Please don’t help the people, hear the people’s cry.

The govt is so caring and concern about the welfare of the people, about whether they have any money left for retirement, and to pay the exhorbitant medical bills. Where on earth could citizens find such caring govt? And why are the people screaming that they don’t need this kind of help? And why is the govt insisting on a help that the people do not want and then blames the people for depending too much on the govt for help?

It must be the people to be blamed for the govt to insist on helping them with their money. The people have no money? Who is the clown that said the people have no money? No, the problem is that the people have too much money in their CPF that tempted the govt to want to help them with their money. And the govt refuses to listen to the simple and pathetic plea of hopeless Sinkies who don’t even know the money is theirs anymore, and that it is their right to decide how to use it. It is not a govt pension or subsidy or gratuity or grant or handout. It is their money.

Who gives the govt the right to decide what it wants to do with the people’s money? Is it that once the people voted a govt to rule over them, the govt has all the right to do what it wants with the people’s savings? If the govt is sincere and really want to help the people, please use the reserves, or the profits it made from the reserves to help the people, top up the people’s CPF savings or Medisave or buy insurance plans for the people.

Withholding the people’s savings is not helping the people. The people do not need this kind of help and do not want it. It is NOT helping the people. It is causing hardship, pain and suffering on the people who need the money for their expenses.

Please, have some conscience and no need to help the people in the use of their money. The people are not daft and can help themselves. Hear the people’s cry. But then again, deaf frogs are deaf. What to do?

CPF Minimum Sum raised

CPF members who turn 55 between 1 July 2012 and 30 June 2013 have to set aside a Minimum Sum (MS) of S$139,000, higher than the S131,000 for 2011.



Changes will also be made for contributions to the Medisave Minimum Sum (MMS) to help Singaporeans plan for their long-term healthcare needs. (Did Singaporeans ask anyone to be kaypohed to help them plan for their long term needs by taking away their money? Who is asking for help or who really needs help? The helper or the one he is helping?)



From 1 July (2012), the MMS will be raised to S$38,500, from S$36,000 - an increase of 7 per cent.

Another change is in the Medisave Contribution Ceiling (MCC). It's the maximum balance a member may have in his Medisave Account.



This is set at S$5,000 above MMS and would be increased correspondingly to S$43,500, from S$41,000.

I wrote just before the by election that all the increases would have to be delayed but did not know that they cannot tahan already. Now immediately after the by election, all starts to rush out. Just heard that clearing of rubbish will be raised and now this. How many more are lined up to be announced?

Why so desperate to raise CPF minimum when the reserves is one of the largest in the world? Which Ponzi scheme having problems with the payout? This is surely not looking good with our reserves. When there is so much money in the reserves, why is there a need to resort to such dicey and unpopular move? They should plan, yes, plan with the money in the reserves, not the people’s hard earned money, to help the people especially in Medisave. Put some of the big earnings they are making into the people’s CPF instead of paying millions in salary and bonuses.

What more bad news is going to hit the daft Sinkies? They would not listen and would continue to do what they claimed to be good for the Sinkies, especially when taking money from the Sinkies. They don’t even think there is a need to ask the Sinkies. And they are so generous by taking less and the people should feel grateful and celebrate because of this.

$139,000 plus $38,500 work out to be $177,500 frozen with the later probably untouchable by many. And the amount will keep going up annually for the good of the people of course. I am wondering who is more desperate to get their hands onto this money.

Saying the obvious, politely

Telling the PAP that it is going to be history is a bit harsh and difficult to accept. Perhaps there is a polite way to tell the PAP that things are not the same anymore. What has happened in Hougang was an exact replica of the heydays of the PAP. The people rallied behind the party with their hearts, not watching their pockets. It was genuine support for a political party, and PAP had its fair share or giant share of it before. The PAP was the party that the people chose to support and to cheer for.

Would the PAP want to know why the support is fleeing to the opposition camp? It is definitely not because the opposition were better, with more talented leaders. The opposition at this point is time is still a small motley crowd that would be hard pressed to form the govt to run the country. The fault lies squarely on the PAP. It is a confluence of many things, poor or bad policies, self serving policies, poor talents being pushed to the podium as the best talents, a neglect for the people and the people’s interests, alienating the people and taking the people for granted. And more.

Would the PAP be able to see through the problems it is facing them? They have very talented and smart people with them. It is not difficult to know the hard truth if they wanted to. But they could choose to deceive themselves and persist to think that everything is fine. And the old guards will say no problem, we will win back everything. They would even say that Hougang was a piece of cake if they were to do what were necessary. It was the fault of a young turk that refused to listen to the experience old guards. They could do this and that. Put a few men here and there to do what they used to do and easily win back Hougang. Such dated perception of the reality, that things could still be done the old way, will still dominate party thinking. The old school of thoughts and old methodology still rule the inner thinking of the party. And it could turn aggressive and abrasive. You could see the signs during the hustling. The image of gangsterism was there and no one could miss it.

It is not the end of the PAP. It has 4 good years to do the right stuff. It is now the will to serve the people, not rhetoric. Put the money where the mouth is. Slaughter all the fake sacred cows. Look after the people and their interests. The exact and specifics that need to be done are common knowledge. The work is all cut out and waiting. Is there a political will to do the right thing, to, for once, be less self serving and be people centric?

Can Hsien Loong turn it around? Can he stop the slide and revive a party that is turning into a dodo, a deaf frog that is too much of itself? More of the same is not going to work anymore. The old ways, the old guards, must be turned into monuments in the museum and a fresh start is needed, with leaders that are there not for the money. Money is the cause that is seeing the decline of the PAP. Would the PAP wait to turn into ashes befall it rises as a phoenix, or would it pick itself up quickly and fly again.

Guilty, guilty, guilty!

No, no, no, we are fair, we reported the by election fairly. We gave both parties equal coverage. The pictures used were appropriate to the stories. We are not biased! We are a respectable and professionally managed newspaper and we are reporting the facts after doing all the due diligence. This is the roughly the reply from the main media against the complaints by Low Thia Khiang for unfavourable coverage of his party during the election campaign.

Who is telling the truth? Who is dishonest? Whose integrity is in doubt? You be the judge. But, sssssshhhhh, keep it to yourself please. Don’t say anything. Don’t tell anyone. ‘Ren zai zhuo, tian zai kan.’ Translated, Man do, heaven watch.

Wall Streets betting slips

Many funds have been set up to advise high net worth clients on how to manage and invest their money. Actually the term invest is a misnomer. They should call themselves betting agencies, betting the clients money in the biggest unregulated casino, the New York Stock Exchange. Many funny instruments called options and derivatives and a mix match of these instruments were offered to high net worth sophisticated clients as sophisticated and complex investment products. In common layman parlance, these are just variations of betting slips or gambling offered to rich and daft clients who were either too lazy to know what they were, or too confused to know what these products were.

All the products can easily be explained in the language of the gamblers in the casinos, turf clubs or football betting counters. Strip them of their financial and unfamiliar jargons, they are nothing new that the gamblers in these gambling outlets did not know.

Options is simply placing bets and covering the opposite position. Putting $100 on white may lose everything. So to minimize the risk, depending on the appetite, the gambler could put $80 or $90 on red. And if the risk appetite is lower, put $100 on each to cover both sides. To be 100% safe, put a few chips on 0 and all bets will be covered.

Then there will be bets on big numbers or small numbers. The variation will be to place some on big and some on small and a few chips on single numbers, the so called high risk high return part. To package the bets to look more sophisticated, put some bets in big and small, some in white and red, and some in quarters or doubles to confuse the clients and gave them high sounding names like structured notes.

To raise the level of complexity, put the bets across tables or in different kinds of games. Put some bets in the roulette tables, some in black jacks and some in the poker tables. The latter two can charge higher management fee as a gambler would be needed to ‘manage’ the gambling. And call these bets structured funds to mesmerize the daft sophisticated investors.

Options in many instances are nothing more different than betting in a football game. Win if the score is 3 goals or more in call options. In bear options, win if the team loses by more than 2 goals or a combination of such bets. Create terms like spread, shoulders, butterfly to impress the investors. Butterfly is nothing but betting for a win if the scores are more than 3 for, or more than 3 against. Another variation is that any scores of more than 2 goals for or against will be knocked out.

The whole scheme of thing is betting and betting and betting. It has nothing to do with investment which fundamentally is putting money on a company because it has growth potential and to grow with the company through profits/dividend payouts or higher share prices. This kind of investment strategy is too slow.

Sophisticated daft investors would be better off betting in the turf club or in football matches as the games are simple enough to understand without the fictitious financial jargons that meant nothing. It is better to know what one is dabbling with than to be confused by the funds and their derivative products that are out to confuse by mixing a whole basket of bets. Why take the risk in betting that only the fund managers know what it is all about? If investors have high appetite for risk, go bet horses and football matches that are more transparent.

Of course horses and football matches are exposed to match fixing. So could these highly sophisticated betting slips. They are easier to manipulate by the big funds with their big war chests and sophisticated computers.

Wall Street and its parallel models across the world are just highly deregulated casinos and nothing else. Until it reverts to the original model of stocks and shares for investment, it is going to break the world’s financial system. It is no longer an investment market but a market for gambling. Wall Street should stop conning the world that it is a sophisticated stock market and a financial centre. It is NOT!

The worst part is that the snake oils are tainted to cheat the investors wholesale. The odds are worst than the highly regulated casinos in Las Vegas. With high speed computers plugged into the system to check all the buys and sells of small investors and to formulate a sure win position for the funds, how can the rest of the investors win? It is cheating of the first order. It is a crime that is allowed to commit in the heart of the world’s biggest financial centre. Do they know they are committing a crime? Yes. But with all the congressmen and regulators in cahoot, all paying themselves crazily, who is there to stop the embezzlement and daylight robbery?