Sign of The Times?

In recent years, I have read or heard various political and financial commentators like Harold James ("The Creation and Destruction of Value") and Russell Napier ("Anatomy of a Bear Market") talk about the increasing level of intervention that governments will assert in both markets and in our lives. Looking at what's been happening since the 2008 global financial crisis, such assessments appear to me to be correct.

In a sign of things to come, the following is a story that I received from the newsletter service Casey's Daily Dispatch:

Basically, a man was arrested and taken in by anti-terrorist police in Sweden after complaining to a friend on the phone about having an “explosive headache.” How did this happen? Apparently, Sweden has had blanket surveillance of all phone and Internet traffic since 2009, and the use of the word “explosive” triggered a keyword rule that made the anti-terrorist troops come out in force. After invading the man’s privacy by listening in on his phone call, police with automatic weapons stormed his house, scared the hell out of his family, and proceeded to arrest him and three relatives, all because the guy had a headache. As if to add serious insult to injury, the guy was denied a public defender, presumably because of the “terrorist” nature of his crime. Way to go Sweden.

If you can read Swedish, the original news article can be found here.

My point is this: Those who criticise Singapore for our lack of freedom should note that increasingly, we may not be alone in having our freedoms restricted by government actions. That's the new reality, in my view.