The end game is Zero

We may be a multi culture and multi religion country, but the influence of Buddhism is widely felt and even practised as a way of life. Or at least one aspect of Buddhism is gaining prevalence without anyone realising it. Buddhism believes in emptiness. In the end all material things do not matter. We come naked and should go naked or empty handed. This is now a national philosophy. Many years ago we started this great saving scheme called CPF and the workers and employers contributed as much as 50% of an employee's income to the scheme. It was so successful that the Govt even switched its pension scheme to this scheme. The people were happy. They have enough in the CPF to buy their homes and then a handsome sum for retirement. The status quo lasted till probably the late 1970s or early 1980s when the savings in the CPF grew to such a size that it became very tempting to everyone. The CPF members not only smiled when the monthly statement arrived. They were rich with the amount of money in their accounts. And I am talking about the average workers, not ministers. As they said, the rest is history. Today, only a few lucky ones would have some decent money left in their CPF on retirement or to be passed down to their children. Every cent has been computed by all the interested parties to have a slice of it and leaving the owner practically just enough to meet his last rites. Some may say, but they still got a flat. Yes they do. But this is also computed that by the time they retire, they will have to trade it for some money to live on. And if they use reverse mortgages, that will be the perfect scheme in the game of zero. At the end no flat and no money. For those who have some money to live on and not having to trade in their flats, the flats also will one day become zero in value. I don't think this philosophy is Confucianist. It is fundamentally Buddhist in nature. The Game of Zero has been perfected. Come with nothing, leave with nothing. One qualification, it applies to the average Singaporeans only. PRs, foreigners and the rich are not part of this game.

Bloggers unite

Blog this shit: Open source information scares the pants of governments April 1, 2010 · Leave a Comment “If you bloggers self-organize and attach yourselves like leeches to specific issues, corporations, organizations, challenges, you will be the intelligence minutemen of this century. The power is in your hands. There aren’t enough guns to kill us all, and Haliburton can’t build the jails fast enough to keep us down.” I copied the above from Temasek Hedge. This is a video clip of a speech by Robert D Steele, a former intelligence officer, who said a lot of things that needed to be said. Other than the power of the internet, blogging and the role of bloggers, he talked about how govts treat its people as commodities, how govt benefitted from sponging the people's money, how America is committing war crimes and profitting from war, how central banks needed to be closed, how bankrupt America is today and awaiting to break up, and how you and me and every blogger can contribute to a better world. I strongly recommend everyone to listen intently to this video clip posted in Temasek Hedge.

Too much effort to write about rising cost of living

University fees increased, electricity increased, sigh, fee increases are no longer exciting news. It is happening almost daily so I am feeling tired of writing about them. Even rental of market stalls can shoot up for no good reason except a change of owners. HDB flat selling at $650k not high enough. Now Bishan EM selling at $900k with $170k COV. What else is going to go up? Salary, yes salary must go up or else who can afford to buy those multi milllion dollar properties. As for worker's salary, tkk. Worker's salary got to be kept competitive, not low, or else all the jobs will go away. Prices of cars were the highest in the world and are jumping higher. No country can ever dream of beating us in this.

Prices of resale HDB flats are stabilising

They have solved the problem of high prices. The resale price increase is getting smaller. COV increased from $12k to $24k in the previous quarter. The last quarter the increase was only $1k, at $25k. Good, more people now can afford to buy resale flats. Just prepare to fork out $25k first. And they are going to build another 12k flats this year and maybe more. So problem solved. Or is it? These flats will only be ready in 3 years time. In the meantime where are these people going to stay? And there are still several hundred thousand new citizens and new arrivals coming in daily. How are they going to add to the demand? How many out there are still waiting to buy their first flat and cannot afford to? And with this kind of indecent prices, is it supposed to be good? Have we reach a satisfactory equilibrium? But no need to bother now. Problem already gone. Everyone happy already. Job well done. BTO is the way to go.

A sickly feeling

We paid $350m to $400m to watch English football. And this amount is about 13% of the takings of EPL. Got it? This little piece of rock with a population of less than 4 millions financing the EPL to the tune of 13%! And Hongkong with a larger population, thus more viewership,0 paid less for the rights. Let's try to do the arithmetics. 10% of 4m is 400,000 people. If 10% of the population watch EPL, it comes to $1000 per head. If 1% watches, it will go up to $10,000 per head. Quite a sum for a past time really. Another way of looking at it, 4m people paid $400m while the rest of the world, 6b people, paid $2.6b or less than 50c each. If we take 50% of the rest of the world, it is still less than $1 each. With that kind of money, we can be a major shareholder of EPL.