CPF encouraging people to contribute more to Medisave

We would like to encourage low-income SEPs and informal workers to fulfill their 2009 Medisave liabilities by 31 July 2010 so as to enjoy the maximum chances of winning up to $3,000 in cash at the next MCD in September 2010. Who would want to lock up their money into a scheme that they have no say as to how to use it? And in many cases they may not use it till the last day when they pass away? On the other hand it sounds so good. Save the money to pay big hospital bills when they are hospitalised. And they better save more or else with the bills going to be bigger and bigger, they will not be able to pay. I wonder how much could these people save and whether they can catch up with the rate the hospital bills are rising? Another good thing about this, it comes with a lucky draw. The scheme is already so good and now got chance to win money some more.

It is getting nearer

Everything seems to be progressing smoothly. Now we shall be waiting for the new boundaries and a list of new faces to appear before the big day is announced. Oh, and plenty of good news coming too. I am sure the opposition parties have a long list of agenda to thrash during the election rally. One of my wish list is to revert the CPF schemes to its original terms with the new terms as optional, voluntary. This will allow the people to withdraw their Medisave, minimum sum and also to decide if they want or do not want to sink their money in any insurance schemes. Of course the high HDB prices will be a great issue to boot. And hospitalisation bill that seems to go one way will be good for discussion too. Hope the opposition parties are will prepared this time and goreng the real issues as best they could, and not be disqualified for some silly mistakes. The first salvo has been fired at the Town Councils.

Geithner is blaming China for not floating the Yuan

The world’s financial crisis is due to China’s fault for not allowing the Yuan to float, and for the big funds to speculate on it. The Americans are heavily in debt because of China’s cheap Yuan, and cheap labour too. It has nothing to do with the expensive labour and high living of the Americans. And the Europe financial crisis too must be the Chinese doing. They have nothing to do with it. The Europeans are not to be blamed unlike the Asian crisis when all the Asian govts were blamed for mismanaging their countries. The remedy to save the world financial system is to float the Yuan. As simple as that. When that happens, all the big western investment funds, and Asians too, will collude, scheme and conspire to destroy the Yuan to bankrupt the Chinese Treasury. They are all waiting on the side line for the biggest treasury to open up for them to loot. China must be alert and be extremely careful in this evil call to float the Yuan, to allow it to be attacked. And they have all the reasons to. Low wages, high income gap, too export oriented economy, authoritative central govt, corruption, minority problems, etc etc, all pointing to a system that is waiting to crumble like a house of cards. And when China relent under US pressure, that would be the day of its collapse. South Korea is getting wary of the pack of wolves and is the latest country that is curbing big time currency speculation. It has joined Russia, Brazil, Taiwan and Columbia to restrict currency speculation. More countries will soon join the league if they know how precarious it is with the big funds waiting to pounce on them like a wolf pack.

Some nice portraits

Some new faces that could strike big in the fashion scene.

Paying $36m for bungalow in Sentosa Cove

This is touted as the most expensive purchase of a private property here. It is still not in the region of $500m like the Michael Jackson or Elvis Presley estates. But theirs are not 15,000 or 20,000 sq ft but measured in acres. This Sentosa Cove property is still very expensive as it is on a 99 year lease and not freehold. A Chinese national bought this. And it was reported that 4 members of a Chinese family bought a unit each at prices of $15.9m to $26m. The expression of 'What is $10m?' becomes very real. There are several thousand billionaires in China and many tens of thousands of millionaires with net worth in the hundreds of millions. And if a sizeable number of them think of parking some of their wealth here, they could have bought up everything in Sentosa Cove. And we are not counting the rich Indians, Indonesians, Malaysians and all over the world who just have too much money and need to park them somewhere. How many more luxury properties can we built to sell to the super rich before we run out of space? The question is why are we selling our precious land and space so happily? Who is benefitting from the transactions and where are the money going to? We have great and meticulous planning in public housing. We will house our people in better and better public housing at affordable prices. One thing for sure, public housing will remain public housing and the quality will be as good as the public can afford them. In the private sector, the quality will also be as good as the buyers who can afford them. And with an abundance of super rich where money is not an issue, whatever the developers built there will be takers. Eventually we could be developing foreign enclaves of super rich in some select corners akin to the foreign concessions in China during the colonial days. The difference is that we did it voluntarily while the Chinese were coerced into parting with their prime estates. Is this what we want? Is this the future demography of Singapore? Or would we want to plan for the Singaporeans to occupy the prime estates at an affordable price by tweaking some planning policies? We have restrictions in landed properties, but this ruling is bypass very often with exceptions. And the landed properties in Sentosa is also an exception. When the British were here, the prime lands were mostly in their hands. They were the colonial masters and looking after their own interests. Today we are charting the course of our own future and the places for our future generations. Where are we going in terms of housing and estate planning? Johore or Batam or Bintang for our own citizens?