Fallen Grace

The righteous and trusted have fallen. Once they were the number One Family in Taiwan. They were pointing their fingers at other people for being corrupt. Today, Chen Shui Bian, the Taiwanese President, is in jail. His wife, the former First Lady has just pleaded guilty to forgery. His son and daughter in law are also accomplice to the crime of money laundering in the millions. Trust and righteousness may only be hiding behind a thin veil of truth.

I posted this article on 27 Dec 08

Wishful thinking or wicked intent In March this year the official figure given was that Temasek was managing $185b of assets. If these were in equity or equity related assets and stocks, my guesstimate is that it would have lost 50% of its value at least. But the figure will be much better if kept in fixed deposits or less risky assets that are saved from the financial crisis. If the loss is in the 50% region, I said if, the loss must be made up from somewhere. I fear the money in CPF. Would the minimum sum and Medisave be further increased? Would the withdrawal age be further delayed? Would there be new measures to shift the goal posts? There are now more reasons to wish that our investments are intact, that the talented fund managers are doing well to keep them growing or at least not losing. There are more reasons not to change the govt so that the talents and the continuity will help to safeguard our assets and investments, and our future. The CPF is like a sacred cow. It is the people's hard earned money and must rightfully return to the people for their own benefit at the earliest possible time. Definitely not till they are dead or near death. This is simply bad. I have all the time this bad feeling, and I can be totally wrong on this, that there are people with designs on our CPF money. To keep the CPF for as long as possible to enable them a cheap source of fund for their own investment schemes. I hope I am wrong. I hope the real reasons to keep the money for as long as they can is really for the good of the people, in the interests of the owners. But should anyone really have wrongful designs, they must know that the designs are wicked and will do them no good. The first is the intent to 'sapu' money. No one should ever think of it as the CPF money rightly belongs to the people and depriving the people from getting it back is already sinful, if not criminal. Decent and honourable people who believe in not doing evil should never harbour such thoughts. The second intent to use the money for whatever schemes or things, may include thoughts of returning the gains to the people, if there are gains, may have some mitigating factors to lower the ill effects of the first intent. But if it is just to exploit this cheap source of fund with no regards to rewarding the owner of the money, it is unforgiveable. Seeing it in any other way is still a dirty thing to do. Do I sound like preaching or delivering a sermon? The rights and wrongs of such acts and intents are difficult to dispute or wish away. Do not have designs on the people's hard earned money for private interests. If there are, it is better to let the owners know and seek their permission and forgiveness. Do not temper with money that is not yours.

Where is the MISTAKE?

From New York to Singapore, from the global international crisis to national recession, where is the mistake? Or better, where is the word 'MISTAKE' been mentioned? The truth is that no one make any mistake. It just happened. Everyone is caught in a world wide tsunami that came from nowhere. Make no mistake about it. It is just a phenomenon that we have to live with, or everyone has to live with.

How much is $58 billion?

With $58 billion HDB could build 580,000 units of flats at $100k each. This is almost all the flats owned by Singaporeans now. With $58b, it could buy 290,000 pieces of Mercedes Benz and line up the whole of PIE. With $58b, it will be more than the combined worth of the top 50 riches people in Singapore. With $58b, the govt can give to each Singaporean family $100,000 in cash. How long will it take to make back $58b? At 10% rate of return on investment on Temasek's balance of $127b, it may take 30 years. But if all the investments can double their value in 5 years, then it may take less than 3 years. The faster way of recouping the loss is to go to Sands when it opens. Place a $58b bet on red or black and one spin of the wheel could recover everything. $58b is $58,000,000,000!

31% and not 40%

My earlier post quoted Tharman's figure of 40% loss which was 2% better than the market's fall of 42%. Yesterday Lim Hwee Hua quoted 31% which was much better than the earlier number. The exact number is a loss of $58b. We have outperformed the market. Fund managers have been using this as a yardstick to measure their performance. Now that they have outperformed the market, would they be asking for a bigger bonus? In the same report in Today, it quoted the Kuwaiti sovereign fund losing US$31b out of a US$300b fund. Now that is just about 10% loss. Remarkable performance. We should recruit some of their fund managers and we could do much better next round. Just wondering if the Kuwaiti fund managers were local or foreign talents.