SMRT

[specuvestor]

I can think of a few:

1) Glass Steagall act should never have been repealed. Regulators across the globe should learn to segregated public interest (ie depositors) from commercial risk (ie investment banking)
2) Risk weighted asset calculation should be higher for derivatives, especially since most of the time it is leveraged, which is happening now in Basel III
3) Curb on leverage

End of the day regulation should curb excessive incentives. I think regulators should learn from mistakes because the market as a whole never, though companies that suffered does. That is why I said US is primed for a SIMILAR crisis because nothing had been done substantially in this administration. The markets still operate under the same greed and fear... it never learns the mistake as long as some people benefit greatly from it, and so yes the cycle continues. That is where government need to intervene to prevent it from happening again. For sure the unknown unknowns will not be able to be foreseen, but that does not mean one does not correct mistakes and progress onwards.

Which leads us back to the topic: Does increasing the fares of MRT and buses means better transportation in Singapore? I highly doubt so because private companies don't care about the system as a whole, yet they are affected by congestion and asset prices, and transmitting those pain to the consumers. They only look at their individual PnL. It is obvious to me why SMRT lagged on their maintenance job. Does privatising power stations really gave us better power pricing?

The anecdotal evidence is very clear in a strong administrative place like Singapore, and may not work as well as say our neighbours. But the principle on public goods remain, effectiveness adjusted by the efficiency of the governance