SBF’s paper is about growing our own timber and protecting our own interests

The gist of the paper’s recommendation is about growing your own timber in three areas, growing the stock market, growing local enterprise and to add wings on them, growing local talent with more scholarships. In the last part, there are plenty of scholarships for foreigners, so this call must be read as fine tuning the scholarships for our children and to target them at the industries, not for foreigners to go home after a few years here.

There was also the exasperating talk about allowing more foreign workers as the restriction on foreign workers was targeted at this lower level where there was a real shortage since Singaporeans did not want such works. For some queer reasons, perhaps someone thought the need to fill up the Singapore’s equivalents of Chennai Business Park and Mumbai Financial Centre (MBFC) with foreigners should have priorlty over having more low level workers and thus the cut is at the worker’s level and not at the PME level.

The sick stock market is now spoken openly. The difficulties to raise fund from our stock market with its life hooked on life support is telling. Stock prices and trading have run to a stand still though computer trading still showed a little misleading life in the market. The reality is best felt by the businesses that found raising money is a dying stock market near impossible. How’s that for the truth?

The call for the revival of the stock market is loud and clear. GIC that is investing the people’s savings should apportion a greater percentage of its investment to support local businesses by supporting their prices in the stock market. Did someone said the CPF money belongs to the employers and not the employees? Shouldn’t the employers that are contributing to the CPF’s biggest share be looked after by the money they contributed?

But before the GIC pump in more money back into the local stock market, they better understand what is the real problem of the stock market. Why is it dying? If it is suffering from Aids, please do not try to scratch its balls. It would not help. The Aids is the killer, not the itching. Unfortunately no one wants to see the problem as it is. The elephant in the room is very difficult to notice.

Investing CPF money in other stock market is exactly like hiring foreigners instead of hiring Singaporean. Here they are spending money to grow foreign companies in foreign stock markets and neglecting our own stocks in our own market.

Similarly, giving scholarships to foreigners and not to Singaporeans achieved the same effect, growing foreign timber and neglecting our own timber.

So, would this serious paper, with so many heads putting so much effort into it, count or mean anything?  When would there be a change of mentality, to grow our own timber, to start our charity drive at home?

By the way, would they even acknowledge the problem faced by the local businesses? Would they acknowledge that the stock market is failing? Who said so? The market is the pink of health, the best market in Asia, the Number One stock market in Asia. What is the SBF talking about a moribund market?

Someone must be talking nonsense or someone must be stupid and cannot see the real stuff, or just listening to the good stuff. No problem, all is fine.

Die, die, North Korea tested a hydrogen bomb

The world woke up in fear to know that the North Koreans have successfully tested a hydrogen bomb. The North Koreans are going to bomb the whole world, or at least they will bomb South Korea, Japan and the USA. Quick, get ready to invade North Korea and destroy its nuclear problem before they build the bomb.

Today’s paper front page headline yesterday read, ‘N Korea H-bomb test claim sends shivers through Asia’. Japan going to boost up its military budget and raise its military alert to Red. It is going to the UN to condemn the North Koreans.

The Today paper also had an interesting comparison on the number of nuclear test by the respective nuclear powers. USA had 1.030 tests, Soviet Union had 715 tests, France had 210 tests, UK and China had 45 each. Now how many frightening tests did the North Koreans made that are sending shivers to the world? 4!

Talk of crying wolf or telling ghost stories to frighten the children? Who is more frightening? Who has more nuclear war heads to destroy Mother Earth? The Americans have more than 7000, China got 200, the North Koreans may have none to date.

So frightening man! The Koreans are so frightening man? Talking about the unthinking that want to believe in lies and propaganda from the Americans, Japanese and the western media. And though Japan did not test any, officially, how many nuclear warheads did the Japanese possess? They have many tons of weapon grade nuclear material in their arsenal.

Who is the greater fool? Oh, wait a minute, the North Koreans is going to nuke Singapore. Believe this as your own peril. For whatever reason I dunno. One thing for sure, if the Americans and their gangsters kept labeling countries as evil and kept provoking them instead of engaging them and bringing them to work as a member of the world civilization, they will get the enemy they painted and created. It will be a self fullfiling prophecy. The USA or Japan will be the likely candidate for the North Koreans to test their nuclear weapons when cornered.

Which country has attacked another country with nuclear weapons?

Singapore’s ‘moribund’ stock market needs to be revived

A lagged stock market, dying stock market, a moribund stock market, all in a mouthful, to describe the pathetic state of the Singapore stock market in the main media is unexpected, unprecedented. Talking about a moribund stock market is kind of a taboo. There seems to be an unwritten code of conduct that no one should whisper about how bad the stock market is faring today. The media only reported about how healthy the stock market has been, kicking, alive, making a lot of profits, derivatives volumes increasing, the best regulated stock market in the world. 

Today something changed. The truth must be spoken. It cannot be kept wrapped for any minute longer. The Singapore Business Federation submitted a 36 page economic strategy proposal to Heng Swee Kiat while he is still fumbling with his team to chart the course to take Singapore forward. The Federation is wasting no time. Time is crucial, the situation is serious and no more mucking around for another year to wait for another report. Actions need to be taken now. And the report ‘is backed by 28 trade associations and chambers and some 70 top level executives, including Singapore Press Holdings chief executive Alan Chan’. What the SBF is saying is that the dismal state of affairs of our economy has reached a point of BTH, ‘beh ta han’ already.

For the proposal to come out today, mind you, such a big committee cannot come out with something overnight. They must have spent many hours, days and months looking into the problems and to come up with their recommendations. What the proposal is saying is that things are bad, real bad and the govt must act on it quickly and seriously.

When Alan Chan’s name is quoted it means serious business. This is a very serious statement from the business associations and chambers and top honchos.  Things are bad and must be made good. This is the truth, the reality, face it squarely and do something, now.

I will write something more about the recommendations later.

Politicians of all colours – Empty your cup

Slowly we are seeing a new breed of politicians appearing, the serious and with a purpose and with a view, not to contest an election just to be in Parliament and thought they had arrived as a politician. On a personal level, yes, to be trusted and voted into Parliament by the people placing their hopes on them, to serve them and to work for their well being, not for the money that they are going to get.

Though the presence of younger and brighter politicians are starting to change the landscape of opposition politics, the bad news is that they are still trapped by the baggage of the past, of an inward looking opposition crippled by years of division, mistrust, personal agenda and vested interests. The new blood would not be able to achieve anything but more of the same if they did not break free from the clutches of history, to chart a new course to challenge the ailing ruling party.

It was unbelieveable that the ruling party could gain more grounds in the last GE and nearly whitewashed the opposition despite a slate of very good and promising candidates against a series of bad policies that made life for the Singaporeans very difficult and worse in the years ahead. Some last minute stop gap measures and handouts helped to win some votes for the time being. But the inherent flaws of economic and social policies cannot be hidden and kept from affecting the people negatively. Big failures and problems will raise their ugly heads when the pressure and conditions changed for the worst. Today’s Singapore Business Federation’s recommendations to the govt are a polite reminder of the flaws and problems faced by the businesses in particular and the people in general.

Would the new opposition blood be able to make any difference in the next GE? If they continue with the same set up, with all the parties continuing in their bickering, with the leaders all wanting to be Indian chiefs as their main priority, continues to be divided and weak, the game is over before it even started.

The good men and women in politics, both in the ruling party and the opposition, must make a clean break from the kind of politics that we have seen in the past decades and find a new paradigm for a new Singapore. The politics and leadership of the ruling party have become irrelevant and unsustainable. The politics of the opposition is ineffective and a waste of time and resources.

The good men and women in politics, with their hearts in the right place, must know that they need to do something to change the course of politics in this city, to take the people forward with a better social economic formula for a better life. Going forward with the same formula is only waiting for the fuse of a time bomb waiting to ignite and bring an end to an unsustainable social, economic and political model.

Empty the cup, get a fresh start, put down the difference, break ranks from the current parties, put aside the personal dream of becoming a PM, pick up a good team of good men and women, regardless of political parties, form a new party for the next GE. Clobber the new party together by the end of the year and there will still be ample time of 3 years to get noticed, recognized and for the people to believe that there is a real alternative of good men and women to take over from the ruling party, to lead the country in the next lap of growth and prosperity.

China sending its professors back to school

No, it is not another cultural revolution. China is unhappy that the academics, especially the professors, that are sitting in boardrooms as independent directors. They are ordering the professors out of the board rooms, to stop corruption. How could this be called corruption? The professors are contributing their expertise in the boardrooms and also to provide the right connections between business and the academia, for the business honchos to tap on the expertise of the professors.

The professors are not the only people banned from independent directorship. Top govt officials holding paid corporate positions in the education sector are also clamped down. The overlapping of govt/academia and business is not acceptable in the clampdown against corruption. ‘The ministry on Nov 3 ordered deans, deputy deans and managers at middle level and above to report their part time jobs, saying those who do not do so in a timely or accurate fashion will be punished based on the severity of violations.’ Bloomberg.

This is one of the things that China did not learn from Singapore. This must be the reason why Singapore is so progressive and China is not. Singapore businesses have no problem with who are their independent directors or where they come from as long as they are honest and incorruptible men and women with the right connections and expertise to add value to the companies. Perhaps this is something the Chinese did not have, honest and incorruptible men and women that can wear many hats and be independent directors and would not be accused of corruption because they are just incorruptible. Just pay them well to make sure they are not corrupt.

With the kind of pay the Chinese are paying, no wonder they have a big corruption problem. They must send more delegations to Singapore and learn from Singapore on how to keep people from falling to corruption. According to world surveys, Singapore is the least corrupt country in Asia. Just pay them not to corrupt.

The only thing good about China is that when it is clamping down on corruption, it is serious about it and big shots are also caught in the net. Xi Jinping was quoted to have said in his book that no one is immune from punishment. China still got a lot to learn.