Myth 221 - Singaporeans are hard to please

Is that so? The official line is that Singaporeans are fuzzy, choosy and very difficult to please. I don't know how people got that impression. My impression is that Singaporeans are so easy to please. They can be easily appeased and will feel very grateful if given a few dollars. The 1% CPF hike is an excellent example of how easily contented are Singaporeans. The $10 to $40 hike in CPF contribution is already a call for celebration. They were so happy, even when they cannot touch the money for another 30 years. So how can Singaporeans be called choosy and fuzzy and hard to please? Actually there are some Singaporeans that are hard to please. Even with salary that can buy them a million dollar private property every year and they arestill not happy, and asking for more. But these are few and should not be generalised. So the fuzzy, choosy and hard to please Singaporean is a myth or a legend?

Banks should do the right thing?

The Obama govt is trying to cut down the banks to size. Banks should return to do traditional bankings, ie deposit taking and not investing activities. Banks should not be allowed to do all kinds of businesses and grow to a size that they cannot afford to fail. Smaller banks will make the banking system safer. Making the banking system safer is THE right thing to do. The last financial crisis is a warning that if it is not done, the next one could wipe out everything. But no, no one is taking heed even if it is the right thing to do. The popular thing to do is to continue with the looting. The bigger the banks the better as they could muscle in to all deals, conflict of interest is never a consideration. Moral righteousness is not an issue. The issue is to make as much money as possible, at all cost. The looting mentality is so prevalent that it must have sicken the Obama administration. And it is reported that the legal fees for the bankruptcy proceedings of Lehman is now US$730m and will hit $1b. And those in the know knew that many of the charges were exorbitant and questionable. But that is the game big financial thieves are playing. And people just smile and say that's the way it is. Join in the game and have fun. Who cares about whether it is the right thing or wrong thing to do. This join in and have fun mentality of irresponsibility is sweeping across the world. We can also see it manifesting in our way of life. Everyone is also grabbing whatever they can. That's the way it is. It is not a matter of doing the right thing but what and how much one can get out of it. This is the new morality of the 21st Century.

Hanging modern day thieves

The New York SEC is throwing charges at Goldman Sachs for financial frauds and selling fraudulent CDOs out to cheat the innocent investors. So far there appeared to be strong prima facie evidences to bring Goldman Sachs to the courts, but whether anyone will be put behind bars is another matter. The final outcome could be a hefty fine on Goldman Sachs as an organisation and not a single thief found guilty. And they could continue with their game of deceit and theft. What the public have failed to see or not led to see is the role of the SEC. Is SEC culpable, an accomplice to all these big thieves, abetting and helping them in their fraudulent ways? The SEC is a regulator to provide a set of rules and regulations, and a sound system, a level playing field, that is fair to all players in the finance industry, including the stock market. What if the SEC connived, innocently or uninnocently, undestood or misunderstood the dangers of a system that they approved for the investors, should they also be hanged? The Senate and Congress must investigate the role of the SEC as well, the financial systems, rules and regulations and practices to see if the SEC is also at fault. Looking at the unfair practices, a far from level playing field, and the unfair advantages of the big funds against the small investors, the SEC is as guilty as Goldman Sachs and must be answerable to their misdeeds, if proven. All thieves, whether they be big financial organisations or regulators, are thieves if proven so and must be hanged.

May Day rejoicing

Our CBF workers were rewarded yesterday with a gift that would make them happy for the next 30 or 40 years. The employer will raise their CPF contribution by 1%. Half of this will go to Medisave Account and the other half will go to the Special Account. As these accounts are not to be touched for a very long time, the workers will have a very long time to enjoy that special smile on their faces when they received their CPF monthly statements. For a worker earning $2,000 pm, he would get $20 more monthly in his CPF. This will work out to be $240 pa and $2,400 for every ten years. Adding interest, this will be quite a significant sum to appear in his Medisave and Special Accounts. Now they are celebrating this windfall in the May Day Celebration.

Reflection on Labour Day

Labour was a big thing in the early part of the last century. The workers traded their muscles for food. They included the peasants and farmers and the industrial workers. Today we are talking about skilled workers and not much of labourers. Labourers are nearly non existent in the Singapore context. There are labourers, but mostly foreigners. This is a great achievement that we may find Labour Day a misnomer. Our workers have progressed up the skilled and economic ladder and are much more better off than in the past. In 1965, the average wages of a worker was more like $400 pm. Today it is like $800 pm with skilled workers getting $1,500 before overtime. A higher skilled worker could get $2,000 and the supervisory level about $3,000. A clerical staff was earning $400 and now $1,800. All these is good on paper if we don't factor in inflation. Are our workers that much better off than their predecessors? The biggest portion of their income has gone to housing and transportation, the basic needs. A 3 rm flat used to cost $7k and now $200k, or 30 times what it used to be. Their salary is at best 4 or 5 times what it was before. But overall, living conditions and quality of life have taken leaps and bounds for the better. The upper end of the labour curve, or the brain labour, the managers and professionals too took a bigger leap forward. Their gains are more significant, from $3k to $10k/$100k, depending on how high up one is. This professional and senior managerial group enjoys the biggest improvement in their income and lifestyle befitting that of a first world talented manpower. We have many who are very comfortable in where they are and with income equivalent to those in America and European countries. But in certain areas there are some misgivings. Our top echelon of talents is somehow still found wanting. For so many years, many of our establishments still found our locals not up to mark and the necessity to fill those positions by foreigners is still a norm. It is quite sad to see the top notch local financial professionals still unable to fit the shoes of our large local corporations. Are they duds or really that incompetent? Quite an embarrassing thought really. Why are we still unable to find our local boys and girls good enough to fill CEO positions and why are foreigners found to be better? Perhaps we should continue to celebrate Labour Day for as long as our local professionals are still regarded as labour, in a way, until the need to replace them with foreign talents is no longer needed. I wonder when that day will come or will never come. In the meantime we continue to build our local corporations into giants competing in the international arena and find suitable foreigners to run them. I wonder how our corporations could have grown to those size on local talents' contribution but then found that they have outgrown our local talents and needing foreign talents to pick up from that level. And the foreign talents rode in like knights in shining armour to teach our local boys and girls how to run the corporations that they have started and built up. They are have skills of gods acquired from heaven.