Author Archives: Lloyds_admin

Silver Price Manipulation | 2016 Sep | Everyone should take delivery whilst they still can

The US government has been printing money willy nilly since 2008 and have expanded their balance sheet by about 4 fold; they have been getting away with this because they have been able to manipulate inflation data by artificially suppressing the price of commodities that are used to calculate inflation. Gold and Silver prices amongst a myriad of commodities are used to calculate the rate of inflation, so if the US government can suppress the prices of these commodities they can continue to print money without the supposed rate of inflation getting out of hand.

The manipulation has been carried out JP Morgan which uses the printed money to short the silver and gold markets; this has been working for the last few years but the demand for physical silver has surpassed supply that this manipulation will eventually ‘come home to roost’ and we will see a dramatic spike in Gold & Silver prices. For silver, net production a year is about 800 million ounces and net demand is about 915 million ounces for 2015 so there is a shortfall of ~115 million ounces. Every single smart phone, tablet, computer, server, etc contains some silver and gold; and Apple alone sold about 220 million phones in the last 12 months; just consider other smartphones, devices, android phones that all contain silver and gold – the demand is very real and because of this there is not much physical silver knocking about right now.

On 2 September, 2016 when Xetra-Gold service demanded to take delivery on Gold, Deutsche Bank essentially announced that they were unable to satisfy the delivery because they don’t have the stock and as we see more investors taking delivery on physical gold & silver, we will discover that many of these institutions supposedly storing gold & silver for us having been leasing them out and they don’t have any physical stock.

For all those who own paper silver or gold, take delivery NOW before it is too late; none of these banks have any stock. JP Morgan who has bee purportedly hoarding silver has nothing in their vaults, all of it is propaganda to try to give the illusion that there is an abundance of physical stock.

Silver Prices will likely hit US$ 60 / oz by Q1 of 2017.

HSBC – Customer Service going from Bad to Worse

HSBC’s customer service in Hong Kong is going from Bad to Worse.

They call me and ask me to go for an interview because we made some instructions in the change signatories for the account; in the telecon, it was agreed that they would send me an email to confirm the location, the person whom I would meet and an exact time. After the telecon, no email was received.

I then call up their hotline the following week, I managed to speak to a customer representative after navigating through the telephone labyrinth involving the keying in of a specific sequence of numbers; this time I was smarter and asked for the person’s name and extension before talking further so that I cannot trace back to this person should they fail to deliver again.

They ask me two security questions which I could not answer off the top of my head – one was the year in which the bank account was setup. I’m sorry – I have 7 businesses with over 20 bank accounts; this particular company was incorporated in 1966 by my grandfather so how on earth am I supposed to memorise the year in which the bank account was setup.

He then promised to get his supervisor to call me and a week later I still have not heard from them.

I think instead of your “Your local bank” as a slogan a more apt slogan would be “Your worst bank”.

I am posting this up here because there is no way you can complain to HSBC and why is HKMA not doing anything about this?

Ontop, 29/F, 18 On Lan Street, Central, Hong Kong | Scam

The bar Ontop, 29/F, 18 On Lan Street is the biggest scam in Hong Kong.

I asked the sommelier to give me a bottle of good quality and good value wine and after 20 minutes he came back with 2005 Cote Rotie 2005 (les Grandes Places)….They try to charge HK$ 3,000 for the bottle.

I run several businesses and understand that we all need to make a buck but to charge HK$ 3,000 for a wine that is very pedestrian and costs less than HK$ 500 wholesale price is really dishonest. Also, the wine was too chilled. My mistake was I trusted the sommelier implicitly and they didn’t tell me how much it was before opening the bottle.

I asked my friend who is a restauranteur to taste the wine without telling him what it was and I asked him how much he would charge for a wine of that quality in his restaurant and he said maybe around HK$ 700.

Ontop, 18 On lan street is a scam so caveat emptor. If you are in Hong Kong avoid this bar; it is dishonest.

Wang Zhenmin’s diatribe at the FCC on 12 April, 2016

Wang Zhenmin said that the abduction of Lee Bo in Hong Kong was “an unfortunate incident” and then said that Hong Kong’s independence contravenes “one country two systems”. Could he not connect the dots and work out the the calls for Hong Kong’s independence was a consequence of the “unfortunate incident” carried out by the communist party? Could he not work out that the abduction of people without a fair trial contravenes “one country two systems”? So China wants his cake and eat it too?

If the communist party wants to talk about the “rule of law” and then China needs to first respect the rule of law and understand that abducting people is “ILLEGAL”. The Rule of Law is not frivolous and you can pick and choose when you want to obey it and when not to. It is almost like a priest telling everyone to praise the lord to his followers when he is himself an atheist.

And lastly trying to draw some ridiculous timeline saying that under Mao it was a 30-year period of “Rule of Politics”, under Deng it was a 30-year period of “Rule of Economics” and that under Xi it was “Rule of Law”….. Abducting people is illegal… so what sort of “Rule of Law” does Xi follow? Under Xi Jin Ping we are going back to Mao with a period of “Rule of Politics”, in fact more so a period of “Rule by suppression”.

It pains me that the Communist Party can speak such nonsense and hypocrisy and frankly until the Communist Party comes forward and apologises for the ILLEGAL abduction of Lee Bo then they are not qualified to talk about the “Rule of Law” because they don’t believe in it.

JP Kuehlwein – “Rethinking Prestige Branding – Secrets of the Ueber-Brands”

Last night, we had the misfortune of attending a talk with Mr JP Kuehlwein at Orange Peel, Central (http://www.orangepeelhk.com/) who coined the term “Uber” brands which is supposed to mean effectively very strong brands.

He spent 90% of the talk telling us how high-end luxury brands like Rolls Royce, Chanel, Hermes, Berluti, etc. create the illusion of exclusivity that make these brands “Uber”. Like how bouncers at a club would deliberately stop some people from going into club even if they are rock stars but lets in some retard; so as to keep people guessing…. and how Berluti invites people to polish their shoes with Champagne…

He then back-pedals and says that a brand doesn’t need to be a luxury brand to be an “Uber” brand and cites “Muji” as an example of an “Uber” brand but stopped short of saying why.

Our comments are:-

– The term “Uber” brand is mis-leading as Uber is a taxi hailing app that has become very successful and to coin the term “Uber” Brand just misleads users because most of the people who attended the talk thought that he started Uber and was going to talk about it

– Mr JP Kuehlwein has worked most of his life for Proctor and Gamble and purports to know a lot about Branding but has never actually launched a brand in his entire life

– Mr JP Kuehlwein thinks that buying a US$ 30,000 car is for the masses

Here is a person who encapsulates what is wrong with this world; by writing a book that no one will read people naturally think that he has something to say and is an authority. He is talking about branding as an expert when he has never created a successful brand in his whole life. He coins the term “Uber Brand” which confuses everyone because we all know Uber is a taxi hailing app.

Our review of the talk is don’t waste your time listening to a wind bag talk absolute gibberish for an hour or so who has never taken a position in life to create something other than a book that nobody wants to read.

Hong Kong Labour Department Getting out of Hand

The Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) is one of the worst implemented schemes which steals money from the employees and punishes entrepreneurs. It offers returns lower than inflation and in most instances delivers returns lower than fixed deposit.

It is already hard enough to operate a business in Hong Kong and MPF adds considerably to the administrative overheads of any small business because MPF payments cannot be made in advance and must be made before the 10th day of every month, which means that every month the employers have to go through the rigomorale of filling out forms, calculating the MPF contribution, filing to the MPFA any changes (e.g. resignations, layoffs, etc.) and then writing / sending cheques to the trustee.

Probably because we have been quite vocal about our views on MPF, a labour department inspection was sent to our office to check that we have observed all of the labour laws in Hong Kong. They asked for documents for all the employees, the Employee Compensation coverage note and other documents.

Having sent them everything by email; they are now harassing us requesting a meeting…. As an employer, Hong Kong is becoming a more and more difficult place to operate a business whilst the Communist government happily kidnaps Hong Kong residents illegally.

Praying for the end of the Chinese Communist Party

All of the world’s problems are caused by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP); they are like a cancer on this earth; I salute all of the students who are fighting to protect Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Press in Hong Kong.

The Chinese Communist Party are destroying Hong Kong because they have no experience governing an International city.

The abduction of the 5 bookstore owners is unforgiveable; Lee Bo et al; they came to Hong Kong to arrest a couple of small folks running a bookstore, violating the Rule of Law with contempt to the one country two systems framework.

I am writing this article because I don’t care if they try to arrest me too; I will not bow to suppression.

In the meantime, I pray for the end of the Chinese Communist Party.

SL320 | Broken DriveShaft | R129 1995

The unthinkable happened. The Driveshaft in my SL320 broke.

I stopped at a traffic light on a steep hill and didn’t use parking break. When the light turned green I accelerated hard whilst the car slid back slightly due to the steepness of the hill. Capow! The drive shaft broke; luckily there were no cars behind me and I was able reverse the car into a space on a flat road whilst I waited for a towing truck to come round.

What happened to the car after the drive shaft broke:-

Doesn’t matter which gear you try to go into the car went backwards (because I was on a hill)
Even in P the car would go backwards
The engine sound is on completely normal
When you are in P you might hear a slight clicking noise

When I told my indie that I think the driveshaft broke he replied and said that doesn’t happen. Having heard my story he originally thought that it was a transmission issue but after inspection he realised that it was indeed the drive shaft breaking. He said that he’s never seen this on a Merc in his 50 year career fixing cars.

Anyone else experienced the same thing?

香港搵盤有乜野好介紹?

宜加香港d鋪租咁貴丶d做地產經紀公司可以點様減底開支呢?

其實宜加網絡發逹，d地產商可以在網上撜盤都可以吸納好多客。

係英國及美國都基本上全部搵盤都是在網上的。有一個網站叫zoopla。基本上全英國的樓盤都糸上面。

我系香港最近發現一個好正嘅搵買盤及租盤平台叫Oneday我地d地產中介可以免費放5個樓盤、放完後就立即有客揾上門。真係好啦！

我都唔明點解冇更多嘅agent去用Oneday.

揾盤,租盤及買賣樓盤專家香港,九龍,新界