SBF’s paper is about growing our own timber and protecting our own interests

The gist of the paper’s recommendation is about growing your own timber in three areas, growing the stock market, growing local enterprise and to add wings on them, growing local talent with more scholarships. In the last part, there are plenty of scholarships for foreigners, so this call must be read as fine tuning the scholarships for our children and to target them at the industries, not for foreigners to go home after a few years here.

There was also the exasperating talk about allowing more foreign workers as the restriction on foreign workers was targeted at this lower level where there was a real shortage since Singaporeans did not want such works. For some queer reasons, perhaps someone thought the need to fill up the Singapore’s equivalents of Chennai Business Park and Mumbai Financial Centre (MBFC) with foreigners should have priorlty over having more low level workers and thus the cut is at the worker’s level and not at the PME level.

The sick stock market is now spoken openly. The difficulties to raise fund from our stock market with its life hooked on life support is telling. Stock prices and trading have run to a stand still though computer trading still showed a little misleading life in the market. The reality is best felt by the businesses that found raising money is a dying stock market near impossible. How’s that for the truth?

The call for the revival of the stock market is loud and clear. GIC that is investing the people’s savings should apportion a greater percentage of its investment to support local businesses by supporting their prices in the stock market. Did someone said the CPF money belongs to the employers and not the employees? Shouldn’t the employers that are contributing to the CPF’s biggest share be looked after by the money they contributed?

But before the GIC pump in more money back into the local stock market, they better understand what is the real problem of the stock market. Why is it dying? If it is suffering from Aids, please do not try to scratch its balls. It would not help. The Aids is the killer, not the itching. Unfortunately no one wants to see the problem as it is. The elephant in the room is very difficult to notice.

Investing CPF money in other stock market is exactly like hiring foreigners instead of hiring Singaporean. Here they are spending money to grow foreign companies in foreign stock markets and neglecting our own stocks in our own market.

Similarly, giving scholarships to foreigners and not to Singaporeans achieved the same effect, growing foreign timber and neglecting our own timber.

So, would this serious paper, with so many heads putting so much effort into it, count or mean anything?  When would there be a change of mentality, to grow our own timber, to start our charity drive at home?

By the way, would they even acknowledge the problem faced by the local businesses? Would they acknowledge that the stock market is failing? Who said so? The market is the pink of health, the best market in Asia, the Number One stock market in Asia. What is the SBF talking about a moribund market?

Someone must be talking nonsense or someone must be stupid and cannot see the real stuff, or just listening to the good stuff. No problem, all is fine.