A mansion for US$242m

A 85,000 sq ft mansion in the heart of Singapore has an asking price of US$242m. It has a 2 storey house, maybe 10 rms at the most, an antique tennis court and a swimming pool, and the rest is just empty land. The most expensive property sold in the US according to Times, was a Dallas mansion for US$135m. And that came with a 42,500 sq ft 5 storey house, 3 swimming pools, guest house and 25 acres of landscaped greenery.

Now what can US$242m buy? I think the Buckingham Palace would go for under $200m, minus its occupants and the treasures in it. This is how the land owning class in Singapore made their money, with high inflated prices of properties that they were bought by their parents or grand parents and inherited as heirlooms, no estate duties. The children and grandchildren just sit on a pot of gold that is growing bigger by the day. And this is supported by a govt that only wants to see property prices going one way, up, up and away. Falling property prices is just inconceiveable given that more than 85% of the residents are owners of some properties, or at least a 99 year lease public housing flat.

The game of inflating the balloon of property prices is most welcomed by the residents. They cannot think of anything else. Anything else like a drop in property price can be suicidal as many are up to their necks in mortgages, except the old rich. Singapore is now worth its weight in gold. And all the rich foreigners are rushing in to park their good money and ill gotten money in properties, a sure bet asset that will not lose its value. The more tycoons coming into the island, despite regulations against foreign ownership of landed properties, the higher will property price appreciate. Soon all Singaporeans including those living in 99 year lease public housing could sell their properties in the millions. No fear of a decreasing lease life that will expire to nothing. What a great formula to generate wealth without working.

They say when something is too good to be true, be careful.

The Korean Tension and US policy of Permanent Wars

                                                       The Korean Tension and the US policy of Permanent Wars

There is no need to look far and wide for reasons pertaining to tensions in Korea and for that matter tensions in the Middle East, ,East China Sea, South China Sea and all over the world. The Evil Empire, USA creates all troubles and incidents and just as it used traditionally in the past it is always quick to cunningly and hypocritically accused others of creating troubles and tensions. Historically US has a warped mind set of carrying out wars of aggression against other people and countries. Its compulsive and impulsive ingrained  warmongering maniac instinct is inherited from its forbears Imperial Britain. Wherever England went, from North America to Africa, Australia, New Zealand, India, China , Burma and Middle East it went on a systematic rampage of murder, killings and genocide, leaving long trails of destruction and wanton human suffering. US as a country was founded on war, violent terrorism , murder , mass killings and almost complete genocide of over ninety-five percent of native North American Indians or over eighty-five millions of them. The trouble and dangerous thing is that just like all European invaders of the Americas in which US is descended from such as Britain, France, Spain, Portugal and Holland, the white American invaders historically have never feel any guilt or remorse of their wanton and dastardly acts of murdeer, killings , torture and genocide of the native Americans.

When the first Europeans went to the Americas five hundred years ago, around 1620s, they were well received by the friendly natives who helped them and provided them with food and lodging. But as the white European invaders swelled in numbers they began to treat the natives contemptuously as uncouth savages and went of to strip the natives of their lands.  The natives were caught off guard and were unable to fight off the European hordes who had superior arms. Had the natives known earlier that the Europeans  were wild, aggressive and cruel , they could have annihilated them because they had greater numbers then, , but they didn't because of their spiritual beliefs in not  taking innocent lives. The natives had thus paid dearly for their strong beliefs. Up to this day the savage European Americans still portray the native Americans as savages as reflected in their writings and history texts though clearly they themselves are the soulless and most wanton and cruel savages.

The Americans are blood thirsty war maniacs and up to now they have always been lucky to get away with it. They like to feel and act as superior to all other peoples and countries in whatever they do. That is OK so long as they play it in a level playing field and put its own house in order. But there is something very wrong with America now and it is of its own doing. This is to be expected because America is run and governed by very sick and insane people, by rogues, crooks and scoundrels. Its psychopatic political and military leaders are obssessed with being number one in the world and spend humongous trillions of dollars annually in military war machines. Its business cum political leaders , in fact you can't differentiate them because their positions are interchangeable and they are so steeped in greed and avarice that when they manoeuvered their ways into positions as CEOs and directors of big business concerns like the banks, stock exchange, real estate , insurance and other industrial conglomerates they will pay themselves real mad in terms of hundreds of millions of dollars. When their companies foundered and collapsed they are considered too big to fail and so they got the government to step in to save the companies with tax payers' money. Since their companies are international with investment capital from other countries worldwide, they thus not only rob their own people and country but also the people and countries all over the world.

The total absence of morals and ethics and the extreme greed and avarice of the American business and political leaders have caused the American economy and finance to fall over the steep cliff with debts amounting to hundreds of trillions of dollars.It is inconceivable how they are going to pay back these debts both local and international which will be a heavy burden on many generations of Americans. Well, there is no way out. They have to resort to bluffs and cheating by getting money from thin air through mass printing of more paper notes of hundreds of billions of dollars to provide what they called quantitative easing. This paper printing and quntitative easing won't last for long for there is no real solid and intrinsic economic value. Therefore the only resort for the rogue, crooks and scoundrels of the American leaders is to adopt a policy of permanent wars to wrank up their war industries so that they can sell their military weapons to other countries. US has no intention to talk peace or negotiate real peace treaties with countries it is provoking into war. Its only tenet is countries which US doesn't like or doesn't approve must succum to US domination completely. When one group of countries eventually succumed to US military mighty power, it will soon pick up another country or groups of countries and trump up excuses with the same intent of waging war on these countries. The evil cycle of US aggressive warmongering never ceases. The world has to put a stop to this streak of American monstrous evil. Therefore countries big or small must be well prepared and well armed even with nuclear weapons to wage wars against the Evil Empire. US will either survive with the rest of the world  or perish with the rest of the world. I hope and I believe every decent people in the world hope too that the general by and large American public will wake up to the sins and evils of their demonic and monstrous government  and either convince it or force it to adopt a new path of world harmony in good will and cooperation instead of persisting in US hegemony. Until this happens there will be no peace in Korea, no peace in East Asia and no peace in this beautiful world.

Southernglory1

Boon Wan thinking aloud about housing

In today’s paper, Boon Wan was quoted thinking aloud about housing policies that were changed and the possibility of more changes. Two key points were mentioned, to remove or not to remove the income ceiling and that HDB should be the trend setter of price and not market forces. He said HDB may not be able to influence fully the prices of private properties, but it could set the price of public housing. Finally someone from the Govt got the common sense to know this, that being the biggest developer of public housing, actually a monopoly, the Govt can determine the prices of public housing. Believe it or not, it is true. I am enlightened.

The issue of removing the income ceiling received the same stupid comments from daft Singaporeans, that by doing so, it would mean that there will be more competition for public housing from those earning more. Hey Minister of Education, the education system has failed miserably to make Singaporeans think independently. So far they can only think, now that is an over statement, they can only parrot the official view impregnated into their dull piece of grey matter in between their ears. Why should there be more competition, or what is the cause of more competition when the ceiling is removed? Supply, it is supply that is causing the problem, silly you. When the Govt builds enough, where is the fear of competition from the wage earners? Those who earn a few dollars more are still the average Singaporeans that need housing. And the fact that they need public housing speaks well of their finance. The rich are those that are selling their properties for $300m, $100m or $50m.

This seed of false envy planted in the minds of daft Singaporeans is very difficult to remove. We have average Singaporeans, all the employee type that draw a salary excluding ministers, top civil servants and top management, staring at each other with green eyes thinking that the other wage earners that earn a few dollars more must be deprived from public housing, must take up a million dollar mortgage to buy private. When would employee grade Singaporeans stop bickering and fighting among themselves for public housing when the fault is all because the Govt refuses to build enough, especially over the last decade?

Boon Wan has slowly started to come around to his senses that public housing is for all Singaporeans. No Singaporeans should be victimised, discriminated from buying public housing flats. All Singaporeans are equal under heaven at least in doing NS, in their rights to buy a roof over their heads. Why are those, who are neither rich nor poor, be deprived from buying public housing and made to defend this country in NS just the same? Can or should the Govt deprived Singaporeans who have served NS, who pledged to fight and defend this country, from buying HDB flats when new citizens who have not done NS be allowed to buy?

The foul up in public housing is smelling and nauseating. And Boon Wan is still defending his predecessor for a job well done. He refused to acknowledge that his predecessor fouled it all up by over building and then compounded the problem by not building. And the biggest or silliest mistake was that the little excess was not excess at all when the immigration door was swung wide open and horrors of all horrors, there were millions of foreigners coming in, and even with the excess it was not enough. And Boon Wan said, one must not be stubborn, when faced with the influx of foreigners buying up everything, his predecessors still refused to budge and continued with his BTO scheme and claiming all was well.

Was everything well, was public housing well? Don’t tell me.

Tokyo Auto Show 2013

Some

of the cars at the show.

The discriminating readers in social media

I have written quite a few articles and for the latest two, one on India Indians integrating with the locals and another saying that there is no discrimination against Singaporeans in Singapore, I am expecting readers to strongly disagree with me or even receiving brick bats from them. The position or conclusion of both articles would not go down well with the readers. I too don’t agree with them. But I cannot claim otherwise unless there is evidence to support a different assertion.

In the case of India Indians integrating with the locals, the best I can say is that they are attempting to do something. But integration is not a one day thing, not even one year or five years. It may take a whole generation or cross generations to integrate into a society. So it will be foolish of me to say that they have integrated well with the locals over a few days. It is just the first step in a long journey.

The point about no discrimination against Singaporeans is qualified by the MOM having a few cases and Chuan Jin and Tharman calling up some big organizations for tea. There were cases, and could be many. But where is the evidence? Where are the reporters reporting on them?

The Brompton Bike case and the AIM case would also be non issue if the netizen reporters did not dig and air the cases and the sticky stuff in them. The reporters, mainly the netizens, not so much about the main stream reporters, can play a big role in exposing the crimes and deceits of foreigners and foreign companies discriminating against Singaporeans. And they have the social media to publish what they have unearthed. There is no fear that no one or the main media would not want to publish them. We need to hear more of such cases, and whistle blowers there must be many, to step forward to defend fellow Singaporeans to make Singapore our home and for Singaporeans.

How well are the foreigners integrating with the locals, the India Indian, the PRC Chinese and the Pinoys? When they are few in numbers, they have to integrate and live with the locals. When their numbers are big, they can be with themselves, among themselves, ganged up to protect themselves and their life style. They don’t need to integrate with the locals. They have critical mass to be on their own. They can form their own enclaves, buy properties in select areas, and even discriminate and ostracise the locals, kick the locals out of jobs, deprive the locals of jobs to keep them for their own kind.

We do have a big problem with big foreign populations. The bigger they are, the bigger will be the problem. The problem today is 5.4m in size. It will be 6.9m and bigger in the future. The problem is here to stay and will grow and swallow up the locals if they are not careful, if they are complacent and think that things will be the same, that being the locals they will have a little advantage over the foreigners. When the foreigners outnumber the locals, the advantage will go to the foreigners and the locals will end up at the wrong end of the stick. It can be very pathetic if that day comes. Sad, it will come faster than the unthinking locals can imagine.