i have never been a fan of manchester united football club, otherwise i would be really embarrassed to hear that the desperate manager louis van gaal has demanded his players to be horny when they play against their opponents. this certainly has been a very peculiar way to motivate his star-studded squad. guess what, they just won the game against their FA cup opponent shrewsbury town after this potent x-rated injection. sometimes, you never know what might work after you have exhausted your usual options.

we have a new head of CSRC, mr liu shiyu who replaced mr xiao gang. this has been very much an anticipated change in the market. as you know chinese investors love to have a scagegoat to reset their loss and start their reckless punting again. i bet all investors will be disappointed again, since they have failed to understand why market has been against them. the newly coronated boss has little knowledge on security or investment banking businesses, given his sizable portfolio of experience in commercial bankings. the jury is still out on his ability to rein in the runaway market and more importantly to continue the structural reforms in chinese security markets. I certainly wish government has appointed someone with more experience in secondary markets and knowing how a security firm or an investment bank works. mr xiao was blamed for several missteps of the market since last june. The most reported one is the latest circuit breakers 5/7 arrangement plus unchanged 10% daily trading curbs. it caused massive hiccup in its first day of trading after the rule was imposed. it was ridiculed by both domestic and foreign investors as "forced wearing condom after tubulization". however, in my eyes, mr xiao is a true reformer and he has really transformed china's security business with a set of new rules since the early 2014. before that, the only player in china's financial market is commercial banks. security companies are only confined to traditional brokerage business. since mr xiao gang, china's fund management business and capital market trading, over-the-counter trading and funding, custodian mamagement and prime brokers, and derivatives innovations became important parts of new businesses for otherwise dying security firms. security firms and investment banks are becoming a true and important financial conduit between fund suppliers and demanders which our commercial banks have failed completely. it is truly unfortunate in china it seems the performance of CSRC is only measured by the stock market performance. how ludicrous is it! this absurdity has placed this ongoing structure reform in limbo again as mr xiao has been removed. this is a retrograde in china's security buisness before mr liu can demonstrate that he is worth his salt in near future.

while bejing was enveloped by a smothering smog, donald trump torpedoed US politics with his outlandish proposal on entire muslim community including those muslims who are US citizens at the wake of sanberdino shooting. he certainly has commanded the headlines that a candidate has been craving for, but seemingly for a wrong reason, and his own party elites have scrambled to categorically distance themselves from his jaw-dropping proposal. most people call what he said down-right pernicious and repellant. To me this is indeed something with a magnitude that makes the Statue of Liberty bow her head in anguish. however, trump's poll number has been doing quite well, and the number of trump faithfuls are even rising. there is nothing more perplexing than seeing trump can survive several seemingly irreversible "blunders" ranging from his malignant comments on mexican americans, women, syrian refugees, muslims and etc. he is keeping going and going like that “energizer” bunny, given he started as a defacto comical candidate. it is so disheartening to see someone like trump can hijack US politics with so-unamerican rhetorics. i am quite baffled by this trump phenomenon. if mr trump were elected, the world would head apoclypse as exactly predicted by ISIS. how ironic it would be.

co-pilot of germanwing has been identified as andreas lubitz. investigator said andreas lubitz deliberately crashed the plane. currently there is no evidence he is connected with terrorist group. if the man wants to die, why take the lives of people on the plane with him? this is more like a mass murder to me.

Latest news is there is a possibility that the crash of germanwing airbus plane is a deliberate act of someone. The audio recording shows that the captain was locked out of cockpit and he was trying to smash the door down before the plane went down precipitously. The co-pilot was probably controlling the plane and the co-pilot has 630 hours flying time.

An analysis of dozens of studies published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology showed a direct link between anger, hostility and heart problems. This should be deemed as a completmentary result to a spate of recent blogs regarding the factors detrimental to your health conditions from our medical expert Colin. Therefore, when you run into someone who is rude, abrasive, and totally brash, just ignore and walk away. do not engage.

Read this from AP that UK is the first nation to pass a bill to allow the creation of human embryos from DNA of three persons. It has been quite a shock to me. Is this some form of legalization for carrying out human cleansing? What do you think of this ?

I once naively negated the claim that cheating could be part of Chinese culture in my reply to our fellow blogger Michael. Today, I am absolutely disgusted after watching an investigative report by CCTV on systematically organized ceating in a MBA entrence exam in some northeast well known university. Some shoddy business men set up training joint to prepare their clients for MBA entrence exams with a dubious 100% guaranteed success. Many applicants signed up for a five day training courses cost around 48,000 RMB. The so called intensive training is to: 1. distribute electronic cheating devices such as earphones and radio frequency receivers 2. master turning on-and-off the devices to avoid electronic detectors used by exam monitors 3. fine tune the receivers to selected bandwidth and make sure everyone will hear it loud and clear&amp 4. ask male clients to carry devices behind their belts while female clients can conveniently place those gadgets inside their bras. Taking exam becomes listening to the broadcasting with hosts sitting in a nearby hotel room reading out answers.  I am quite dismayed by the fact that nobody even walked out after they were asked to cheat. These MBA candidates have already failed before they even get started, when they thumb their noses on honesty and integrity.

Today, both stock markets in Shanghai and Tokyo pared losses with 1.8% and 2.4% respectively after China's PMI number confirming a slowing China economy.<div><br></div><div>From "Morning Briefing" of "Seeking Alpha":</div><div>Fall in Chinese services PMI indicates slowdown is broad-based. Chinese HSBC services PMI dropped to the lowest level since August 2011, falling to 50.9 in December from 52.5 in November. The decline mirrors a drop in the official print and in manufacturing PMI, suggesting that the slowdown in the economy is broad-based. The latest reading was one factor that helped drag down Asian markets today amid fears that China's deceleration will continue in Q1.</div>

In past few days, interbank lending rates spiked up. 7 days rate cleared 9% briefly and 14 days rate is about north of 8% as well. Yield curve is ominously inverted. PBOC has injected 300 billion into the market, but entire financial market seems struggling with year end cash crunch. A persistent inverted curve would imply a recession ahead. However I would surmise that the free floating of lending rates since july by PBOC caught banks off guard and they are not simply ready to face a much more complex risk management issues, and they just hold cards to their chest and see what will be up next. The days of guaranteed money making for banks are numbered. They will find their powerful SOE clients will demand a lower funding rates. Margins will be inevitably squeezed. Structurally, interbank swap market is still far from being mature in terms of tenors and bid/ask spread. Many medium and smaller banks are left completely bewildered. Only the banks with superior risk management skills will survive. I would not be surprised that entire banking industry might see some major realignments down the road.