussion: clear, uncompromising clarity and transparency of the topic. On one hand, delivering a truthful and transparent discussion is an old common sense. Untruthful discussion is an oxy-moronic phrase. On the other hand, it is also a new concept because in the world of high politicking and political correctness, many discussions are started and prematurely concluded with many “elephants in the room”. Kids, like the ones I had the opportunity to get to know at the school, will not tolerate such maneuvering. They will call you out and they will put you in your place. It is such an important lesson to say what you mean and to mean what you say.

The students have provided me with a glimpse of how broken yet promising our educational system is. Nifty, with its limited resources, stands behind its program to provide a unique channel to introduce entrepreneurship to the students. In the education world that prefers stability, the mundane and the one-size-fits-all policy, Nifty stands on the sparsely populated section of the educational field that fosters creativity, brevity and possibility. Looking at the students, I can see the passion, belief and doubts all rolled up into one. It is the true reflection of our educational system where the problems and promises are one of the same.

The experience of speaking to the students on the topic that I am passionate about, has opened my eyes, more than theirs. These students are the passion of the nation and they are our economic seedlings. While they have made a long and treacherous journey to get to where they are now, it is up to us, the adults to further foster their development honestly and unselfishly. Make ourselves as their yard stick, we should not, but their aspirations, we should all learn from. After all, aren’t we supposed to look forward rather than backward? Can’t wait for my next invite.

* Chimaera = a Greek mythological creature with multiple heads

Quote: if min wage of $5.50/hr in 1990 rose at same rate as CEO pay rate to today, it’ll be at $23/hr.
Though some CEO might not be deserving to get this type of reward, the comparison is hardly linear. Market complexities, new opportunities (thus more pressure) and new breeds of systemic risk are few that make the linear comparison somewhat misleading… My $0.02

Been on news diet for the last few days…Good break to bring more quality to you guys! You guys rock!