The above is the title of Ng E Jay’s article in his blog. And I would like to say that I completely disagree with him. Come on E Jay, you are thinking like an American now.
‘Cuts to the US military budget on the magnitude projected if the Supercommitte’s political impasse fails to be resolved would inevitably results in a significant scaling down of US military commitments worldwide, include an enormous downsizing of its global naval capabilities. This would invariably lead to increased geopolitical tensions in the ASEAN region and beyond.’ Ng E Jay
‘US military commitments worldwide’ is an American terminology to mean conducting wars worldwide. East Asia and the world would be much safer than it is today. There will be little dictators trying to throw their weights around but these will be limited to local skirmishes and small warfare. Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi will still be running the shows. There will be no big scale wars like in Iraq and Afghanistan and in Libya. Don’t forget the Korean and Vietnam Wars. There will be smaller civil wars which dictators could easily suppress without the US and Nato interfering by supplying more arms and weapons.
And small pesky countries would not dare to agitate or provoke bigger countries to risk a war on themself. China, the non belligerent country that has been painted as the trigger happy one, will be even friendlier when no pests dare to irritate her.
The trigger happy Americans are able to conduct wars everywhere exactly because they have the money to do so. Without the military budget, the world would be much more peaceful and safer. The South Koreans would not dare to rattle their sabers daily at the North Koreans. Any Singaporean who thinks that the North Koreans are going to attack Singapore should go get admitted to IMH.
The pesky countries of Asean would not dare capture Chinese sailors or make nonsensical claims against Chinese territories or ever raring to go to war with China. There will be a new balance of power and a new status quo. Peace will have a better chance when little pests know that they cannot stir trouble and think they can get away with it.
An aggressive evil power is the temptation for small countries to destabilize the region, with the evil power nudging them from behind. Fear not, for the evil power is behind them. It is a good thing if the defence budget of the US is slashed drastically. Then calm and peace shall return. They would not have the money to start wars everywhere.
All the wars are started by the Americans. Make no mistake about it. Remove the blinkers to see the truth. They create the tension, the instability, the suspicion, and then invited themselves in to be the policeman, the peacemaker, the leader. And of course, to sell more weapons.
11/24/2011
Pension is 10% of annual salary at most
Hsien Loong has spoken on the impending findings of the Salary Review Committee, likely to be out in time for Christmas. He touched a bit on how the pension scheme works and that the max a minister will get is 10% of his annual salary. In his short revelation, everything is in percentages and nothing absolute was revealed.
What is 10% of annual salary? Or what is annual salary? Does this annual salary comprise the basic monthly salary, 13th month AWS, performance bonus and productivity bonus based on the GDP? If the annual total is $10m, 10% will be $1m, assuming that last year the bonus was really huge and the average was $10m per minister. And if the bonus was bigger, then the percentage will be smaller and vice versa.
If the pension is based on annual salary which includes many variable bonuses, presumably the pension should be variable over the years as well. But this is just too perplexing to compute. I would rather believe that the pension is based on the fixed monthly salary. Given a minister’s salary of say $3m a year, the pension of 10% should be about $300k. Right or not?
If the pension is computed using gross annual salary that includes bonuses, then something is not in order as the performance factor and GDP growth should no longer be applicable to a pensioner. As the pension is a monthly payment, even the 13th AWS should not be in the computation. It should be a simple computation based on the last drawn monthly salary and nothing else. Tiok boh? What about allowances?
The other problem about adding all the bonuses into the annual salary is that it is going to vary from year to year. So ministers retiring on a good year like George and his colleagues, the pension is going to be better than those who retire in a bad year. This doesn’t make sense.
So I would think the annual salary is based on 12 months or at most 13 months. And definitely all other allowances for all kinds of appointments other than the minister’s salary will be excluded. We will have to see what the final figure is, if it is not a state secret like the cost of building a HDB flat. If not at the very best, the figures given will be only a matter of percentages.
No self respecting human resource professionals will include performance bonuses and the country’s GDP performance as components in the computation of a person’s pension. Pension does not take into account individual or the country’s performance into the future.
What is 10% of annual salary? Or what is annual salary? Does this annual salary comprise the basic monthly salary, 13th month AWS, performance bonus and productivity bonus based on the GDP? If the annual total is $10m, 10% will be $1m, assuming that last year the bonus was really huge and the average was $10m per minister. And if the bonus was bigger, then the percentage will be smaller and vice versa.
If the pension is based on annual salary which includes many variable bonuses, presumably the pension should be variable over the years as well. But this is just too perplexing to compute. I would rather believe that the pension is based on the fixed monthly salary. Given a minister’s salary of say $3m a year, the pension of 10% should be about $300k. Right or not?
If the pension is computed using gross annual salary that includes bonuses, then something is not in order as the performance factor and GDP growth should no longer be applicable to a pensioner. As the pension is a monthly payment, even the 13th AWS should not be in the computation. It should be a simple computation based on the last drawn monthly salary and nothing else. Tiok boh? What about allowances?
The other problem about adding all the bonuses into the annual salary is that it is going to vary from year to year. So ministers retiring on a good year like George and his colleagues, the pension is going to be better than those who retire in a bad year. This doesn’t make sense.
So I would think the annual salary is based on 12 months or at most 13 months. And definitely all other allowances for all kinds of appointments other than the minister’s salary will be excluded. We will have to see what the final figure is, if it is not a state secret like the cost of building a HDB flat. If not at the very best, the figures given will be only a matter of percentages.
No self respecting human resource professionals will include performance bonuses and the country’s GDP performance as components in the computation of a person’s pension. Pension does not take into account individual or the country’s performance into the future.
11/23/2011
TPP – The Poverty Pact
The Beggar’s Sect was a very big social gang in the fables and legends of the Chinese pugilistic literature. It was a big gang of beggars that boasted of great martial arts exponents to protect their turfs and areas of operation. They set up their own rules, collect protection fees from their members and would beat up challengers to their territories and their controlled businesses.
The thing is that the Beggar’s Sect was mainly for beggars, and the rich would keep themselves away from the Sect. The Sect continued their existence with members from the begging community.
There seems to be a revival of the Beggar’s Sect in the Pacific region, led by the Americans, the country that is deep in debt. It is roping in more indebted countries as members in a pact called the TPP, standing for the Trans Pacific Partnership, or is it The Poverty Pact? And it is beating all the drums to make it attractive and teasing China to join the pact. The thing is whether China, with all the money in its treasury, and being the biggest creditor of the US, would want to join the poor countries that could only shout but with nothing left in its treasury?
Would China be deceived into joining the TPP or The Poverty Pact? Anyway, with Asean as an established regional grouping of countries and linking up with the big economic countries of the world, is there a need for a new pact to be led by a poor country from the eastern Pacific coast that is many thousands of miles away? Why should these Asian and Southeast Asian countries be led by a country in America? Are they that helpless, and lack of leaders to need to be led by someone else who simply walked in and say I am your leader?
And there is also an APEC. So why dance to a new pact because the Americans say so? APEC and Asean are all redundant and there is a need for another new animal to get things done?
The thing is that the Beggar’s Sect was mainly for beggars, and the rich would keep themselves away from the Sect. The Sect continued their existence with members from the begging community.
There seems to be a revival of the Beggar’s Sect in the Pacific region, led by the Americans, the country that is deep in debt. It is roping in more indebted countries as members in a pact called the TPP, standing for the Trans Pacific Partnership, or is it The Poverty Pact? And it is beating all the drums to make it attractive and teasing China to join the pact. The thing is whether China, with all the money in its treasury, and being the biggest creditor of the US, would want to join the poor countries that could only shout but with nothing left in its treasury?
Would China be deceived into joining the TPP or The Poverty Pact? Anyway, with Asean as an established regional grouping of countries and linking up with the big economic countries of the world, is there a need for a new pact to be led by a poor country from the eastern Pacific coast that is many thousands of miles away? Why should these Asian and Southeast Asian countries be led by a country in America? Are they that helpless, and lack of leaders to need to be led by someone else who simply walked in and say I am your leader?
And there is also an APEC. So why dance to a new pact because the Americans say so? APEC and Asean are all redundant and there is a need for another new animal to get things done?
Apple polishing in the corporate world
The Tokyo and Osaka stock exchanges are in the final stages of a merger to reemerge as a bigger stock exchange. Merger and acquisition is the magic formula of advanced corporate and business management principals. Corporation seeks quick growth and profits by simply merging and acquiring other corporations. It is swift and instant growth.
When the time frame to show results by top management is reduced to a couple of years, M&A is the quick solution. And short term gain is matched by short term policies and management practices. Corporation intending to do M&A only needs to put its house in order, or appears to be in order. Patch up the leaking holes temporary with stop gap measures, giving it a new coat of paint and hope that the ship will reach the next port intact. The whole ship could be rotting, but as long as it looks good from the outside, and can sail for a while, that is good enough.
The next most important thing to do is to go out quickly to merge or acquire another healthy ship to boost its bottom line before it sinks. What the top honchos forget is that other corporations could also be indulging in the same apple polishing to look good on the outside and waiting for an unsuspecting suitor. The merger could be between two rotten apples hoping to turn into a shiny apple through the copulation.
The old concept of organic growth, which is slow, tedious and a lot of hard work, is shelved permanently by all the MBAs from the top business schools. There is no need to work so hard, the way to real growth. They have no time for such crappy business idea. Too slow and too difficult. Take the short cut, M&A and lo and behold, a bigger corporation with bigger net worth overnight. Everything becomes bigger, bigger risk, bigger problem, bigger cost, and bigger hole. Uh no, economies of scale man!
Do not be awed by the M&As that are going on in the corporate world. It may be the in thing today. It is not necessarily the right thing to do or a good thing. A rotten apple is a rotten apple. It is the equivalent of banks indulging in big time gambling for quick and easy profit. When the fundamentals are unsound, M&A is a short cut for destruction as the resources were assigned to do apple polishing instead of running and building a sound organization. Quickies are in favour just to look good on paper and in the eyes of the unsuspecting and gullible spectators.
Many young people are also looking for such M&As, to marry the scions of a rich family and lo behold, the merger will bring instant wealth, and recognition, to sit in big companies, to run big corporations.
When the time frame to show results by top management is reduced to a couple of years, M&A is the quick solution. And short term gain is matched by short term policies and management practices. Corporation intending to do M&A only needs to put its house in order, or appears to be in order. Patch up the leaking holes temporary with stop gap measures, giving it a new coat of paint and hope that the ship will reach the next port intact. The whole ship could be rotting, but as long as it looks good from the outside, and can sail for a while, that is good enough.
The next most important thing to do is to go out quickly to merge or acquire another healthy ship to boost its bottom line before it sinks. What the top honchos forget is that other corporations could also be indulging in the same apple polishing to look good on the outside and waiting for an unsuspecting suitor. The merger could be between two rotten apples hoping to turn into a shiny apple through the copulation.
The old concept of organic growth, which is slow, tedious and a lot of hard work, is shelved permanently by all the MBAs from the top business schools. There is no need to work so hard, the way to real growth. They have no time for such crappy business idea. Too slow and too difficult. Take the short cut, M&A and lo and behold, a bigger corporation with bigger net worth overnight. Everything becomes bigger, bigger risk, bigger problem, bigger cost, and bigger hole. Uh no, economies of scale man!
Do not be awed by the M&As that are going on in the corporate world. It may be the in thing today. It is not necessarily the right thing to do or a good thing. A rotten apple is a rotten apple. It is the equivalent of banks indulging in big time gambling for quick and easy profit. When the fundamentals are unsound, M&A is a short cut for destruction as the resources were assigned to do apple polishing instead of running and building a sound organization. Quickies are in favour just to look good on paper and in the eyes of the unsuspecting and gullible spectators.
Many young people are also looking for such M&As, to marry the scions of a rich family and lo behold, the merger will bring instant wealth, and recognition, to sit in big companies, to run big corporations.
11/22/2011
The cost of returning home
Two young Singaporeans having settled down in America for a few years could have bought a decent landed property for $300k or $400k, driving around in a fairly big car for $30k, and have a decent savings of perhaps two or three hundred thousand bucks.
If they were to return to paradise, selling their home for about the same amount and with a net cash of three quarter of a million, they could at best buy a private condo and still having to take a few hundred thousand bucks in loan. Eventually the private flat is going to cost them perhaps $2m in total. And they need to buy a small car that is going to cost at least $100k.
Their net financial position is negative, with a big mortgage and hardly anything left in their savings. This is the price of returning home. And there is job hunting to do. It is like being robbed of a couple of million bucks on returning home to stay. Yes, they can go and rent a flat and live like FTs.
In the case of a foreign talent from the neighbouring countries, most of them would not have much of a property anyway. They came, got a job, rented a place and started savings. Few years down the road, placed all their savings for a public flat and service them with their CPF. The value of the flat can only go up, like a savings account with guaranteed 5% to 10% interest rate equivalent, maybe more. Then they start to count the days when they could cash out and return home to be a rich man, or in the US or Australia to start life with a reasonable good cash holding from the sale of their public flat.
The two tales tell of the comparative advantage of Singaporeans returning home to pay a huge ransom for something less and a foreigner who came with nothing much but leaving with a pretty nice cash hoard. And this is not far from the truth. The cost of living is a heavy price to pay. The only good option is to cash out and move out. But his option is not so attractive to Singaporeans who called this island home.
If they were to return to paradise, selling their home for about the same amount and with a net cash of three quarter of a million, they could at best buy a private condo and still having to take a few hundred thousand bucks in loan. Eventually the private flat is going to cost them perhaps $2m in total. And they need to buy a small car that is going to cost at least $100k.
Their net financial position is negative, with a big mortgage and hardly anything left in their savings. This is the price of returning home. And there is job hunting to do. It is like being robbed of a couple of million bucks on returning home to stay. Yes, they can go and rent a flat and live like FTs.
In the case of a foreign talent from the neighbouring countries, most of them would not have much of a property anyway. They came, got a job, rented a place and started savings. Few years down the road, placed all their savings for a public flat and service them with their CPF. The value of the flat can only go up, like a savings account with guaranteed 5% to 10% interest rate equivalent, maybe more. Then they start to count the days when they could cash out and return home to be a rich man, or in the US or Australia to start life with a reasonable good cash holding from the sale of their public flat.
The two tales tell of the comparative advantage of Singaporeans returning home to pay a huge ransom for something less and a foreigner who came with nothing much but leaving with a pretty nice cash hoard. And this is not far from the truth. The cost of living is a heavy price to pay. The only good option is to cash out and move out. But his option is not so attractive to Singaporeans who called this island home.
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