TR EMERITUS

Liu Thai Ker’s keynote address at a forum organised by the Business Times of SPH in collaboration with Singapore Institute of Building Limited yesterday (31 Jul) is drawing unusual flaks in the social media. He is singing the same sick mantra of growing population for economic growth and wanting more immigrants in the little island. More than 160 comments (in TRE) have been posted in the thread about the 10m population that Liu Thai Ker said was needed for Singapore to be a sustainable country. If this belief is true, Singapore would have perished long ago and all the small countries should not exist. The netizens were not angry with Liu Thai Ker personally. But for him to repeat this folly is just unbearable. And they are looking for a scapegoat to vent their anger. Liu Thai Ker was in the right place to take the blows. To have 6.9m or 10m or 20m is just a matter of adjusting to a life in a more dense piece of rock. Can, sure can. The people would also become denser or be condensed. It is not a matter of can or cannot. It is a matter of whether the people want to go down that road. It is not even a matter of being sustainable or not sustainable. There are many schools of thoughts on this and no one is wiser. It is not an absolute solution that we go this way or we will perish. Come on, is there a genius out there that can be sure of this, that there is no other ways? By the same belief, I would not even grant it the privilege of calling it a logic, the Australians must be dumb to have so few people in a continent bigger than China, India or the USA and with a population of about 20m. The economists for growth will be screaming ‘fools’. The architects and property developers will be shaking their heads for the lost opportunities to build more buildings and fill up the land with more people. Wonder who is crazy? Why do we want to keep building and building and to add more and more people into this piece of rock? What for? Oh, economic growth!  We have gone pass the law of diminishing return when every extra effort will give smaller and smaller returns. We are in a new level, a level when every extra effort, or increase in population, will lead to an increase in pain. The more people we put into the island, the higher will be the cost of living, the stress on the socio eco system, the infrastructure and the demands on the people. It will lead to more stress and more pain, on the people and on the systems and structures. Those who are living in the confines of 50,000 sq ft properties would not know or feel that this is happening. Some wise crackpots are even telling the people that living in 600 sq ft flat for a family of 4 or 6 is fine, no drop in the quality of life. We used to have that kind of environment in the 50s and 60s, 8 or 10 people living in a cubicle. That was the quality of life. They escaped the squeeze by spending time outside the cubicles. Today the people are better off with aircon comfort in shopping centres and the great pubs and nightspots. The people are saying they did not want this kind of squeeze. Why should their lives be screwed by a few people who want to push this belief through, even got it rubber stamped in Parliament? The govt has heard the cries and the felt the anger. But it seems to choose the deaf frog way, not wanting to listen and now we have a line up of snake oil sellers paraded to sell this koyok of more population. Who is the crazy one? The people must decide on this. The people have rejected the PWP. If the govt wants the moral authority to carry this through, it must call for a referendum before destroying this island for the Singaporeans and their children. Turning a deaf ear is not a solution. This is the people’s call, not the call of a handful of individuals, and definitely not the call of snake oil sellers.   Chua Chin Leng aka redbean * The writer blogs at http://mysingaporenew.blogspot.com    Read More →

Asian Games have been tough and the Olympics tougher, but the Indian paddlers have started to feel the pinch at the Commonwealth Games too, largely due to the domination of China-born players in the event.  The Indians won two gold medals - including one by top paddler Achantha Sharath Kamal - at the Melbourne Games in 2006 and one at the Delhi Games. But they will return home without a gold this time after Sharath Kamal lost his semifinal match on Saturday to Zhan Jian, who competed for the Chinese national team for 10 years before shifting base to Singapore.  "Yes. It is a bit frustrating," Sharath admitted. "Lot of Chinese immigrants are coming into different teams, mostly Singapore. Canada has one from China who was in the quarterfinals."  Sharath was even more disappointed after the Singaporean pair of players of Chinese origin - Gao Ning and Li Hu - denied him and his partner Anthony Amalraj the gold in the men's doubles on Friday. However, he was generous enough to admit that the Singapore players played better.  "The problem is that they keep changing their players. You take time to break a player but when you have done that you see them replacing him with a new player. But they know our style because we have been on the tour for years," said the paddler.  It was for the first time in his career that Sharath played against Zhan Jian. "I have been on the international circuit for 14 years and I have not played this player before. This is not normal."  He said that the situation is such that when he was playing the doubles semifinal against another Singapore pair on Friday, all other teams were supporting the Indians.  "When we beat them (Yang Zi and Zhan Jian) in the semifinals, everybody was very happy. It's like all of us versus Singapore. They are monopolising everything. Last CWG, we could take one gold and Nigeria another. This time England took one. Rest were won by Singapore."  Singapore has so far won four gold medals and is in line to add two more to its kitty. Four of five gold medals they won in Melbourne came from table tennis. In Delhi Games, the sport accounted for 6 out of a total of 11 gold medals for the country.  Indian coach Peter Engel too said that the competition at the Games was getting tougher with the presence of Chinese players. "Of course," Engel said when asked what had affected India's chances in the Games.   Source: Times of India    Read More →

This is how our constructive, nation-building BT reported how GIC is adding insult to injury: AMID a gloomier outlook for fund managers globally, GIC has racked up annualised real returns of 4.1 per cent over the past 20 years to end-March this year, up from 4 per cent as at end-March last year. This return – above global inflation – was underpinned by a strong recovery in global financial markets, said the Singapore sovereign wealth fund. Waz the point of this inflation-beating return when the 2.5% CPF rate is below S’pore’s inflation rate? Remember that until recently, we were told the 2.5% rate was justified given that inflation was oneish? In late July after the June inflation numbers were released which showed core inflation slowed for a second straight month to 2.1 per cent after May’s 2.2%, but a drop to below 2% will be unlikely this year, OCBC economist Selena Ling told MediaCorp. CIMB economist Song Seng Wun agreed: “The domestic pressure on core inflation hasn’t disappeared. In fact, the pass-through of wage costs to consumer prices has so far been slower than expected, but may become more visible as the economy further recovers. ”Core inflation, which excludes accommodation and private road transport costs, is regarded as a reflection of the wage cost pressure, and the MAS and the MTI retain their 2 to 3%  forecast given the tight labour market. Govt’s way of saying, “You want less FTs, we give you slower growth of FTs and higher inflation.”? The official forecast for all-items inflation is being kept at 1.5 to 2.5%, as the Government expects overall prices to ease in the second half due to lower imputed rentals and car prices, with Certificate of Entitlement quotas expected to rise more than expected*. Especially as our CPF monies do find their way into the pool of funds managed by GIC. Not that this is any secret exposed by Roy Ngerng. I blogged about this in 2009. And I think TRE reproduced it then. And one LKY spoke in 2000 or 2001 at a GIC anniversary do about how the CPF monies were converted into a special govt bond and the proceeds flowed into GIC after being mixed with govt surpluses in the Consolidated Fund. — * Update at 5.00am: Extract from BT of 24 July on inflation The government has cut its 2014 inflation forecast amid lower car prices and housing costs expected for the second half of the year: it now sees headline inflation coming in at the lower half of its 1.5-2.5 per cent forecast range. But with domestic cost pressures remaining the primary source of inflation, the government reiterated that core inflation (which strips out accommodation and private road transport costs) will stay elevated at 2-3 per cent in 2014. The impact of rising consumer prices on households varied across different income groups in the first half of this year. Worst hit were the bottom 20 per cent of households: their larger expenditure shares on food and healthcare costs meant they experienced a higher inflation rate (excluding imputed rentals on owner-occupied accommodation) at 2 per cent, compared to the middle 60 per cent income group and the richest fifth of households (both at 1.7 per cent). CIMB and DBS economists agreed that much of the increase in food and healthcare costs was the result of ongoing restructuring efforts, where a tight labour market has pushed costs (and therefore prices) up. Said DBS’s Irvin Seah: “Restructuring is inflationary in nature, and it will affect everything. Even if we are unable to bring healthcare costs lower, we should try to moderate the pace of increase.” According to a report released by the Department of Statistics (DOS) yesterday, Singapore households experienced a 1.7 per cent inflation rate in the first half of this year compared to the same period in 2013. This was lower than the 1.9 per cent rise seen in the preceding six months. Excluding imputed rentals on owner-occupied accommodation, the consumer price index (CPI) went up by 1.7 per cent in H1 2014 – slightly higher than the increase of 1.5 per cent in the second half of 2013. As for the second half of this year, the government expects headline inflation to ease, due to lower car prices and accommodation costs.   Cynical Investor [Source]: Thoughts of a Cynical Investor (http://atans1.wordpress.com).    Read More →