Scholars Are Primarily Booksmart

Came across an old message board discussion thread on what Jim Rogers said about sovereign wealth funds in Abu Dhabi & S'pore that made large investments in Citigroup & UBS during the subprime financial crisis:

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"They're making a big mistake; these banks have many more problems still ahead. They should wait until these companies are really on the ropes a few years from now . . . and trading at $5 a share."

But aren't they supposed to be the smart money? Maybe not. "I know these people, and they have never given me the impression that they're smarter than anyone else," Rogers says. "They have gigantic amounts of money, but they've made a bad judgment in these cases."
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Though Jim Rogers didn't mention who those people are, i reckon for S'pore he is referring to the 'scholars'. As you can see from the chart in my previous writeup Mutation of PAP as Seen from S&P500 Index , the scholars are lulled into thinking they are smart during the super bull run from 1980s to 2000.

However the scholars just happen to have their boats lifted in a rising tide.

"Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked"-Warren Buffett

Other than the billions of investment losses, we can also see our govt scholars getting screwed by the chinese streetsmarts in the Suzhou Industrial Park investment.

Singaporeans including myself have since birth been beaten down through the education system. Many are beaten to think they are stupid when they didn't score well in the primary school leaving exam at age 11-12. These beaten down folks need to reclaim their self-worth,esteem as what Jim Rogers said & what we can see from these scholars' dismal performance outside the classroom.