It is set in motion ...

Earnings drop for 2nd consecutive quarter

By Leong Sze Hian for TOC

I refer to the Ministry of Manpower’s (MOM) Labour Market Third Quarter 2010 Report. Earnings Average (Mean) Monthly Nominal Earnings Singapore $ Per Employee, has continued to fall from $4,310 to $3,819 and $3,754, for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Qtrs, respectively.

With the economy booming and expected to be the fastest growing in the world at 15 per cent GDP growth, and media reports reporting that the job market is bursting at the seams, why has earnings continued to fall for the second consecutive quarter?

Since we are talking about Average (Mean) Earnings, what is the median earnings?

Normally, as in the past, media earnings may be lower than mean earnings?

So, although the annual growth rate was 5.4 per cent, with inflation hitting 3.8 per cent in November, which is the highest since January 2009, (“S’pore’s inflation hits highest level since Jan 2009”, Channel News Asia, Dec 23), we may yet end the year, with a third consecutive year of negative real median wage increase.

Unemployment

Mature residents aged 40 & over continued to form the largest group of resident job seekers (24,000 or 45%). As to long-term unemployment, the majority (67%) of them were mature residents age 40 & over.

For Residents Made Redundant, the occupational group, Professionals, Managers, Executives & Technicians (PMETS) formed the largest group, at 51.7 per cent.

By educational attainment, those with a degree, formed the largest group, at 29.9 per cent.

By age group, age 40 & over formed the largest group, at 51.8 per cent.

Sinced the data on residents made redundant pertain to private sector establishments each with at least 25 employees and the public sector, the number made redundant may be more if we include private sector establishments with less than 25 employees.

The number of workers placed on short-week or temporary lay-off rose to 410 in the third quarter, from 290 in the second quarter.

Similarly, the above excludes less than 25 employee establishments.

Re-employment

For re-employment, the improvement over the quarter was for all groups, except for residents with diploma or other professional qualifications whose re-employment rate declined from 64% to 60%.

Business outlook

The business outlook has softened. For example, a smaller net weighted balance of 3% of manufacturers expect improvement in the next six months, down from 18% in the quarter’s survey.

In summary, the above statistics may indicate that perhaps things are not as rosy as most media reports have portrayed, particularly for older and more educated residents on a relative basis.

29 December 2010

Rewriting History

Krugman: Invincible Ignorance

So Republican members of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission are going to issue their own report, placing primary blame on the government — because it’s always the government’s fault.

And according to reporting at the Huffington Post, all four Republicans voted in favor of banning the phrases “Wall Street” and “shadow banking” and the words “interconnection” and “deregulation” from the panel’s final report, according to a person familiar with the matter and confirmed by Brooksley E. Born, one of the six commissioners who voted against the proposal.

Yep. It was all Fannie and Freddie, which somehow managed to cause housing bubbles in Ireland, Iceland, Latvia, and Spain as well as the United States; and the repo market had nothing to do with it.

And bear in mind that this wasn’t one Republican; it was all of them.

I really do wonder how this country can remain governable, when one party insists on creating its own reality. Next thing you know they’re going to reject the theory of evolution. Oh, wait …

Orwell and the Financial Crisis

"... The same thing happened with Social Security privatization. There was a long effort by conservative groups to promote privatization, a term they themselves devised. ... But then, when it turned out that the term polled badly, they began rewriting old records in an attempt to cover up the fact that they had ever talked about it. ..."

"... The right has always understood that the perceptions game is a long game, that you have to rewrite history on a sustained basis to shape the assumptions that govern politics. Work at it steadily, and you have even a liberal Democratic president believing that Social Security only covered widows and orphans at first, that Medicare started small, and that the Clinton-era productivity boom began under Reagan... So of course they’re working hard, right now, to expunge deregulation and shadow banking from the story of the 2008 crisis."

17 December 2010

Will Global Warming submerge the whole of Singapore ?

Who cares ...

S$1,000,000 - 78 SqM, HDB 2 Bed- Room Flat ( 99 year lease ) ?

Unsustainable Policy : HDB

By Goh Meng Seng

Minister Mah Bow Tan has continued to claim that HDB flats are "affordable" despite of the 30 years mortgage. He has however, made a few interesting points today.

First he asserts that due to land scarce, in order to have a "SUSTAINABLE" housing policy, the present HDB policy should continue. Secondly, he has somewhat RETRACTED from his earlier position that it is ok to have high HDB prices because we could "monetize" aka sell our flats for retirement. He now says that we may not need to sell our flats and downgrade for retirement.

I have explained why selling flat for retirement is NOT A WORKABLE and SUSTAINABLE OPTION at all.

Before I talk about why this scheme of "selling flat for retirement" is not sustainable in the long run, I would like to address the basic fundamentals of why such HIGH HDB PRICES under the guise of "asset enhancement" is the deliberate policy direction of PAP government.

High Property Prices to solve Aging Population Problems

Since early 1980s, PAP has suddenly realized that their aggressive "TWO IS ENOUGH" policy is flawed and it would create unprecedented acceleration of aging population. By doing a demographic projection, it would mean that the CPF scheme may not be sustainable in providing adequate retirement financing for this aging population.

The burden of providing retirement financing lies on the government to give constant returns to CPF account holders. If less and less people are going to work in the work force while more and more people are going to withdraw their CPF money, it will create cashflow pressures on CPF. i.e. CPF will have to liquidate its assets to repay the CPF holders while earning lesser returns from a smaller asset pool. This problem will aggravate in time to come. This is also part of the reasons why CPF withdrawal age keep postponing.

The brilliant idea of maintaining high HDB flat price comes about to solve a lot of these problems derived from aging population. The following are the reasoning:

1) If people have less savings in CPF, the government won't be burden by interest payment to the account holders. i.e. the government will wash its hands off from retirement financing of an aging population.

2) How or who will finance the future retirees then? A 30 year mortgage plan will DEFINITELY force Singaporeans to sell their flats for retirement! This is basically because their CPF accounts will have very little amount of funds left! By allowing HDB prices to increase, these future retirees could well "withdraw" their "retirement funds" by selling off their HDB flats at high prices! This would solve their retirement financing!

Impact of HDB flat for Retirement Financing

Such simplistic thinking will have a few impacts. All of these impacts are unfavorable to Singaporeans but very favorable to the Government.

1) The Government could benefit from selling HDB flats at high prices to citizens and they no longer need to fork out money for any subsidies. All so call subsidies are basically on paper accounting, market subsidies.

2) The first adjustment is to raise land prices. HDB, on paper is in deficit because it has to buy land from SLA (both under Ministry of Development) at market prices. Please note that SLA has become the biggest land owner in Singapore with monopoly power to determine prices.

3) All proceeds from Land Sales go directly into the reserves and that is why our reserves grow at rapid rate since 1980s.

4) The government earns interests, instead of paying interests, from making loans to HDB buyers. This also means that Singaporeans are paying higher HDB prices using almost all their CPF monies and burden by higher mortgage interests.

5) The prices of HDB flats MUST increase substantially over time in order for this scheme to be sustainable. If not, the whole system will collapse.

Implications

What are the implications?

Apparently, the government benefited the most from such scheme! It relinquishes its responsibility of providing retirement financing for an aging population basically transferring this burden to the future generations in terms of HIGHER HDB PRICES. MAKE PROFITS from these higher HDB prices which transferred into reserves which make them good i.e. they have been boasting how good they are because they have accumulated so much reserves. On top of that, make money from interests collected from HDB buyers!

What they government gain will be what the citizens will lose. This is a very simple logic. HDB is the MONOPOLY of the new HDB flat market and it is also the lender who earns interests from all outstanding loans.

This scheme will impact on both present HDB owners who bought their flats at high prices which end up with 30 year mortgage. They will most probably be FORCED to sell their HDB flats when they want to retire. The future generations will have to suffer higher HDB prices because this is intended, so that the present generation could generate enough funds for their retirement needs!

Unsustainable

This model is NOT sustainable in the long run. The reason is pretty clear. In order to preserve the purchasing power of the amount of money Singaporeans have put into their HDB flats, the future price of their flats has to increase tremendously to cover the interest cost as well as inflation throughout the 30 years period.

However the wages of the working class normally grow at the rate just enough to cover inflation. That is why we are witnessing this impact of wages lagging behind HDB price growth for the past two decades. From the following graph prepared by Lucky Tan.

 

From 1990 to 2009, wage doubled while HDB prices grow by FOUR folds! This correspond to the increase in the mortgage payment period from 15 years to 30 years! In time to come, our future generations may have to pay for a 40years or even 50 years mortgage for just a decent HDB flat!

Is this sustainable?

Nobody can guarantee property prices to grow forever at such rapid rate. With an aging population, less youngsters will demand for MORE supply due to more elders trying to sell their flats. This will have downward pressure on relative prices.

There are CONFLICTING policy objectives. On one hand, in order for the scheme of utilizing high HDB prices as a means for retirement financing, we need HDB prices to outstrip wage growth but in order to maintain "AFFORDABILITY" for all generations, we need to maintain the price increase according to wage growth! How could these CONFLICTING policy targets be met simultaneously?

This is really an ill-thought out HDB-retirement scheme by the PAP government. This scheme benefits only the present government by alleviating its burden to provide for the retirement funding needs for the citizens while benefiting from all the higher HDB prices and interests earned from loans to HDB owners. This is in the expense of Singaporeans both present and future.

Almost all present Ministers will not be around in 30 years time to take responsibility for the effects of their policies. It is important for Singaporeans to understand the great implications of this HDB-retirement scheme upon our present generations as well as future generations.

I have come to this realization of this scheme ever since PAP started to embark the so call "Asset Enhancement Scheme" back in early 1990s. I have written a number of articles in protest of this scheme but many Singaporeans were overwhelmed by the immediate gain of paper capital gains. There were even Singaporeans trying to capitalize on the sudden increase in their flat value by upgrading or multiple upgradings. In the whole process, they committed higher and higher debts.

The latest report has indicated Singapore's housing debt has constituted more than 51% of total loans from our financial loans! This is even higher than Hong Kong's 20%! We will be doomed if there is a property crash! The whole financial system will be burden with unperforming loans!

An economy cannot invest too much of its financial resources in assets like properties which are not "productive" for the economy. If the property sector takes up too much of financial resources of the economy, we will not be able to have enough resources to finance investments by our local entrepreneurs. It will also means that the financial sector will be over-exposed to a potential bubble which will wipe off our wealth when it burst.

Experiences from Japan, Ireland and even US have shown that over-exposure of the financial sector to the bubble prone property sector will destroy the economy. Japan has hardly recover from its collapse of economy due to property bubble since 1990s!

It is up to every Singaporeans to judge on whether what I write here make any sense. It is easy to sell greed to the masses but it will create non-reversal damage to our future generations. It is not easy to convince people that high property prices are BAD for them. I have waited this long for the opportune time to explain what I have learned throughout these years. I urge every readers who agree with my views to help me to spread this message to your friends and relatives.

This unsustainable and potentially damaging HDB-retirement scheme must be stopped and ceased else our future generations will suffer in vain for our inaction.

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From Web Blog - Singapore Notes

Gambling With Your House

... the NKF definition of subsidy, as exposed by the KPMG investigation team:

6.11.1 The NKF reported in its Investment Report 2004 that it enabled its patients to save in excess of $3.5 million in treatment costs by providing subisdies for costly medication and by bringing down drug prices.

6.11.2 We found that the amount of such savings was derived from the difference between the prices charged by NKF and a notional market price of drugs based on estimated annual consumption in 2004 instead of the difference between the prices charged by the NKF and the actual prices of drugs paid by the NKF. These savings were reflected in invoices given to patients.

6.11.4 As mentioned above, the market price was a notional market price determined by the NKF. The NKF, being a substantial and significant purchased, enjoyed subsidies and rebates from its drug suppliers. Instead of passing these costs savings to its kidney patients, we found that the NKF charged its patients a premium for certain drugs.

11 December 2010

There are just too few of you in this world ...

A Plea ...

20 November 2010

Death and Taxes - USA

Paul Krugman

Unserious People

OK, let’s say goodbye to the deficit commission. If you’re sincerely worried about the US fiscal future — and there’s good reason to be — you don’t propose a plan that involves large cuts in income taxes. Even if those cuts are offset by supposed elimination of tax breaks elsewhere, balancing the budget is hard enough without giving out a lot of goodies — goodies that fairly obviously, even without having the details, would go largely to the very affluent.

I mean, what’s this about? There is no — zero — evidence that income taxes at current rates are an important drag on growth.

Oh, and they’re talking about raising the retirement age, because people live longer — except that the people who really depend on Social Security, those in the bottom half of the distribution, aren’t living much longer. So you’re going to tell janitors to work until they’re 70 because lawyers are living longer than ever.

Still, I guess this is what it takes to get compromise, if by compromise you mean something the center-right and the hard right can agree on.

Update: It’s here. And it really is that bad. The idea that co-chairs of a commission whose charge is fiscal sustainability should take it upon themselves to (a) declare that federal revenue must not exceed 21 percent of GDP — that’s right, putting a cap on receipts and (b) call for reducing the top rate from 35 to 23 is just awesome.

Income And Life Expectancy

I’ve referenced this before, but here’s the Social Security Administration study. Look at Table 4: since 1977, the life expectancy of male workers retiring at age 65 has risen 6 years in the top half of the income distribution, but only 1.3 years in the bottom half.

11 Nov 2010

Middle Class - Chinese

Todayonline - The heir apparent and China's middle class

By Peter Foster
The writer is The Daily Telegraph's China Correspondent. He moved to Beijing in 2009.

From behind the walls of a faceless government building in west Beijing came the news this week that China's mandarins have identified the man who will, in all probability, lead their country after 2012.

It was delivered through a typically obfuscatory communique from the official Xinhua news agency, which said the individual in question had been promoted to a job on the commission that oversees China's armed forces. By such signals do we come to know the identity of the man who will take the helm of the world's second-largest economy.

Mr Xi Jinping, a 57-year-old technocrat with degrees in chemical engineering and law, also happens to be the son of one of China's revolutionary leaders: A "princeling".

What he stands for is far more difficult to divine. Some say he's an economic reformer, or at least presume so since Mr Xi made his name pushing through economic development in the coastal provinces in the 1990s. His success may have something to do with that revolutionary lineage - his father Xi Zhongxun was a communist guerrilla fighter who was purged during the Cultural Revolution, but rehabilitated under Mr Deng Xiaoping.

Perhaps, say the rune readers, this makes Mr Xi the son more liberal-minded when it comes to political reform. Equally, say others, having suffered during the Cultural Revolution himself, Mr Xi is burdened with that same deep fear of political chaos that has made China's top leadership so resistant to change.

The truth is that nobody knows: There has been no manifesto, no hustings, no televised cross-examination, just the coded announcement that Mr Xi will become the leader of an organisation and a country that plays its cards disconcertingly close to its chest.

Perhaps it is a mistake to try and decipher the man. Like the current President, Mr Hu Jintao, he is almost anti-charismatic, a deliberately faceless embodiment of the consensus that rules China. (His wife, a folk singer popular with the over-50s, is far better known.)

Understandably, after the madness of the Mao years, big personalities are no longer welcome in Chinese politics; instead Mr Xi stands at the apex of a labyrinthine network of committees set up to inch China forward, step by step, towards a socialist nirvana with Chinese characteristics.

And therein lies the problem: While China's rulers are dealing in increments - "crossing the river by feeling the stones", as Mr Deng put it - the country they govern is plunging into the turbulent waters of the future.

When Mr Hu stepped out of the shadow of Mr Jiang Zemin in 2003, China had 190? million mobile phones. Today, it has over 800?million. Only 50?million were online; today, it is 420?million. During the same period, China's share of global GDP doubled to 8 per cent, and by 2019 - the mid-point of Mr Xi's putative reign - China could account for nearly 15 per cent.

Such momentous material advances are changing the social fabric of China at a far greater pace than the ruling party is adapting to meet the people's expectations. China's middle classes increasingly want to know why they can't afford to buy a house or why their children can't find jobs after graduation, just as its millions of migrant working classes want to know why, when they live and work in a city, they don't have the right to send their children to school there.

Increasingly, China's individuals think they know their rights and are prepared to defend them against rent-seeking officials, bullying commercial interests that cover up their mistakes and damage public health, and bent policemen and courts that put the interests of the party over the constitutional rights they pledged to uphold.

It is this changing reality that Mr Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace laureate, was reflecting when he wrote Charter 08, a document that offered a blueprint for gradual reforms that would bring basic rights and freedoms - of expression, association, religion and property ownership - within the grasp of ordinary Chinese.

Those demands are arguably the natural consequence of the economic and social development that the party has engineered. But whenever faced with pressure to take the next step, China's leaders have suffered from a 20-year attack of political vertigo, of which Mr Liu's 11-year jail sentence is but the latest expression. As Mr Sun Liping, a sociology professor who was Mr Xi's PhD supervisor, has written in an essay much read on the Chinese Internet, the result of this has been "social decay" - which has its origins in the uncontrollable power of the party that Mr Xi looks set to lead.

"The system of government in China will change. It will change in Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam. It is changing in Singapore. But it will not end up like the American or British or French or German systems. What are we all seeking? A form of government that will be comfortable, because it meets our needs, is not oppressive, and maximises our opportunities. And whether you have one-man-one-vote, or some-men-one-vote or othermen-two-votes, those are forms which should be worked out. I'm not intellectually convinced that one-man-one-vote is the best. We practise it because that's what the British bequeathed us ... "- Lee Kuan Yew

For the foreseeable future, the centre holds; but the tension created by political paralysis, by the ruling party's refusal to submit to checks and balances, to explain itself and even argue its case to a society increasingly expecting explanations, is not going to abate.

The world can only hope that out of its secret huddles and conclaves, the party has found a leader in Mr Xi with the ability to manage the consequences.

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

21 October 2010

Free Flow II

Paul Krugman - Rare and Foolish

Comments:

Bill Pieper

Taiwan
October 18th, 2010
12:13 pm

While the behavior of the PRC government may well be despicable, one almost has to admire how they consistently school western “barbarian” nation, especially the oafish Americans, at nearly every turn. This time they might have overreached, but so what. They have gotten what they want and can sit back while the US officials wring their hands, desperate not to upset their mighty corporate pay masters with a response deemed too harsh. The hand wringers will of course be fully supported by an army of allied ideological warriors from DC think tanks, universities, federal regulatory sleeper cells and elected/selected members of Congress on both sides of the aisle.

The Chinese are masters of two classic strategic and tactical policies used in concert and with complimentary effects. One is divide and conquer, that is, pitting nations which should be naturally allied against the PRC to instead quarrel with one another. This is frequently accomplished by pitting the US exporters and financiers against their European counterparts for example. The other is to exploit an opponent’s weakness, using it as a weapon. In the case of United States, the weakness would be the American slavery to an ideology of “free” trade and unrestricted capital flow; an ideology that provides a near perfect cover for unfettered greed on the part of the nation’s political and financial class. In a hyper-financialized oligarchy such as the US, this fanatic devotion to ideology has benefited a handful of players enormously, while contributing greatly to the ongoing decimation of the middle class.

After the epidemic of tainted products from China, toys poisoning children, toxic drywall, pet food, bad baby formula (presumably none of which reached American shores) etc., etc., a responsible government would have simply imposed a flat out ban of any product that can be consumed, worn or used to build homes until the Chinese government can demonstrate that it has the ability and the will to police its own manufacturing industries. If the US had a government that cared about its people and actively worked in their long term interests, such a ban would have been in place years ago. As far as I can tell it would be perfectly legal within the framework of WTO and other international trade agreements to do so, since public safety interests trump trade deals. In fact, I imagine that if the shoe were on the other foot and US companies had routinely shipped tainted and dangerous products to the Chinese, the PRC would have stepped in and halted such trade until the US can prove it is a responsible trading partner.

The REE debacle illustrates an alarming trend that has been going on for decades. The loss of REE processing resources will take years to replace, so even if mining commences tomorrow, the ore cannot be processed until the plant and expertise is in place. But it is not just rare earths that should concern Americans. When a nation loses its ability to create things, even non-strategic industries will decline over time because there is a lot to learn by making stuff.

Even when products are produced using high level design, creation and engineering talent located in the US, many innovations in process and design are taking place in the locations that actually manufacture the products. The US is losing the “culture” of manufacturing, a culture that contributes to improvements of the products being produced. In addition to this, there is an enormous amount of technological transfer and outright theft of intellectual property from western companies going on, especially in China where western companies are forced to partner with local operations to produce at least some components. These local partners will flat out steal patented technology, even highly sensitive defense related technology, all while being protected by political allies in the PRC. The western companies go along with these risks and costs because they either feel they have no choice in order to remain competitive, or they are eyeing the alluring and thus far illusive carrot of a billion person market. Some companies are finding out too late that it has simply not been worth the cost. But the C-level managers who made the decisions to go to China in the first place - as well as their eager financier partners - have long since made their millions and care not a bit about the costs to their home countries and fellow countrymen.

Paul Cohen

Hartford, CT
October 18th, 2010
12:34 pm

Paul,

There are already too many conflicts around the world that could embroil everyone. We are fighting two endless wars to protect our access to oil, without which, our mighty military machine would collapse. Now you want to escalate tensions with China because they won’t share their rare-earth materials? Let’s throw in Panda Bears. And hey, they have the Great Wall for tourism too. We need to end our colonial foreign policy, not extend it. The greed and selfishness (the ever escalating concentration of wealth flowing to the top) of Corporate executives is the reason we export jobs to exploit cheap labor. If there were a more equitable distribution of wealth in this country, Americans could support demand without having to cut jobs and the opportunity for amassing wealth would still flourish. I’m a bit surprised at the hawkish tone of this piece.

19 October 2010