JAKARTA: Each layer of the kue lapis legit is believed by Indonesians of Chinese descent to symbolise fortune.

Also known as thousand layer cake, it comprises many thin layers piled on each other, made of butter, margarine, milk and egg.

To add flavour, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg are included, giving the cake a colour resembling bacon. Hence, during Indonesia’s Dutch colonial period, the delicacy was known as Spekkoek (bacon cake).

While kue lapis legit is ubiquitous in Jakarta, the cake from Happy Bakery is among the most famous due to its taste, history and price.

For 45 years, people have been patronising the bakery in South Jakarta when Chinese New Year approaches.

“It is a Chinese tradition here to buy it for the Chinese New Year,” owner Liena Gusman told CNA.

“The cake symbolises multiple fortunes, that is why it is sought after during Chinese New Year,” she added.

The 20cm x 20 cm cake is available in plain flavour, or with prunes, cheese and walnuts as toppings.

READ: A dash of honey: Jakarta’s ‘burnt’ banana fritters a sought-after comfort food

It is the butter that distinguishes her cake from competitors, said Mdm Gusman, 60. “We use the finest butter, (imported) Dutch butter,” she said.

The more butter a variant has, the more expensive it becomes.

The cheapest variant, which only uses margarine, goes for 445,000 rupiah (US$31). Depending on the amount of butter used, it can cost up to 1,120,000 rupiah. The latter is often dubbed the most expensive kue lapis legit in town.

“The cake is hard to make. It takes about 2.5 to 3 hours,” Mdm Gusman said, adding that she does not use any preservative.

FROM RATTAN SELLER TO BAKER

Mdm Gusman is the second-generation owner of Happy Bakery.

Her father Gunaifi Lay, 88, was a struggling rattan seller in Palembang, South Sumatra who decided to take his family to Jakarta in 1969 in the hope of earning a better living.

With only 300 rupiah, Mr Lay rented a room in Central Jakarta for his family of six and had only money left to buy some eggs.

His wife, an avid baker, made kue bolu (sponge cake) out of the eggs and Mr Lay decided to sell the cake.

Since Mr Lay was a stranger to Jakarta, he took the bus and sold it from one bus terminal to the other.

Over time, sales started to improve and a friend told him to make kue lapis legit as it was more sought after than sponge cake.

READ: Jakarta’s 88-year-old ice cream parlour that stands the test of time

The move reaped dividends. Mr Lay later bought a house in South Jakarta for his family.

They continued to sell cakes to resellers. One day a man knocked on their door saying that smelled the aroma of their lapis legit and wanted to buy one.

That prompted Mr Lay to build a bakery in front of his house in 1976. Since cakes are meant for happy occasions, he named the bakery Happy.

They have never used a particular marketing strategy to promote their cakes and assumed their success was by word of mouth.

Apart from kue lapis legit, the bakery also sells the 3-layered lapis Surabaya, pineapple tarts, Dutch spekulas cookies and others.

As the first child of four, Mdm Gusman had been helping her late mother with baking since she was just eight years old.

Coincidentally, she is also the only child who is interested in baking. Hence, when her parents decided to pass on the business 20 years ago, Mdm Gusman took over.

She remembers the heyday of the bakery to be during Indonesia’s second President Soeharto era when it was still a custom for people to give acquaintances cakes during festive days such as Chinese New Year and Hari Raya.

“I was baking cakes from 3am until 1am,” she reminisced. Their customers included members of Soeharto’s family and Indonesian celebrities.

STRONG DEMAND FROM FOREIGN VISITORS

After Soeharto’s fall in 1998, the business was still booming with customers from all over Indonesia and from abroad such as Malaysia, Singapore and even the Netherlands wanting to get hold of the traditional cake.

Most of the foreign customers are from Malaysia and Singapore, she said.

There were times when tourist buses arrived at the bakery and Malaysian customers wanted to buy their cake for takeaway. They were willing to wait for hours, she recalled.

She had many requests to export her cakes abroad but she always declined out of fear that the freshness would be compromised, as no preservatives are used.

Since Indonesia has been hit by COVID-19 last March, business has been poor, said Mdm Gusman.

“Now it is very bad. We are just breaking even.”

READ: Instant noodle obsession: 5 quirky twists to the classic Indomie in Jakarta

Before the pandemic, sales during Chinese New Year would increase tenfold. During the Hari Raya period, profit would be up 15 times as compared to the usual, she said.

However, sales were less than a quarter of the usual during last year’s Hari Raya. She had to let go of about half of her 20 staff.

Even though this year’s Chinese New Year is predicted to be more subdued than usual due to COVID-19, Mdm Gusman hopes her loyal patrons will still buy her lapis legit.

“They usually buy the cake three days before Chinese New Year. So hopefully this year they will still come.”

Read this story in Bahasa Indonesia here .

SINGAPORE: A 13-year-old was among the 316 people arrested for their suspected involvement in loan-sharking activities, said the police in a news release on Tuesday (Feb 9).

They were rounded up in simultaneous raids islandwide during a three-week operation that ended on Sunday. The raids involved officers from the Criminal Investigation Department and seven police land divisions.

Preliminary investigations revealed that 33 of the suspects had allegedly conducted harassment at debtors’ place of residence.

Sixty-eight suspects are believed to be runners who helped loan sharks in their business by carrying out automated teller machine (ATM) transfers.

The remaining 215 suspects purportedly opened bank accounts and provided their ATM cards, personal identification numbers or Internet banking tokens to loan sharks to facilitate their unlicensed moneylending businesses, said the police.

A total of S$52,000 in cash and items such as mobile phones and pre-paid SIM cards were seized during the operation, said the authorities.

Investigations against all the suspects are ongoing.

Under the Moneylenders Act, when a bank account, ATM card or Internet banking tokens of a person is used to facilitate activities of an unlicensed moneylender, that person is presumed to have assisted in carrying on the business of unlicensed moneylending.

First-time offenders found guilty of that could be fined between S$30,000 and S$300,000, jailed for up to four years and receive up to six strokes of caning.

Those found guilty of acting on behalf of an unlicensed moneylender, committing or attempting to commit any acts of harassment face a fine of between S$5,000 and S$500,000. They could also be jailed for up to five years and caned between three and six strokes.

The police warned that loan sharks are increasingly sending unsolicited loan advertisements via text messages or online platforms, and said they will continue to take tough action against those involved in the loansharking business.

“This would include taking action against those who open or give away their bank accounts to aid unlicensed moneylenders,” the police added.

SINGAPORE: The COVID-19 cluster linked to a police K-9 unit has grown to seven cases, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said on Tuesday (Jan 19), after one more close contact tested positive .

MOH reported four new COVID-19 cases in the community on Tuesday, and one was linked to the K-9 unit cluster.

Case 59428 is an eight-year-old Singaporean student at Chua Chu Kang Primary School who had last gone to school on Jan 15.

He is the son of two previously confirmed cases, Cases 59365 and 59393, both linked to the K-9 unit cluster. He was placed on quarantine after being identified as a close contact of his father, who was confirmed to be infected on Jan 16.

The boy was swabbed on the same day, and tested negative for COVID-19, MOH said, adding that “there is therefore no risk of transmission to the students he had contact with previously”.

However, he developed a fever on Jan 17 and was tested again at KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital.

The second test gave a positive result. His serological test came back negative, indicating a likely current infection.

READ: Patients with mild symptoms may hesitate to see a doctor; experts urge public to be vigilant

FIRST REPORTED INFECTIONS para-vet – Case 59280 – at the police K-9 unit was reported as the sole community case for that day.

According to MOH, the para-vet developed a fever on Jan 11 and visited a general practitioner clinic on the same day, when he was tested for COVID-19.

The 32-year-old Singaporean remained at home on medical leave until his result came back positive on Jan 13 and he was taken to the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID). His serological test was negative, indicating it was likely a current infection, said MOH.

The para-vet’s identified close contacts, including family members and co-workers, were isolated and placed on quarantine, with testing at the start and end of their quarantine periods to detect asymptomatic cases.

On Jan 15, the police said that three of its officers who were in close contact with the para-vet had been quarantined.

READ: 3 SPF officers quarantined, 25 police dogs negative for COVID-19 after para-vet tested positive

Twenty-five police dogs that had interacted with the para-vet two weeks before he showed symptoms also tested negative for COVID-19, the police said.

On Jan 16 , MOH reported that the para-vet’s wife tested positive for COVID-19. The 28-year-old, Case 59347, had been in quarantine since Jan 13.

She developed acute respiratory infection symptoms on Jan 14 and was tested for the coronavirus. Her result returned positive the next day, and she was also sent to NCID. Her serological test was negative.

The woman works as a prison staff officer with the Singapore Prison Service but does not interact with inmates, MOH said. She was mainly working from home during this period.

JAN 17: TWO MORE CASES LINKED, CLUSTER IDENTIFIED

On Jan 17 , MOH reported that a 44-year-old Singaporean man who works as an administrative officer at the police’s K-9 unit had COVID-19.

The administrative officer, Case 59365, developed a dry throat on Jan 7 – earlier than the para-vet’s onset of symptoms – but had not sought medical treatment, MOH said.

The administrative officer was tested on Jan 15 as part of special testing operations at the para-vet’s workplace. His result came back positive on Jan 16 and he was taken to NCID. His serological test was negative.

After the administrative officer was confirmed to have COVID-19, MOH on Jan 16 contacted one of his family members, a 44-year-old Singaporean woman, as part of contact tracing efforts.

The woman, Case 59387, is a homemaker, and was tested for COVID-19 on Jan 16 when she reported she had developed a fever and chills on Jan 9, as well as the loss of smell and taste on Jan 13. She had not sought medical treatment, MOH said.

Her test result came back positive on Jan 17, and she was taken to Ng Teng Fong General Hospital. Her serological test was negative.

JAN 18: CLUSTER GROWS TO 6 CASES

Two new community cases of COVID-19 were reported in Singapore on Jan 18 , both of whom are family members of the administrative officer.

Case 59393 is the man’s spouse, a 43-year-old Singaporean woman who is a homemaker, while the other is a 66-year-old Malaysian woman, Case 59395, who is a long-term visit pass holder. Both developed symptoms, including diarrhoea and loss of taste, but had not sought medical treatment.

They were identified as close contacts of the administrative officer and were contacted by MOH on Jan 16. They were tested for COVID-19 when they reported their symptoms and their test results came back positive the next day.

Both women were taken to hospitals in ambulances, with Case 59393 warded at KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital and Case 59395 at Tan Tock Seng Hospital.

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LA PAZ (AFP) – The case of a 12-year-old girl who is pregnant after being raped for years by her father and others in a La Paz prison has sparked outrage in Bolivia over the practice of letting children live in jails.

According to government figures, about 1,500 young children and adolescents live in Bolivian prisons with their convict relatives – a situation critics say is ripe for the kind of abuse suffered by the young girl.

Children of inmates often are forced to live with them in prison because they have no other relatives, or because both parents are in jail.

“The girl is two months’ pregnant,” said the country’s prisons director Ramiro Llanos.

The child has told authorities she was repeatedly raped by her father, uncle and godfather since she was eight years old, Mr Llanos told local media Wednesday.

The case is now in the hands of child protection officials, who have offered the girl psychological counseling.

University professor and political analyst Carlos Cordero said the girl’s situation was in part the result of the “miserable conditions and neglect of the inmates.”

The San Pedro prison in La Paz, where 500 children live with their parents and where the incident took place, is infamous because several years ago, visitors were able to easily buy cocaine as police turned a blind eye.

The minors share living space with violent criminals – murderers, rapists, gang members and drug dealers. They witness the rampant use of alcohol and drugs, as well as the bloody fights that frequently erupt.

“It is traumatic to live in a place like this,” said Stefano Toricini, a volunteer for an Italian non-governmental organization who has provided counseling to children at San Pedro for the past decade.

“The kids live in a state of constant psychological pressure, and the culture of violence that pervades prisons is not for children.”

Mr Llanos – who spent part of his childhood living in a jail with his father, a political prisoner of the country’s military dictatorship in the 1960s – called on police to “stop being so corrupt and stop allowing children in prisons,” in comments to the Pagina Siete newspaper.

For Yolanda Herrera, president of the independent Human Rights Assembly, “the problem is not that children are inside prisons – the problem is that there are no state policies for the protection of children.”

Bolivia’s police chief, General Alberto Aracena, said: “As a human being, I cannot imagine that children are made to live in prisons, because I can see that they are exposed to all sorts of dangers and risks.”

With the support of Congress, police have said they will carry out a census of the children living in prisons and give officers special training to deal with the situation, Gen Aracena said.

Prisons in Bolivia are the second most crowded in the region, after those in El Salvador. They are designed to house 3,740 prisoners, but there are 13,840 inmates, according to the Organisation of American States.

NEW YORK CITY: On Feb 8, Elon Musk’s electric car firm Tesla announced that it had invested US$1.5 billion of its cash reserves in Bitcoin back in January. The news helped to boost the cryptocurrency’s already skyrocketing price by a further 10 per cent, to a record high of more than US$44,000.

But, especially in Bitcoin’s case, what goes up can just as easily come crashing down.

READ: Bitcoin pulls back from brink of US$50,000

Bitcoin was invented in 2008 and began trading in 2009. In 2010, the value of a single Bitcoin rose from around eight-hundredths of a cent to eight cents. In April 2011, it traded at US$0.67, before subsequently climbing to US$327 by November 2015.

As recently as Mar 20 last year, Bitcoin traded at about US$6,200, but its price has since increased more than sevenfold.

Today, Bitcoin is a perfect, 12-year-old bubble. I once described gold as “shiny Bitcoin”, and characterised the metal’s price as a 6,000-year-old bubble.

That was a bit unfair to gold, which used to have intrinsic value as an industrial commodity (now largely redundant), and still does as a consumer durable widely used in jewelry.

READ: Commentary: Gold may have lost some of its shine but don’t write it off just yet

Bitcoin, by contrast, has no intrinsic value; it never did and never will. It is a purely speculative asset – a private fiat currency – whose value is whatever the markets say it is.

A WASTEFUL AND SPECULATIVE ASSET

But Bitcoin is also a socially wasteful speculative asset, because it is expensive to produce.

The cost of “mining” an additional Bitcoin – solving computational puzzles using energy-intensive digital equipment – increases at such a rate that the total stock of the cryptocurrency is capped at 21 million units.

Of course, even if Bitcoin’s protocol is not changed to allow for a larger supply, the whole exercise can be repeated through the issuance of Bitcoin 2, Bitcoin 3, and so on. The real costs of mining will thus be replicated, too.

READ: Commentary: Amid record high value, Tesla’s bitcoin bet raises uncomfortable questions

Moreover, there are already well-established cryptocurrencies – for example, Ether – operating in parallel with Bitcoin.

But as the success of government-issued fiat currencies shows, the universe of speculative bubbles is by no means restricted to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

After all, in a world with flexible prices, there is always an equilibrium where everyone believes the official fiat currency has no value – in which case it consequently has no value.

And there are infinitely many “non-fundamental” equilibria where the general price level – the reciprocal of the fiat currency’s price – either explodes and goes to infinity or implodes and falls to zero, even when the money stock remains fairly steady or does not change at all.

READ: Commentary: US dollar could face turning point soon

Finally, there is the unique “fundamental” equilibrium at which the price level (and the value of the currency) is positive and neither explodes nor implodes. Most government-issued fiat currencies appear to have stumbled into this fundamental equilibrium and stayed there.

Keynesians ignore these multiple equilibria, viewing the price level (and thus the price of money) as uniquely determined by history and updated gradually through a mechanism like the Phillips curve, which posits a stable and inverse relationship between (unexpected) inflation and unemployment.

REAL-WORLD HYPERINFLATIONS

Regardless of which perspective one adopts, real-world hyperinflations – think of Weimar Germany or the recent cases of Venezuela and Zimbabwe – that effectively reduce the value of money to zero are examples not of non-fundamental equilibria, but rather of fundamental equilibria gone bad.

In these cases, money stocks exploded, and the price level responded accordingly.

Private cryptocurrencies and public fiat currencies have the same infinite range of possible equilibria. The zero-price equilibrium is always a possibility, as is the unique, well-behaved fundamental equilibrium.

Bitcoin clearly is exhibiting neither of these equilibria at the moment. What we have instead appears to be a variant of a non-fundamental explosive price equilibrium.

READ: Commentary: The rise and further rise of Bitcoin

It is a variant because it must allow for Bitcoin to make a possible, if unexpected, jump from its current explosive price trajectory to either the nice fundamental equilibrium or the not-so-nice zero-price scenario.

This multiple-equilibrium perspective doubtless makes it appear risky to invest in intrinsically valueless assets like Bitcoin and other private cryptocurrencies.

The real world is of course not constrained by the range of possible equilibria supported by the mainstream economic theory outlined here. But that makes Bitcoin even riskier as an investment.

READ: Commentary: Is Dogecoin the next investment craze after GameStop?

BITCOIN A TEXTBOOK EXAMPLE OF EXCESS VOLATILITY

Tesla’s recent Bitcoin buy-in shows that a large additional buyer entering the market can boost the cryptocurrency’s price significantly, both directly (when markets are illiquid) and indirectly through demonstration and emulation effects.

But an exit by a single important player would likely have a similar impact in the opposite direction. Positive or negative opinions voiced by market makers will have significant effects on Bitcoin’s price.

The cryptocurrency’s spectacular price volatility is not surprising.

Deeply irrational market gyrations like the one that drove GameStop’s share price to unprecedented highs in January (followed by a significant correction) should serve as a reminder that, lacking any obvious fundamental value anchor, Bitcoin is likely to remain a textbook example of excess volatility.

This will not change with time. Bitcoin will continue to be an asset without intrinsic value whose market value can be anything or nothing. Only those with healthy risk appetites and a robust capacity to absorb losses should consider investing in it.

If none of what happened with GameStop made sense to you, listen to financial veterans break down how different players powered the surge and which listed company could see copycat attacks in CNA’s Heart of the Matter podcast:

Willem H Buiter is Visiting Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.