My A Team

What is an A Team? I can handpick many A Teams according to my fancy. For one, I can pick from all the President or Overseas Scholars and I can even fill the whole Parliament, all 84 of them. Another version of my A Team is to pick the best of each profession, a few doctors, a few lawyers, a few architects, a few engineers, a few academics. There you are, another A Tea, all excellent in making money. Or to be more colourful, I can pick Jack Neo, Zoe Tay, Christopher Lee, Tao Li, Lam Chi Beng, Mamat Mardan, Agu, a few more sportsmen and women, and I will have an A Team of celebrities. All these great talents of the respective fields have one thing in common, talent in what they are doing. The question is where is their interest, where is their heart? No matter how great they are in their respective professions, do they bring along their hearts to serve the people, care for the people, put the people's welfare first? What is likely to happen is that a footballer may think of how to make football more profitable, an actor may want to make more money for the movie industry, or a top professionals may transfer his knowledge in making money to making more money from the people instead of for the people. What we need is an A Team with a heart, thinking of how to make life better for the people, not slamming them with a few hundred thousands and make the people pay for the rest of their lives, not increasing fees, fares to make more profits from the people. Where is such an A Team? I can't find it among my A Teams of super talents.

Myth 198 - Fear of collapse with new party

There is this myth that is circulating that the demise of the current ruling party will lead to the collapse of paradise as a country. Without the current ruling party, there will be uncertainties, fear and flight of capital and investments, and everything will simply breakdown. It is just like being under the curse of a wicked witch, overnight and we are gone. To believe in such heresy is being too simplistic, too naive and, very insulting to the intellect of the people. What is very likely for a new party to come to power is that there are enough able men and women to be elected to replace the current ruling party. And these able people need not be first class honours in everything. As long as they are able and decent people with sufficient knowledge/education, and a good heart to lead, they will be good enough. This country is not run by 82 politicians. It is run by an army of very able men and women in the civil service, stats boards and the uniformed groups. They will not simply disappear at the stroke of midnight. They will continue to serve whichever party that comes to power. To claim that the demise of the current ruling party is the end of everything is like saying that all these thousands of able men and women are of no significance, that they have no ability and no mind of their own. They could not function without the current ruling party. In reality, among these able men and women, many are even brighter than many of the politicians that we have. There are enough talents among them to form several cabinets, to fill the GRCs many times over. Paradise will survive with or without the current ruling party. In the 70s we used to claim that one block of 5 rm HDB flat has enough talents to run the country. Today, there are hundreds of blocks of 5 rm HDB flats, executive flats, and not counting the landed properties and private properties. Who say we have no talents? Is paradise in such a deplorable state, so fragile and vulnerable? What the hell have we been doing all these years to nurture and cultivate the best of our talents and then claim that we have no talents? Didn't we have been told that we have the best civil service, the best armed forces, the best of everything? But no political talents!

Fixing the affordability myth

HDB flats are affordable! You must believe that this is true. I swear that this is true. Yes, it is true under certain conditions. There is enough money in the CPF. If not enough, it can be made enough by increasing the amount available from the CPF. But this option is at its limit and can hardly get higher unless money from the Special Account and Medisave Account can also be used. Another way is to prolong the payment, from 20 years to 30 years to 50 years. And all these assume that the flat buyer is forever employed in all his 30 or 50 years of living. What Singaporeans should ask for is for a reduction in the amount of CPF that can be used for purchase of HDB flats. And the duration for repayment should also be shortened. This will allowed more money to be saved for retirement and no need for any CPF Life or fearing that there is not enough money left in the CPF after paying for an affordable HDB flat. Ok, some of you must have stood up and wanting to pounce on me for suggesting reduction of CPF and the duration for repayment. Let me explain. If the people has only $X in the CPF, or the repayment is shortened to say 10 or 15 years, his affordability must come down if not all of $X can be used. He can only afford to buy a flat that cost less than $X. Now you get what I mean? The policy of pricing HDB flat is based on affordability and not on the cost of building the flat. So if the buyer can afford to pay less, the price of HDB flats must come down accordingly. The problem today is that a buyer can use nearly all his CPF and can stretch to 30 or maybe 50 years. This will increase his affordability to buy more expensive flats. So HDB can price its flats accordingly and proclaim that HDB flats are affordable. Today's affordable is all your money in the CPF for 30 or 50 years. This is translated to mean you will not have much of a saving until you have paid off the affordable flat. Got it?

Living in the past

This post could also answer some of the questions by Grunt above. I have read Lee Wei Ling's article 'Medicine is not just a career, but a calling' in the Sunday Times. What came out clearly is that Wei Ling is one of those near extinct specimen that is still living today, out of phase and out of time. The world has changed so much that chivalry is dead, compassion and helping the needy are only for publicity, not intended to be a genuine calling from the heart. This is best manifested in the high profile and high budget shows to attract people to part with their money by the sheer power of the media and show biz personalities. it is all a show. Medicine and medical science have advanced in leaps and bounds. So has human values and greed. Today, if a medical professional, or for that matter any professional, who is not earning enough to live a flashy lifestyle, he is a failure. He may be sidelined by his peers or scorned at for living in the idealistic past. Everything must be priced as high as the client can afford to pay. It is called 'affordable'. There is no time to bother about the actual cost or how deep a hole the client has dug to bury himself. This kind of thinking can be seen in another article in the same paper on the price of new HDB flats by Joyce Teo. She quoted a Albert Lu, the MD of C&H Realty who said, 'for those seeking a new flat to live in, it would not really matter whey they buy. If they were to buy high and sell low, they would also be able to buy a replacement home at a low price.' If this kind of rationalisation is acceptable, then HDB should go ahead and price at any price it wants, after all the owner is going to stay there for good. So buying a 4rm at $500K or $300k does not make any difference if it is owner occupied. Really? What a clever professional view! Back to Medicine is a calling. Yes it is a calling. Money is calling. The frightening thing is that many of our national leaders answered the calling to serve the people and they came from professions where the calling of Money is stronger. Now we can understand why money is the key in policy making. And why affordable has taken on a new meaning.

Long term investment and potential long term losses

The losses incurred by our investments in foreign banks is now under public scrutiny and attacks. Many people are just very unhappy and are very concerned about the huge losses from public money. They have not related to how these losses could ultimately affect their savings in their CPF or to the overall financial well being of the country. If the losses are realised, and huge, it must come from somewhere. There must be a big hole somewhere waiting to be patched. The only comforting news is that it is long term investment, maybe 10 years, 20 years or 200 years. In the long term, everything will be alright. The stock prices will come back up, the property prices will come back up, and so will be our investments. These are the general expectations of how things will be from past experiences. What if the fundamentals have changed? What if the rot is of a different kind, HIV or a new mutant that is incurable? The problems with the banks we have invested, and in many of these foreign banks are of a different nature. They are not structural or cyclical. They are due to frauds and mismanagement. Many of these institutions are empty shells, being robbed over the years by their management but dressed up as respectable and sound financial institutions. The money they are asking for their rescue is mindblogging. If the trouble of these banks are cyclical or structural, it is only a matter of time before they return to their former health. The question now is that it may not happen at all, or it may take a few generations to rebuild them from scratch. The same analogy can be applied to our stock market. Under normal circumstances the stock prices will rebound and go back to where they were before. But would it be that way? To understand this we must know why the stock prices were high and why they became so low. If they are just structural or due to cyclical economic swings, then there are hopes that they will come back. What if the high and lows were due to different factors, systemic flaws, structural flaws? As examples, what if the listed companies were run by crooks that we have no control over them, or the business models and the accounting numbers were all fictitious? What if the high prices were due to in flow of foreign funds which have dried up? What if the foreign funds that were here were just for short term, to exploit the weaknesses of our system and run when they have made enough or being exposed, or the systemic flaws were patched up? Maybe instead of investing in bankrupt or empty shelled foreign institutions, it is better to plough the money into our own healthy and well regulated companies and stop throwing good money away at organisations that we have no control whatsoever. We need to build a healthy base at home and attract good quality money here, not the other way. In the long term, a rotten apple can never be returned to what it was before. Bad investments in rotten apples are simply bad investments, down the drain. Habis.