Law of wealth

The current economic recession, probably the worst that Singapore has ever seen, may be a blessing in disguise. For too long, Singaporeans have had it too good, and expecting that the good times will roll on and on - strong economic growth, high wages, sky-high apartments (of the $$$ kind) and easy credit through very very low interest rates.

I have lived long enough to know that this happy state of affairs cannot last long. That it has done so came as a bit of a surprise to me. Of course, there was the recession in 2003 - largely caused by the SARS outbreak, so it was not representative of typical economic cycles. The same can be said of the internet boom/bust and even the Asian Financial Crisis back in 1997. All of these were largely localised. For the connected globalised economy, the real markets were still there. So it would appear that globalisation would smoothen these economic boom-bust cycles, leveling the fluctuations that are characteristic of capitalist economies.

We got drunk on globablisation, we became careless with our money, and like the US consumers, we began to go into debt thinking that we will always have that steady stream of income to cover ourselves. Debt financing, sophisticated people call them. Even the Singapore government was bullish about this, talking about the desirability of developing a debt market as if it was the next best formula for pushing the economy to ever greater heights.

Now, I am not saying that debt financing is all wrong. Most businesses depend on a careful balance of cash flows to survive and many go into debt to expand, for example, listing on the stock market. But when everyone is doing it, including the clueless sub-prime people in the US, where debt is miraculously converted into interest-baring assets, which are then resold as it they were gold, ad-nauseam no less, with no accountability and no tomorrow (because the people who sell these get their money today -why worry about accountability some time down the future?), we end up with what the world is lamenting but can't do much without - toxic assets. These 'assets' which came out of the ingenuity of the human mind - to create something out of nothing. Ironically, every banker is now holding a lot of these toxic assets and none of them dares to move on them.

The problem is, they forgot that only God can create something out of nothing. We mortal souls? They again forgot about Isaac Newton and the greatest physicists that came after. They taught that matter cannot be created nor destroyed. But I suppose those PhDs who went into Financial Engineering - they abandoned Physics and its immutable laws. They did not look at 'wealth' as matter, so you could create new wealth without limits.

When you tinker with matter, you can save mankind or blow up the whole world. Is it any surprise that when you do the same with numbers, you can end up destroying the world too?

God help us all.

Image: morguefile.com. Author: clarita

Love and law

For the voyeur amongst us, the story titillates. For the family of the woman, it was a tragedy, non more so than the 2 children who will not see their mother for 10 months. For the youth, it may have brought on psychological scars. Hopefully, these scars will heal so that another tragedy might not happen.

I am referring to the case of a 32 year-old woman, formerly a school teacher, who was jailed for 10 months for having sex with an under-aged boy, now 15. No, there was no rape involved. It was reportedly a consensual affair. But the newly minted law on these matters made this consensual affair a crime - whether the 'perpetrator' (read: the older person) is a man or a woman. Newspapers have given this story enough coverage that it does not need recounting here. On its own, this story isn't all that remarkable. Woman teachers have been reported elsewhere to have engaged in the same sort of activity before. See for example, Buffalo, Lamar CISD, Mary Kay Letourneau, etc.

While the woman has been 'put away', and the teenager probably receiving psychiatric counseling, the woman's 2 children will be the real victims in the long run. They require counseling too, though I am not aware how old they are now. And if the family were to break up because of this, then it will be a double tragedy. This is really a mess, and on hindsight, could all have been avoided if the woman's family had been more sensitive to her needs.

It is too late to say 'I told you so', but if there is a lesson to be learnt her, it is that everyone, including teachers, need attention, that nothing should be taken from granted. Are we engaged in something that takes up all of our time to the exclusion of everyone and everything? This is an obsession, and obsessions are no good. If you want to get married and have children, then you are obliged to stay married and bring up the kids. Why should somebody else's interests rank higher than your own family's? The simple straightforward answer is, it shouldn't.

Love others as you would yourself. If you cannot love your own family, what right have you to go around doing charity for others?

Ageing and willing

Just the other day, I got a lift from a person I met for the first time around a 'yusheng' dinner at a posh Chinese restaurant. We had an interesting chat around the table, from which we discovered that we shared knowledge of several people in our profession - talk of a small world.

He dropped me off at Potong Pasir MRT station. As we neared this Opposition-held ward, I casually mentioned Mr Chiam See Tong. He has been known to be in bad health since a minor stroke he sustained a few years ago. He hasn't made his presence felt in Parliament for a long time now, not like when he first got into Parliament and got ridiculed for his stuttering speeches. He spoke in Parliament again last week. His manner of speaking was again a topic of discussion. He was slow, very slow, but he spoke, nevertheless. He puts to shame many other MPs who merely put in perfunctionary speeches in Parliament. Quite frankly, I never thought that Mr Chiam would ever speak in Parliament again, but I, together with Singapore, were proven wrong.

No, he wasn't the fiery speaker, never was anyway. And yes, he was often ignored, even in his heyday. But he always came across as ever sincere, earnest and honest. Some would add naive. Probably not the type who will built up an opposition alliance of any substance, as history seems to have shown.

I am happy that he spoke. It was probably an inconsequential speech. But he is showing the rest of us that when it matters, however hard it is personally, we should make our point and presence felt, never mind the ridicule and talk behind the back. I haven't got what he has - courage and honesty. You've got to be honest with yourself, and if Mr Chiam believes in cobbling a GRC together in the next GE, I wish him well. He will probably try his best to keep his word, come what may. He's an old but willing warhorse that you'd feel confident of supporting, somehow. Instead of playing dead and living on sympathy, he has shown why he is still the MP for Potong Pasir after 24 years, in spite of the repeated assaults from the PAP juggernaut over this same period.

Source: Chiam See Tong Friendster Account

Learning and training

Someone asked me, "What's the difference between a test and an exam?"

I would have brushed off the question, thinking that he just wanted to split hairs, except that this question has gained a certain significance with the announcement by the government of the intention of scrapping exams for Primary 1 and 2 students and replacing them with tests to be held throughout the year.

Ever since this announcement, many Singaporeans have weighed in on the issues. Many feel that the absence of exams at P1 and 2 will disadvantage students when they eventually take exams in P3. There's this thing about practice and pain that almost all Singapore parents of school going children are all too familiar with. Right from Primary 1, if not earlier, parents engage private tutors to grill their children on how to work out problems and answer exam questions. If the private tutor did not have an inventory of practice questions for their children, his/her competence could be called into question. One wonders then if our more 'successful' primary school students are exam-smart or just simply smart? Of course, one can be both but a lot of cynicism has been expressed over exam-only-smart students.

So perhaps it is the right thing to do, abolish exams for P1 and 2 students and get them to really learn and not merely be trained, like you would a dog. But doubt lingers, and I am not convinced that you can brush aside such doubts. The current exam-heavy regime of education in Singapore will still be there - the PSLE, the GCE 'O' levels.... As many parents point out, from P3 onwards, exams will determine the options, directions and schools that their child can take and go to. And if you don't train them early, especially when they are young, their ability to cope later becomes questionable. Of course, the really smart ones will adapt quickly, but those needing coaching will now, ironically, get more extra-curricular coaching in anticipation and preparation for the P3 exams and beyond. After all, it is a conventional wisdom in government to take the long-term view. And this has filtered down to the governed(?) Perhaps schools will also offer such coaching because they will also be ranked. No principal wants his/her Primary School to be ranked last. It isn't good for the school's image and certainly damaging to morale and prospective promotions of teachers and principals in the dog-eat-dog world of education in Singapore.

So what is the difference between tests and exams? I would venture that, as far as anxious parents are concerned, the difference is like night from day. Somehow, exams are viewed as a more serious form of assessment and thus a true validation of the competence of their children's performance compared to tests, even if tests are held more often throughout the year. If the latest government initiative is carried through (and there is little reason for it not to), we might see tests evolving into mini-exams. This will mean an increase in the anxiety for parents, students, teachers and private tutors throughout the year.

Pity the educators.

See also:
Primary education in Singapore
Review of Primary education in Singapore

Image: morgueFile.com. Author:gracey

The Ox cometh

Chinese New Year has come and the first 2 days of celebrations have past without your knowing it. In this New Year celebrations, it has been the same old routine, the obligatory CNY eve dinner, the visiting, the eating. Yes, the visiting too. It appears that for some relatives, it is a once a year affair meeting up, unlike friends whom we meet and talk with the whole year around.

But meeting them, the relatives, have been a good thing, I wonder, though, if our meeting will be the last. Why so morose in a time of celebration? The inevitable. Within the last year, I have lost a dear relative, who was the architect of my parents' meeting and eventual union. In a way, I am here today because of her. But she was over 90, and she died peacefully in her sleep, that was a relief. There are those who hang to to dear life, when letting go would be so much better. So I had one less person to visit this. I visited another nonagenarian yesterday, an in-law. She seemed less alert than when I last saw her, no prizes for guessing, one year ago. But she could still recognise me, if barely, and one had to go near her to make oneself heard. But otherwise, she is in relative good health, which is what I wished for everyone I visited this CNY. No, not the wealth and good fortune, not the wish for the presence of the God of Fortune in the New Year, it had all got to be about good health. Priorities and realities, they change as you grow older. Perhaps that is why we grow wiser too. Oh to reminisce the fun and folly of youth, days gone by, never to come again.

We wish the best to all the children and send them along their way with a little money during these times. We genuinely wish them the best of life, good fortune, a life in excess (not of excess), excelling in school and, yes, health in their young lives. Even the young die prematurely, in the prime of their lives. We must ever be mindful of that. The young, some of them act and behave like there is no tomorrow. They speed down the expressways after having imbibed a few glasses, devil may care to claim their souls that very day. Many youth puff their way into addiction, thinking that they can put the stick down some time down the road. It rarely works out that way. I know a friend, a good man, who told me that, try as he might, he could never stop smoking. His regret comes too late. He is addicted till the day he breaths his last.

Why such depressing thoughts, this CNY? Perhaps the old look back with a sense of "seen that, done that" 20/20 vision. For all the good wishes over the years, there have been hard times. And 2009 promises to be the hardest of them all, the mother of all depression, they say. Talk is about possible loss of jobs - not because the company will retrench, but that the company will simply disappear, post CNY. People are on edge. It is part of the conversation this CNY. Everyone, it seems knows someone who has such worries on their minds.

But we remind ourselves that we have to be resilient, as the expansionary Government Budget 2009 suggests. More than at any other time, these people already have a plan B, ironically just waiting for that opportune time to put action to words. As the New Year slips into history, we face the inevitable tomorrow.

Happy Lunar New Year!

A coin has two sides

The blogging community started the buzz, the mainstream print media picked it up and it went all the way to Parliament. This is really a reversal of rolls. Usually, news starts with what is said in Parliament, gets reported in the print and/or broadcast media and then dissipates in the blogging community where everyone weighs in which his/her 2 cents worth. But the story really started innocuously enough in the print media when the subject of interest wrote an article for the Straits Times.

Of course, I am referring to Singapore Permanent Secretary Tay Yong Soon's ill-advised column on his family and his 5-month trip to Paris where they attended a cooking class $15,000 a pop, totaling S$45,000. For this amount of money, you could be enrolled in a full-fledge degree course, or even a master's degree course at SIM University. This is conspicuous consumption of the highest order, although one cannot deny that the PS is just following official policy to learn new skills to remain employable. Thus, before we jump to the conclusion that the PS has indulged himself and his family, we should let him explain.

And from all accounts thus far, the PS appears to be a decent chap. The only error he made was talk to the press about his trip and have it written up. Really, if he has the means to get a top-notch lesson in cooking that costs a bomb, that's his prerogative. There are many others who spent a fortune indulging in their hobbies, so why begrudge a man his pleasures? And he did it with his family, so that's really a good thing. Nothing like family bonding around the fireplace, albeit a costly one.

But chatter on the internet, in blog gossips and such, these are often merciless, subjective and shorn of any mitigating information. Merciless is the keyword here. It does not matter if you are a good man, a generous man, a charitable man. Once you are 'caught', you're toast. So what's the lesson here?

1. Be careful when you talk to the Press.
2. Apologise to show humility, not that you are in the wrong (Good for you, Mr Tay)
3. Don't defend yourself, let others do it for you (his colleagues' comments spoke volumes for him).
4. Be a good boss - the goodwill will be returned in spades later
5. Take internet chatter with a pinch of the salt. (Look, we are not trained journalists, just chatterboxes, sometimes equal to the best auntie gossipers you can find in a market any day)
6. Ignore internet savvy auntie gossipers at your own peril
7. Write for the Press at your own peril. Worst if you are a civil servant

Worth of Words

I am disturbed. I really am. What is the source of my discomfort, you ask? Well, a Director of our Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has written to the press, in reply to a reader's question, that "Insurance companies are expected to have clear policies...", that "MAS expects the board and senior management to ensure that these policies and procedures are implemented consistently". She was writing in response to a reader's letter questioning the security of having one's personal data stored on insurance agents’ laptops. Some other readers have gone on to question the wider practice of providing photocopied ICs for all kinds of applications, depositing ICs with the security guard, etc.

While MAS may not have oversight over the latter, its reply concerning the former certainly gives no comfort to the person considering an insurance policy. If governance can be executed through expecting that people and organisations will do the right thing, then the frauds that have been surfacing over the last few years, from Enron to Satyam, would not have occurred. But it is precisely because these things do happen, and that even after auditing firms have done their jobs (or not) in conducting periodic statutory reviews. What is alarming in many cases is that fraud can take place with the most respectable people (e.g. Bernard Madoff - described as a long-standing leader in the financial services industry), that something more cries out to be done. I am not suggesting that we stifle the industry with more government rules thereby imposing onerous bureaucratic procedures on businesses that are struggling in these times. But its current 'hands-off' approach is surely too optimistic of human nature.

Might Singapore be waiting for its next Enron, or Satyam or, worse, its Bernard Madoff to make MAS' Communications Director's words come back to haunt her? We have had Leeson-Barings under our belt, but we certainly don't need another.

Health of my Pocket

Great news! 4,500 jobs to be created in the Healthcare sector within the next 2 years. This will surely come as good news to people who are facing retrenchments, or already have been retrenched. I think many Singaporeans have come around to the inevitable - the inevitability that jobs will be lost, but jobs elsewhere will be created, that to remain employed and employable, we just have to change by acquiring new skills.

Except, you wonder what vacancies these 4,500 are supposed to fill in the Healthcare sector? And if the Healthcare sector was missing 4,500 admin and ancillary staff up till now, you wonder how Singapore has gained a good reputation for the efficiency of its healthcare services so far? Or are we padding our hospitals and other healthcare establishments such as Polyclinics? Well, yes, there will be a new Hospital, the Khoo Teck Phuat Hospital come 2010, so recruiting and training people in the next two years makes sense. But does it require 4,500 administrative and ancillary staff to run the hospital? And the long waits at government Polyclinics, a bug-bear for many years, are hardly caused by a lack of administrative staff, it more like not enough doctors.

If these staff are not absolutely necessary, I hope they do not add to the already high cost of medicine in Singapore. Already, means testing has started, and I fear for people in the middle-income bracket ending up paying for these government pump-priming activities. Almost every commercial firms are looking at cutting cost nowadays with not a few deciding that they could do with less staff. While government activity will help to fill these gaps in the employment market, I hope that when better times come around, healthcare cost will not go up because "operational costs have gone up..."

Image: morgueFile.com. Author: Clara Natoli

Balanced Sight

I must congratulate the Singapore Government, and especially the Singapore Malay leaders, in the courageous and sensible stance they are taking over the Israel-Gaza conflict. People the world over, it appears, are up in arms over Israel's disproportionate response to the rockets that have been lobbed into its soil, and continues to do so.

Well, in the first place, there is no such thing as disproportionate response in war. You mean a person fires two rockets at you and you are only entitled to respond with 2 rockets? Well of course not, you say. But then, where do you draw the line? 4 rockets for 2? or 6 rockets? The argument of proportionality simply breaks down in war, where the ultimate objective is the achievement of specific targets - in this case, Israel wants these rockets fired by the Hamas to stop. But the rockets have not stopped, so Israel continues to wage war on the Hamas in Gaza.

But back to our Singapore government. Its stand is the most practical, from an outsider's point of view. We do not get the bombs and rockets on our soil. Those in Southern Israel and Gaza do. So if we sided one over the other, we are expressing a preference that proportionately more rockets land on one side over another. That is what protesters the world over are suggesting whether they are pro-Israel or pro-Hamas. Rather, Singapore is urging for a ceasefire and for both sides and for both to go to the negotiating table as soon as possible. This is probably the most acceptable way, now that the world wants to care about it, to solve the problem now, if not long-term.

Going out on the streets to stage protests and demos may look good, but it does no good for anyone. Boycotting other's products, like what one former leader north of Singapore is mindlessly suggesting, deprives the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and everyone else affected, their honest and decent livelihood, especially in these depressed times.

The best thing to do is to pray for the conflict to end.

Image: morgueFile.com. Author: Michael Connors

Genocide in our midst

Some Singapore businessmen, they are a bunch of crooks. You don't really have to look for them in Copenhagen, where an erstwhile gangster lives in comfort and respectability, among crooks, i.e., until he was brought down by one of his collaborators recently. Heaven does not have eyes, they say, for this man is still alive and will probably recover.

In Singapore, crooked businessmen are depriving the foreign workers they bring in to work on their projects their just dues - their salary - and worst, in crunch times, as at present, they abandon them to their own devices. These poor souls cannot find alternative employment, and thus cannot feed themselves. They can't go home either because they don't have the money, and worst, their passports are with the crooked employers. The law should come down hard on these employers, whose only interest is in themselves. It is ok if you bring in trucks and machineries, and once un-needed, you dump them in a yard and let them rust and rot. You cannot treat human beings like that, however. But obviously, many foreign workers among us are being treated exactly like that.

Unless our Manpower Ministry takes a proactive approach, this sorry state of affairs will continue to happen. Bodies representing employers wrote to the press after the press brought the plight of these workers to the public's attention. Otherwise, who knows what the end of these people will be. And when the public does come to know about it, the disgust will be so severe that we cannot but hide in a hole, any hole, and be ashamed to call ourselves Singaporeans because educated, civilised and entrepreneurial Singaporeans that we supposedly are, are practicing human genocide, right in our very own backyard. Is the genocide word too strong? Looking at the situation right now, it just about describes the heinous way in which we treat people who build our houses and our roads.

We should hang our heads in shame.

The Old and the New

The New Year in Singapore brings something good and something not so good, depending on who you are. First the good news (why must the bad always come first?).

The ban on smoking has now been extended to cover all multi-storey and basement car parks. Why couldn't they include open air car parks too? After all, trees in open air car parks need carbon dioxide, not carbon monoxide. Help save the tree, dammit! But then again, we don't want smokers to have to rent a boat out to sea to smoke, right? Let's remain compassionate. Anyway, they can't smoke in non-aircon public buildings either (that's what the authorities mean when they state Shopping Centres, right?). Lift lobbies, markets, playgrounds and exercise areas (which I take to include all path for walking and running (hey, walking is a form of exercise too) are included too. And oh, anywhere within 5 metres of the entrances and exits of buildings are no-no-land. I suppose that means that you can lean on or hug the walls of these buildings and smoke away happily. This extension of the banned areas is good news for non-smokers, bad for smokers. Now will they stop smoking? No, they'd rather go onto the roads 5 metres away from the buildings and add vehicle exhaust fumes to their cigs smoke. That will mean more will contract lung cancer and whatever other ailments related to pumping smoke into your lungs on a regular basis. Certainly bad news for smokers, which leads to the bad bad news below.

The bad news? The government is going to charge more for B and C class wards in its Hospitals. That's what means testing leads to, generally - unless you are dead broke. Between the two - being dead broke and having the means, the choice is clear - be broke, but don't let anyone find out that you are broke in name only. Like someone who moved millions to dollars to HK SAR and went to jail for it. Singapore's laws are just as tough, if not more so.

So the upshot is, if you smoke, don't be rich. Otherwise, you'll have to pay through your nose, pun not intended.

Otherwise, have a Happy New Year.


Image: morgueFile.com. Author: Pedro Jose Perez

Never brought to mind

The year is coming to a close. In the immortal words of Queen Elizabeth II, this has been an Annus Horibilis. No, this is not a dirty word, at least not in the "common" way it is understood (tsk tsk, what are all of us thinking of on the last day of 2008?)

It started out promisingly enough, coming off a year (2007) that saw record profits for businesses and stratospheric growth of wealth by individuals in en-bloc'ing their private properties - typically their houses. For those who don't know what that means, it is a collective sale of an entire block property such as a condominium, for hundreds of millions of dollars, the proceeds of which is then allocated to the owners according to their share values in the property. A friend of mine received over a million dollars for his townhouse, which was part of a bigger cluster development. No wonder that erstwhile neighbours became mortal enemies when such en-bloc sales were blocked because they couldn't garner the 80% minimum 'ok's' to proceed with the sales. A few lawsuits are still pending in the courts over these disagreements, and people have even complained through the press above the oppressiveness of Sales Committees who just cannot stop thinking about selling their houses.

The year is ending with much less optimism though, amazingly, there are people who still want to go ahead with their en-bloc projects. One wonders if these people have lost so heavily in the stock market, or business, or whatever bombs they had bought into that cash has suddenly taken a critical dimension in the grand scheme of things.

The year is ending with bitter memories for many over the Lehman Brothers debacle, where older people would have lost their entire retirement savings had not DBS done some refunding on compassionate grounds. Of course goodwill and reputation also meant a lot to the bank. Well, never mind, if you are short of cash, there are ways to raise money, such as the rights offering on 22nd December 2008, a third of which was taken up by Temasek Holdings. In these times, you really need Temasek to come in because there aren't much free money sitting around as it used to. And whatever money that many imagined they had have just gone up in smoke, either in the stock market, or in Bernard Madoff, whose estimated US$50 billion loss was the largest any individual had managed to lose - on behalf of his clients, i.e. That's why I have never believed in pyramids where money is concerned, however respectable they are always dressed up to look.

And people are beginning to be out-of-pocket where jobs are concerned. Again, DBS started the ball rolling by putting 900 people out of work. It got an obligatory tongue-lashing from Mr Lim Swee Say, the Trade Union chief, over this action, but it is not likely that retrenchments will stop at DBS Bank, in spite of what the Union leaders say. When the business dries up, when the money stops flowing anymore, you've got to close shop - its a fact of life. What the government can do is pump money into the economy to sustain it, but this can only be a short term measure. Hopefully, the economy will recover at the end of 2009, as some high government officials have dared to predict, but the majority opinion seem to be that this depressing state of affairs is going to last much longer.

And it is sad that the year is ending with news of abandonment of foreign workers by Singapore contractors, who suddenly find that they have no more jobs for people whom they have brought into the country. What's worse, these workers have reportedly not been paid for some time now and some are starving and are no worse off than beggars.

And to end it all, the symbolic Wheel of Fortune, the Singapore Flyer broke down on the 23rd December 2008, trapping 175 people on board at the time. Truly tonight, the last day of 2008, when thousands of people throng the various new year's eve parties on the island, they'd be singing Auld Lang Syne with a new gusto, and especially agree on the question:

Should all acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind...

Goodnight and goodbye, 2008.


Image: morgueFile.com. Author: elemenoperica

Don't be blunt

I agree with Minister Lim Boon Heng (Today, 23rd Dec 2008 - page 1). Not that I am a staunch PAP supporter or that I am anti-opposition or that I am a union member. If anything, I am more apathetic politically, so my view this time around, as in many of the past cases I have commented on, is purely based on reason, and perhaps a bit of self-interest. Well, ok, that's a lot of self-interest.

I agree that the Central Provident Fund (CPF) should not be cut in these recessionary times because, as Mr Lim has rightly pointed out, it is a blunt instrument. It will cut the real wages of workers whose organisations are making money in these depressed times just as much as for those organisations which are bleeding red, or at best are just floating above water right now. Now why should workers, salarymen, in profitable companies, be asked to give more of the profit generated through their effort to their employers? So that these employers can buy another couple of houses at depressed prices, and/or mop up shares of blue-chip companies at a bargain, all to their own benefit? If the workers' Unions even contemplate this, they should be run out of the Union house. And since the CPF contribution rates are uniform across the board, then workers in those companies doing badly should also not be touched.

Let's not have a situation where the employers, the bosses, have their cake and eat it too. They can cut the bonuses, other variable wage components and even reduce wages, as suggested by the Union leaders, but not the CPF. We salarymen depend on the money in the CPF account to pay for the roof over our heads We have no choice. Imagine every HDB dweller dumping their houses because they cannot make the mortgage payments. We'll have a crisis worst than the recession on our hands, a situation perhaps akin to the sub-prime mortgage problem in the US. We also need the CPF savings for our retirement years. The government has been harping on the possibility that Singaporeans, in spite of their CPF, may not have enough to retire with. So don't pare it down, don't reduce the quantum of contributions from the employers. Otherwise, reasons for the Retirement Accounts and whatnots that are cooked up from time to time by the government (in good times) will look so hollow.

Singaporeans may be an obedient and disciplined workforce, but we are not stupid. While we do not want to go to the extremes that some American Unions have gone, we need to look out for ourselves too.

Image: morgueFile.com. Author: Dani Simmonds

Public Gambling

Mr Khaw Boon Wan comes across as an honest man. Really. Read what he says in interviews and listen to him in Parliament. You cannot fault the man for being drop-death honest with you. He doesn't fudge the issues. Instead, he tells it like it is. He speaks to the common folks, not at them, not over them, not from above. So you cannot but like the man for his forthrightness and ability to empathise with you.

He has come out to admit that the mis-investment of sinking funds should rightly be a concern to the man in the street, for after all, these mis-invested money are the people's money, they belong to the townsfolk. (See Straits Times, 19 Dec 2008). But he reasons that since these same investments made money in the past, and the current losses represents a small portion of these gains, it shows that these funds are, on balance, in good hands. He further makes the point that the statement of accounts of these town councils can be inspected any time, no questions asked. I think he is being level-headed and reasonable again. But the problem with this is that it isn't very useful examining the books 'after the fact', is it?

But surely the thing that saved the TC's bacon this time was past investment gains. Let us do a thought experiment, for the heck of it. If a TC had $10million in sinking funds, and invests 10% of it in risky structured deposits (i.e. $100,000) - the law says they can't go beyond 30%. Again, assuming that the annual yield of that investment is 10%. The investment will have yielded $100,000 x 10% = $10,000 in a year. Let's assume the good times lasted 3 years and assuming the same rate of return, the TC ends up with $30,000 profit (let's not do the compounding thing and we shall ignore inflation). Suppose in the 4th year, a financial tsunami hits, and the fund loses $29,000 in absolute terms. That still gives the fund a positive $1,000 over 4 years. Is that good management of funds or not? Of course, you'd have to consider the opportunity cost of the next best option, which is a Fixed Deposit. Over 4 years, the yield, at 2% per annum, will be $2,000 x 4 years, or $8,000. Clearly, in this scenario, it would have been better if the money had been invested in FDs. Of course, you will argue that this scenario is contrived to 'win' the argument, but so is the 'luck' that the TCs counted on over the past to accumulate enough surplus to still come out quite decent in its overall investment returns in spite of the $16million loss. Nevertheless, could my contrived scenario be possible?

If so, in both cases, the balance sheets still yield a positive bottom line, but you and I know that they have lost big time with the structured investment. Mr Khaw's argument begins to get into trouble with a scenario somewere in-between. Is he not then gambling with numbers, like all those queues we witness in front of 4-D booths almost everyday?

It is ok if the money belongs to you, or a private business, but if it is the people's money, which Mr Khaw very rightly admits to be the case, then this risk is not obviously acceptable.

The TCs were just lucky this time around. I know of people, and you will too, whose investments have almost been wiped out, or at least reduced so drastically that it would be a pain greater than going to hell, to liquidate now. And I am not referring only to the mini-bombs...er...bonds, I mean.

Image: morgueFile.com. Author: Lisa Solonynko

Superkids

Last Friday night, I met up with some ex-colleagues whom I have not seen in a while. We were part of a small outfit then, all of us young and unmarried. So I suppose, without the husbands and wives and children, we got to strike up close bonds as only young people do. 

Now we are much older. The oldest child we have among us is already in Junior College - all of 17 years old. So it was natural that part of the conversation over dinner turned to children and their education. Pre-school education was raised - words like Kumon and what-nots came up in the free-flowing conversation. Apparently, many of my ex-colleagues have sent their toddlers to these specialist schools to, I suppose, gain a leg-up in life. All this while I kept silent, because I never ever believed in these schools. I sent my son to a PAP kindergarten for two years, and that was it. Tried to get him interested in Piano, but he wanted out after a few lessons. So that was it too, until he was enrolled into a neighbourhood school just 7-10 minutes walk away from where I lived. He passed his PSLE with straight As (although A+ would have been more impressive), got into another neighbourhood Secondary School, now biding time till his 'O' levels. 

Such is the life of every Singapore boy and girl. We have to pass through 2 major exams in our young lives, exams which many parents treat as a matter of life and death. So I could empathise with a parent who wrote in to Today's (15 December 2008) forum page lamenting the lengths to which Singapore parents would subject their children to regimentation memorisation, regurgitation, creativitisation, etc. from as early as 2 years old. I often wonder if there is anything wrong with us parents. We bring a child into the world, and just as soon as they are ready to walk, we rob them of their childhood by subjecting them to an endless regimen of training in the hope that they will turn into an Einstein or, at least, some'thing' they could brag in parties and gatherings.

I often also wonder whether, somewhere along the line, education in Singapore has taken a wrong turning, for the worse. I do not know, but 20-30 years hence, when our children themselves becomes parents, they would reverse these practices because they know it didn't so much benefit them as it did their parents. I would be disappointed if this state of affair is perpetuated by them and those that come after them. Then we would know that the turning has been too sharp.

Image: morgueFile.com. Author: Darren Hester