Illusion of payrise

High inflation Major cause: Restructuring Strong currency cannot offset domestic pressures on prices. DBS analysis. Oct 8, 2007 Singapore exchange rate policy struggles with inflation Commentary by DBS Group Research (source: The Edge daily) SINGAPORE’s CPI inflation hit a 12-year high of 2.6% year on year (y-o-y) in July. While this was partially due to a two percentage point hike in the GST in July, some structural changes in the economy are also at play. Apart from imported inflation, which can be addressed with the exchange rate policy, much of the current inflationary pressure stems from domestic sources. Plainly, exchange rate policy is not very effective in dealing with domestically driven inflation. Policymakers will need to utilise non-monetary policies to complement the exchange rate policy if inflation is to be kept in check. The above is part of an article posted in littlespeck.com. What is actually affecting the people today is that their income is shrinking. Yes, they are getting a huge pay cut without knowing it. And to maintain their same purchasing power, a huge pay rise is necessary just to go back to square on. The illusion of huge pay rise is as good as watching David Copperfield and his magic show. It is all an illusion. There is no pay rise for those who got a pay rise, except those who got a very substantial payrise. Those who got little or no payrise is getting a paycut.

Chinese vote not lost

This is what Khairy believed. He believed that after all that had happened, after all that he had said and done, the Chinese vote is still with him. And for that matter the Indian vote. And he is confident that he has done the right thing and the minority votes will still support him. We will see.

Like that also got?

The Singapore Embassy has came out officially to dismiss Juwono's claimed that MM was the stumbling block in the DCA ETA agreements and that Singapore added new conditions to the agreements after it was signed by Juwono himself. I believe the Singapore side of the story. Singapore will not make any statement officially on such an important issue without getting its facts right. And what Juwono had said, sadly, is a reflection of the quality and mentality of the Indonesian leader. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

Children shattered and parents protest

The recent PSLE seemed to be taking its toll on the children if a letter writer is to be believed. Guo Weifu complained that his son was in the top class but came back shattered after the PSLE maths exam. He checked and found that many children also suffered the same fate. The questions were too tough and many were not able to complete half or more of the questions. This is indeed frightening when anything less than 100 marks is deemed no good. And the confidence of the children were literally smashed. Poor children. Poor parents. What is happening huh?

Medisave money can use a bit only

My father in law has stones in his kidney and he was admitted into a private hospital. The so called specialist recommended him to go for a minor operation the next day. As he was in pain, he decided to go ahead without asking about the cost of the operation. End up his stayed in the hospital for 4 days and 3 night. His hospital bill was $11K. Only can use $1K from his medisave to pay. The rest has to be paid by cash. Is medisave really that good?? The above was posted in Sammyboy. If it is true, then what is our money in the Medisave for? Huh, our money or not our money? Isn't the Medisave meant to pay for our hospitalisation? Or is it to be rationed for 20 hospitalisation stays in the future? Jesus!