Ferraris for the people: Luxury goods sold in fractions

Anyone can easily own a Basquiat painting, a pair of Yeezy sneakers or even a Ferrari — at least, that is the promise of a growing number of fractional ownership platforms that sell shares of these rare items, starting at just a few US dollars. One platform, Masterworks, in spring last year turned the US$6 million painting The Mosque by Jean-Michel Basquiat into 284,420 shares at US$20 each. With fractional ownership, there is no chance of hanging the painting in a buyer’s home, parking a Lamborghini in their garage or storing six bottles of Romanee-Conti wine in their cellar. However, by owning at least a piece of the property — at least on paper, like the shares of a publicly listed company — anyone can now directly benefit from an increase in the item’s value, just like a wealthy collector. Whether it is paintings or baseball cards, “it’s not a new industry,” said Ezra Levine, the chief executive officer of Collectable, a platform that specializes in sports paraphernalia. “It’s not like cryptocurrencies where it was literally invented five or 10 years ago,” he said. “It’s just that the ways that people can participate in [the market] and experience it, enjoy it, have just dramatically changed in the last six months,” Levine said. Slugger, the username of a collector who preferred to stay anonymous, made a 500 percent profit on a few shares of a box of Pokemon cards, initially priced at US$125,000. The platform Rally had offered the box via an initial public offering, similar to the listing of a company on the stock market and also subject to controls by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. “These fractional platforms just open up the class to people who can’t afford to buy a full [Michael] Jordan [trading] card,” said John Schuck, 43, whose holdings amount to about US$20,000

Bitcoin won’t eclipse central banks

Innovation in central banking often starts in small markets. New Zealand was the first country to formally adopt inflation targeting as we now know it in 1990. Today, the Bahamas and Cambodia lead China in piloting central bank money in electronic form. However, few realize it was Finland that pioneered the world’s first central bank digital currency (CBDC). The experiment has some important lessons for those feverishly trying to figure out how revolutionary CBDCs will be, including the UK, which joined the club just last month with a new task force. Finland introduced the Avant Card in December 1992, long before bitcoin came into existence. It could be loaded with up to 500 euros (US$607) in today’s terms and was rechargeable. According to Aleksi Grym, an economist at the Bank of Finland, central bankers were convinced that this system would quickly displace cash. However, consumers found it difficult to use. Retailers were frustrated to have to add extra point-of-sale equipment. Finland’s central bank ended up selling the card to a group of banks that shut it down in 2006. Today, Avant Cards can be found on eBay for US$10 — hardly digital gold. It turns out that displacing the efficiency and convenience of modern credit card networks, and now their digital brethren, is incredibly hard. Most consumers value the reassurance that their money is safe in the bank if they lose their debit or credit card, which was not true with these bearer instruments. It is revealing that today Finland has chosen the digital slow lane for reconsidering a CBDC, despite being the most cash-lite country in the world, with just 3 percent of transactions undertaken in cash. This leads to another key lesson: Before major central banks issue tokens at scale, there needs to be a far deeper assessment of the impact on financial stability and

Ciao ciao bambini: Plummeting birthrate a headache for Italy

When Daniela Vicino started work as a teacher in Sicily three decades ago, she had up to 30 children in her classes. With the birthrate tumbling, that number has almost halved. There are now “18-20 at best, and even 15-16 in some cases,” she told reporters in the southeastern town of Caltagirone. “It is a very painful thing.” Italy has long suffered one of the lowest birthrates in Europe, but the situation has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic — saddling the country with problems that go well beyond empty cribs. Last year, the Italian population shrank by almost 400,000 — roughly the size of the city of Florence — to 59.3 million as deaths peaked, births bottomed out and immigration slowed down. At a conference on the decline of the birthrate on Friday also attended by Pope Francis, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said that the average age of Italians was 47, “the highest in Europe.” “An Italy without children is an Italy that has no place for the future, it is an Italy which slowly ceases to exist,” he said. Experts have said that fewer children today mean fewer tax-paying workers tomorrow, making any country less productive and less capable of providing for its aging population. This has long been a concern for Western societies, but the threat looms larger in Italy, already the most sluggish economy within the G7 club of industrialized nations. Draghi has promised more nurseries, support for working women and mortgage help for young couples as part of Italy’s 221 billion euro (US$268 billion), EU-funded pandemic recovery plan. Italy’s social security system is skewed toward the elderly, with health and pensions taking a lion’s share of the budget. The hilltop town of Caltagirone is famous for its ceramics and UNESCO-protected baroque architecture. However, like much of southern Italy, it is also economically depressed and

EDITORIAL: Stop the panic buying and rumor mill

Taiwan is facing its severest outbreak since the COVID-19 pandemic started. Everyone should do their part to maintain social order, starting by not panic buying. While a cluster infection linked to China Airlines that started last month has gradually subsided, new clusters have been found in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), New Taipei City’s Wugu (五股) and Lujhou (蘆洲) districts and Yilan County’s Luodong District (羅東), with their links still being investigated. The daily number of local cases continues to set records, with yesterday’s number rising to 180 (not including five imported cases), leading the government to raise the pandemic alert in New Taipei City and Taipei to level 3 for two weeks. Despite a few previous crises, most residents in Taiwan had been leading normal lives envied by people in many other countries. Now, with the government health authorities and hospitals carrying the heavy load of this outbreak, ordinary people must also play their part in curbing infections, starting by not creating panic. Most people do not need any more reminders about wearing masks and maintaining social distancing, yet they need self-restraint with regards to panic buying and spreading false information. Many supermarkets in Taipei and New Taipei City were yesterday swarmed by seemingly healthy buyers wanting to stockpile dried food and daily necessities, apparently out of fear that the supplies would run out quickly in the event of a lockdown. When there is no shortage of supplies, panic buying is selfish and counterproductive, as manufacturers and retailers have to restock products more often, and other people in more urgent need might not be able to acquire the goods they need. Gathering at the markets also increases the risk of virus transmission. Some of the panic buying might be prompted by online disinformation, which is trickier to contain than COVID-19. For example, three voice messages on Friday

Taiwan and the ghosts of history

Would the US be prepared to risk a catastrophic war with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to protect the Republic of China, better known as Taiwan? US President Joe Biden laid out his vision clearly last month. He sees the rivalry between the PRC and the US as a global conflict between democracy and autocracy, and Taiwan is unquestionably one of Asia’s most successful democracies. In 1954, then-US president Dwight D. Eisenhower threatened to use nuclear weapons after China shelled a rocky islet near Taiwan’s coast, when the country was still a military dictatorship. Things were different then. The US was treaty-bound to defend Taiwan. This changed after 1972, when US president Richard Nixon agreed that Taiwan was part of “one China,” and US president Jimmy Carter nullified the defense treaty in 1979. Whether the US would still fight a war over Taiwan has become a question subject to what former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger long ago termed “strategic ambiguity.” As a result, US military commitments in the East China Sea are peculiar. A defense treaty with Japan obliges the US to defend a few uninhabited rocks called the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), known as the Senkakus in Japan, but not democratic Taiwan and its 23 million people. There are practical reasons why a Chinese military attack on Taiwan might still provoke a war with the US. China’s control of the East China Sea would be a threat to Japan and South Korea. Allowing that to happen could start a dangerous nuclear arms race in East Asia. Taiwan also has highly advanced computer technology, which the US and its democratic allies would prefer not to see in the PRC’s hands. Then there is the long hand of history. We are not determined by the past, but we ignore it at our peril. While

Hiking in Taipei is wonderful and weird

“Hey, I’ve seen you before,” an elderly gent yelled. I was hiking past him on Bishanyan in Taipei’s Neihu District (內湖) and decided to stop and say hello. It turned out he thought I was someone else, someone almost a foot shorter than me and also not bald, but why get bogged down in details? We had a nice, albeit strange, chat; he provided intimate details — details I neither asked for nor wanted to know — about how he did not feel his age. Anyway, it was entertaining, and these surprising, random and overwhelmingly positive moments are regular experiences on Taipei’s hiking trails. Whether it is solo hikers playing music out of loudspeakers for all the world to hear, middle-aged men yelling: “Hoooo” as loud as they can for no apparent reason, or just folks stopping you to overshare personal information, people — and the noise they make — are a big part of almost any hike you go on in the Taipei area. This point has been made before in this newspaper, but where the writer of that other article found frustration, I generally only find pleasure (“A-holes on Taiwan’s mountains,” Sept. 3 last year, page 13). I had reason to remember that article recently while I was out on a side trail leading off from the gorgeous Jinmianshan (Goldface Mountain). This peak, the main trailhead of which is near Xihu MRT Station, attracts large numbers of hikers, presumably most of them drawn by the picturesque rocky outcrops at the top of the walk. Out on the side trails, things are a bit quieter, and I was walking in silence until my calm was pierced by the velvet tones of Michael Bolton. The song? When a Man Loves a Woman. It is a classic — of sorts. Everyone knows it, but it is Michael Bolton,

Gaza death toll rises as clashes spread

ESCALATION: Israeli President Reuven Rivlin warned of civil war after synagogues were attacked and fighting spread to the country’s mixed Jewish-Arab communities Israeli planes yesterday renewed airstrikes in Gaza, and Hamas militants responded by firing rockets into Israel as their battle entered a fifth night, and US and Arab diplomats sought an end to the violence. Palestinian health officials said that at least 12 people were overnight killed in airstrikes throughout Gaza. The officials said that a woman and her three children were among the dead after their house was hit in a refugee camp. The Israeli military said that it carried out strikes on a Hamas military intelligence facility and a number of rocket launching sites in northern Gaza. The Palestinian Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs said that Israeli planes destroyed a mosque. A Israel Defense Forces spokesman said that the military was checking the report. Across the border, sirens sounded throughout much of southern Israel, sending residents running for shelter. In the cities of Beersheba and Ashdod, buildings were struck by rockets. There were no immediate reports of injuries. With no sign of an end to the fighting, casualties spread further afield, with Palestinian authorities on Friday reporting that 11 people were killed in the occupied West Bank amid clashes between protesters and Israeli security forces. More than 132 people have since Monday been killed in Gaza, including 32 children and 21 women, and 950 others wounded, Palestinian health officials said. Among the eight dead in Israel were a soldier patrolling the Gaza border and six civilians, including two children, Israeli authorities said. Ahead of a UN Security Council session to discuss the situation today, US Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs and Press and Public Diplomacy Hady Amr arrived in Israel on Friday. The US embassy in Israel said that the aim was “to reinforce the need to work toward a sustainable calm.” Israel on Friday launched day-long attacks to destroy what it said were several kilometers of

Ex-Iran parliament speaker touts presidential bid

BRIDGE BUILDER? Ali Larijani, who has close ties to the country’s clerics and moderates, negotiated a 25-year strategic agreement with China earlier this year A former speaker of the Iranian parliament, the Islamic Consultative Assembly, yesterday registered to run in the country’s upcoming presidential election, becoming the first high-profile candidate to potentially back the policies of the outgoing administration that reached a tattered nuclear deal with world powers. The decision by former Iranian lawmaker Ali Larijani, who served as parliament speaker from 2008 until last year, came on the last day of registration for the June 18 election. While a panel overseen by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is to ultimately approve candidates, Larijani has over his decades in government maintained close ties to the cleric, while also alligning himself with the relatively moderate Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Reporters in Tehran watched Larijani, 63, register at the Iranian Ministry of Interior, which oversees elections. He waved to onlookers after completing the process, his face covered with a blue mask as Iran continues to battle the COVID-19 pandemic. Larijani, a former commander in the paramilitary Iranian Revolutionary Guard, previously served as Iranian Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, as well as the head of Iran’s state broadcaster. Under former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was by the West perceived as a hard-liner, Larijani served as secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council and as a senior nuclear negotiator. Larijani’s family includes prominent members of Iran’s theocracy, with his cleric brother once serving as the head of the Iranian judiciary. His father was a prominent ayatollah. Larijani had an active role in signing a 25-year strategic agreement with China earlier this year. On Friday, as a sign of respect, Larijani reportedly asked permission to run from high-ranking clerics in the city of Qom, Iran’s religious center. Within Iran, candidates exist on a political spectrum that broadly includes hard-liners, who want to expand Iran’s nuclear program; moderates, who hold onto

University of California drops SATs

The University of California (UC) would stop considering SAT and ACT scores that are submitted with admission and scholarship applications under a settlement of a student lawsuit, the school said on Friday. The 10-campus system, which has more than 280,000 students in California, decided not to continue fighting a judge’s injunction issued last year that barred it from considering the scores for admission even when they were submitted voluntarily, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Activists have long argued that standardized tests put minority and low-income students at a disadvantage. Critics say that test questions often contain inherent bias that more privileged children are better equipped to answer. They also say that wealthier students typically take expensive preparation courses that help boost their scores, which many students cannot afford. That was the argument in a 2019 lawsuit filed against the university system on behalf of some high- school students and nonprofit groups. The settlement, reached earlier this month, “ensures that the university will not revert to its planned use of the SAT and ACT, which its own regents have admitted are racist metrics,” Amanda Savage, an attorney representing the students, said in a statement reported by the newspaper. The UC Board of Regents last year voted to drop the SAT and ACT tests as admission requirements through 2024 and eliminate them for California residents after that. Prospective students applying for programs this year did not submit SAT or ACT scores. However, regents said that applicants for the fall semester this year and next year could submit the scores voluntarily. The new settlement would “provide certainty for students and their families, counselors and high schools,” the school said. Under the agreement, SAT and ACT scores would not be considered for admission for students applying for entry from fall this year to spring 2025. However, the scores that are submitted

Taiwan in Time: Burning for freedom

May 17 to May 23 “Who still remembers Chan Yi-hua (詹益樺)?” This question has been asked repeatedly over the decades, usually on the anniversary of Chan’s self-immolation on May 19, 1989 at fellow political activist Deng Nan-jung’s (鄭南榕) funeral in front of the Presidential Office. Deng had committed the same act on April 7 when the police came to his office to arrest him for sedition. That day is now observed as National Freedom of Speech Day, and it would be pretty hard to find someone in Taiwan who doesn’t know Deng today. The same can’t be said for Chan. His friend Chen Chen (陳真), who witnessed his death, asked the question in 2004 in a China Times Evening News (中時晚報) op-ed. Commentator Chang Chien-wu (張千舞) asked it again via the Liberty Times (自由時報, Taipei Times’ sister paper) in 2007, and both the Liberty Times and Taiwan People News (民報) brought it up again in 2016 on the 25th anniversary of his death. It’s not that Chan has been completely forgotten — a statue of him has stood since 2007 in his hometown of Jhuci Township (竹崎鄉), Chiayi County, where people gather every May to remember him. His story was also a significant part of last year’s documentary The Price of Democracy (狂飆一夢), which featured his comrade Tseng Hsin-yi (曾心儀). However, a search for Chan only yields one result in the National Central Library’s database: A-hua (阿樺), a collection of interviews and essays edited by Tseng. Chan’s activist career was brief but eventful. He first took to the streets during an anti-nuke protest in October 1986, and was severely beaten and detained a month later when trying to help the exiled politician Hsu Hsin-liang (許信良) enter the country. Chan later delved into the farmer’s rights movement, and

Mosques disappear as China strives to ‘build a beautiful Xinjiang’

The Jiaman mosque in the city of Qira, in the far western Chinese region of Xinjiang, is hidden behind high walls and Communist Party propaganda signs, leaving passersby with no indication that it is home to a religious site. During the Muslim holy month of Ramadan last month, two ethnic Uighur women sat behind a tiny mesh grate, underneath a surveillance camera, inside the compound of what had long been the city’s largest place of worship. Reuters could not establish if the place was currently functioning as a mosque. Within minutes of reporters arriving, four men in plain clothes showed up and took up positions around the site, locking gates to nearby residential buildings. The men said it was illegal to take photos and to leave. “There’s no mosque here ... there has never been a mosque at this site,” said one of the men in response to a question if there was a mosque inside. He declined to identify himself. Minarets on the building’s four corners, visible in publicly available satellite images in 2019, have gone. A large blue metal box stood where the mosque’s central dome had once been. It was not clear if it was a place of worship at the time the satellite images were taken. In recent months, China has stepped up a campaign on state media and with government-arranged tours to counter the criticism of researchers, rights groups and former Xinjiang residents who say thousands of mosques have been targeted in a crackdown on the region’s mostly Muslim Uighur people. Officials from Xinjiang and Beijing told reporters in Beijing that no religious sites had been forcibly destroyed or restricted and invited them to visit and report. “Instead, we have taken a series of measures to protect them,” Elijan Anayat, a spokesman for the Xinjiang government, said of mosques late last year. Foreign ministry spokeswoman

Taiwan’s first walled city, then and now

After a rebellion decimated the Fongshan County (鳳山縣) capital in 1721, the Kangxi Emperor finally decided to allow the construction of walled cities in Taiwan. The following year, with the completion of an earthen wall surrounding it, Old Fongshan City (鳳山舊城) became Taiwan’s first walled city. Over a century later, the wall was replaced with a stone one, much of which remains standing today. To walk the length of this wall is to walk through centuries of history in just one afternoon, as modern-day amenities intermingle with traces of Taiwan’s past. Any visit here should begin at the Center of Old Fongshan City History (見城館). It is a modern facility featuring a VR introduction to the area (included in the ticket price of NT$49 for adults, NT$29 for Kaohsiung residents), handheld AR devices to further enrich exhibits and a scale model of the old city. What really makes a visit to the center worthwhile is the multimedia presentation incorporating this model that is played twice an hour. As the history of the region is presented in video format (with English subtitles) on a large screen, different components of the model appear and disappear from the model floor, accompanied by lighting and visual effects, allowing visitors to see 300 years of history played out in front of their eyes. Incredible care went into the preparation of this show and it alone is worth the price of admission. With a mental picture of the area in mind, it’s time to continue the tour of Old Fongshan City, following the wall counterclockwise. Beside the parking lot, the wall ends abruptly at Shengli Road. During the Japanese era, traffic flow became a more important consideration than historical preservation and it was decided to punch a hole right through the wall and the adjacent Turtle Mountain (龜山)

All Nantou County classrooms to be air conditioned from next academic year 南投拚教室全面有冷氣 縣長林明溱感謝蘇貞昌

High temperatures over the last few weeks, more like what one would expect at the height of summer, have caused many students to complain about the oppressive heat. During an administrative report delivered to the Nantou County Council on Friday, Nantou County Commissioner Lin Ming-chen thanked Premier Su Tseng-chang for taking on board his suggestion by allocating funds from the central government’s Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program to install air conditioning in all of the nation’s elementary and high schools. Lin reported that his administration has also committed an additional NT$100 million to the project and has already put the air conditioning upgrades out to tender. Lin expects that all of Nantou County’s students will be able to enjoy air-conditioned classrooms by the beginning of the next academic year. Lin says that after the legislature passed a NT$400 billion budget for the Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program, many parents petitioned him to do something about the lack of air conditioning in classrooms, since every year come summertime, students find it difficult to concentrate on their lessons. Lin says he brought the matter up during a county administration meeting and suggested allocating NT$20 billion from the budget to install air conditioning in all classrooms. After Lin’s suggestion was reported in the media, Su took action to set aside funds for the project and guaranteed that all of the nation’s elementary and high school classrooms would have air conditioning by the end of February next year. (Liberty Times, translated by Edward Jones) 最近高溫炎熱如盛夏，學生直喊熱，南投縣長林明溱十四日在縣議會進行施政報告時表示，感謝行政院長蘇貞昌聽到他的建議，從前瞻基礎建設計畫預算編列經費，讓全國中小學教室裝冷氣。 南投縣也自籌一億元配合款，最近已完成冷氣招標，預計下學年開始，縣內學生將陸續有冷氣可吹。 林明溱指出，行政院前瞻基礎建設計畫四千億元預算在立法院通過後，他接獲許多學生家長反映，因教室沒有冷氣，每到夏天學生難以專心上課，當時他就在縣務會議建議行政院長蘇貞昌，能從前瞻基礎建設計畫預算中撥出兩百億元給全國中小學教室裝冷氣。 經媒體披露後，蘇院長即果斷指示行政院編列，還保證要在明年二月底前，達成全國中小學教室全面裝冷氣政策。 (自由時報張協昇)

Photo News: The world celebrates ‘Eid al-Fitr’ holiday amid pandemic 從照片看新聞:「開齋節」在疫情下登場

SPEAK UP ! 雙語會話

Just get the landlord around to take a look at it (5/5) 請房東過來看就好了（五） A: When we first looked at the new apartment, I thought it was really spacious. Now we have moved in, all the rooms seem much smaller. B: It’s funny how we misremember some things. Our memories can be very unreliable. A: It’s not that, it’s just that I had no idea how much stuff I have accumulated over the years. I don’t have anywhere to put my things. B: Yeah, you’ve always been a hoarder. You can’t bear to throw things away. A: I think I’m going to have to get creative with how I store things away. B: Can’t you just buy more furniture to store everything in? A: That just means accumulating more stuff. I think I need to go minimalist. A: 我們第一次去看那間房的時候，我覺得它空間還蠻寬敞的。可是現在我們搬進去了，所有的房間看起來都小多了。 B: 記錯事情這種情況還蠻有趣的，我們的記憶有時候很不可靠。 A: 才不是因為我記錯咧！我只是沒想到日積月累，我的東西越來越多，已經沒有地方可以放了。 B: 對呀，你是很會囤積物品的人，你就是沒辦法丟東西。 A: 我應該要來發揮一下創意，想辦法把我的東西都收納進去。 B: 你不能多買幾件家具，把這些東西都收納起來嗎？ A: 這樣只是在累積更多東西，我應該要一切從簡。 (Paul Cooper, Taipei Times／台北時報林俐凱譯) English 英文: Chinese 中文: