Auditor General has reported many more cases of creative accounting problems resulting in losses of millions.

Should shananigans or chicanery be permitted by the Auditing professions or should the auditing professionals themselves engage in such practices to help clients cover up potential queries from stakeholders.

Why can’t the government ministers set as examples themselves and improve the presentation of Annual Budgets to include report and include all includes including extraordinary gains from SLA, HDB, LTA, JTC, URA to as to avoid the same mistakes over and over again as seen happening in 2007 Increase of GST from 5% to 7% based on wrong and inaccurate projection of surpluses and incomes.

Such a state of government is equal to misrepresentation which has already happened in the high-profile NKF case.

Let Temasek and GIC be properly run with professionals providing accurate information and not creative accounts which tend to disguise mistakes or misrepresent information.

The various incidents of malpractices like failure to recover debts owing to state due to computer errors or over-spending or spending without authorization should be put to a stop without any more excuses.

Although the increment is more than 10%, it is likely to be just enough for the needy to catch up with the inflation of then essential items they can’t do without.

Thanks for encouraging all to together here to tell the truths and ask some serious questions on many issues and policies affecting us all.

I believe there is a greater interest now among people to know the rationale and truths behind many of our government policies.

Only through responsible discussions among citizens here each in his own way will we collectively contribute to raising expectations and standards of our many government policies from wider nation-building perspectives.

It may take time for government to admit its past errors but with our collective inputs based on facts and substance from many here I believe government eventually have to listen and it will not be in its interest to continue to ignore views for too long.

Votes will go against them if they don’t listen because people are more educated and cannot be easily brainwashed by state controlled media and propaganda.

Perhaps the Straits Times chief executive, chairman or editors cannot face up to their superior for allowing such post in its official website as foreigners might read it and come to know that our annual budget actually is based on creative accounting and does not contain full facts like hidden profits and gains made by the government and its many government-linked companies.

Dare I say that none of us are anti government and establishment, the love for our country and the people have driven and instigated/motivate You into actions in the duty of caring for the people and the country, this is indeed lofty. Our Leaders have used colourful, sweet words and glorious statistics all these years to make the people feel good. Unfortunately, the people hardly (felt)feel consoled but distressed that all those ‘beautiful things’(window dressings?) are never theirs(the people) to share but they (were) are make to labour for them to realise the ideals of our leaders. Even blind man knows(they heard and get to hear) that much of the harvests go to the leaders themselves, just look at the ways they remunerate themselves!

Laymen have difficulties to relate their problems and difficulties to others, many bear with their situations and invariably crimes and suicides are their solutions and getaways from their difficulties. Paradoxically, we have a group of conscientious intellectuals like You who are willing and kind to champion the minnows, it’s a great blessing. I wish more of such people will come forward for the collective goods of the people and hence OUR COUNTRY! Please accept my respects.

Headlines and items include:
- $2,300 Hongbao for the Tok family
- One-off hongbao for all adult S’poreans this year
- Those over 51 to get Govt top-up of their CPF Medisave
- What’s in his hongbao … public assistance will get $330, up from $290

Why all the celebratory “lucky”, “feel good” as if “strike Toto or 4D” song and dance about? What’s this excessive publicity about? What’s the hype?

I know it’s the 10th day of Chinese New Year today but are Singaporeans getting a fantastic and auspicious deal from Budget 2008? It’s great to read the commentary “Bonanza Budget furthers strategic aims” by Ms Chua Mui Hoong that “the figure is about 62 per cent of the $1.4 billion increased revenue from the hike in goods and services tax (GST) – which means that through the Growth Dividend, the Government is giving back man-in-the-street 60 cents of every extra dollar it collected from the GST hike.”

Pardon my candour but instead of Hongbao Budget, some may think it’s “Peh Kim Budget” as all the Govt-imposed hikes and the ongoing ever-increasing inflation is “killing” us. (For those who are not familiar with the term, “peh kim” is donation given to bereaved family). Then again, Choi, thai kah lai see, (touch wood!) it’s Chinese New Year!

Well, they changed the laws to suck much of our money last year (by increasing GST, PUB, public transport fare hikes, ERP, GST-loaded daily necessities price increases, conservancy charges, delay CPF Minimum Sum Payment, etc. and what have you). Now being wise after the event with 20/20 hindsight, they’ve decided to give back some. Not all but “some”. Just “some” to pull wool over our eyes again?

So is there cause to celebrate being lesser victims now?

Victims to a system whereby laws are changed for the benefits of those who make the laws? Or for the benefit of the poor who may now have $330 per month instead of $290.

Remember Parliament:
[Dr Lily Neo: Sir, I want to check with the Minister again on the strict criteria on the entitlement for PA recipients. May I ask him what is his definition of "subsistence living"? Am I correct to say that, out of $260 per month for PA recipients, $100 goes to rental, power supply and S&C, and leaving them with only $5 a day to live on? Am I correct to say that any basic meal in any hawker centre is already $2.50 to $3.00 per meal? Therefore, is it too much to ask for just three meals a day as an entitlement for the PA recipients?

Dr Vivian Balakrishnan: How much do you want? Do you want three meals in a hawker centre, food court or restaurant?]

Hopefully, $330 is enough for 3 decent meals a day in hawker centres?

Who knows?

It’s after reading Reuters below, that I found out what the celebration is about. Oh, the huge Hongbao’s and “FU” are meant for the fat cats!

Reuters – Saturday, February 16

SINGAPORE, Feb 15 – Singapore government ministers and other political appointees, the world’s best paid, will cost taxpayers another 15 percent in the coming financial year starting April, according to the city-state’s budget on Friday.

The state will spend S$66.5 million on political appointments, up from S$58.1 million in the current fiscal year to March — which was also 27 percent up on 2006/2007.

The government announced two rounds of pay hikes for ministers last year, raising Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s annual pay to S$3.76 million — at least five times that of U.S. President George W. Bush

Now I know!

And thanks to http://wherebearsroamfree.blogspot.com/2008_02_01_archive.html

I know better!

Cheers,

Feed Me To The Fish

2. Whether it is HDB overpricing [by humongous multiples], recklessly importing hordes of foreigners to the present 1 in 4 of the population, buying into subprime-hit foreign banks to increase LKY’s clout internationally, OVERTAX & UNDERSPEND to amass huge hoards of our monies for THEIR use, all these serve political purposes, mainly to ENTRENCH THEMSELVES IN POWER FOREVER, GIVE THEM CLOUT AND “WEIGHT” INTERNATIONALLY SO THEY WILL BE WELCOMED WHEREVER THEY GO, from Downing Street to Great Hall of the People or the Boardrooms of Morgan Stanley or Total, all our monies are used for the sole political purpose of giving our leaders CLOUT and “WEIGHT”. Our monies are not for us.

3. Hence, not content with OVERTAX & UNDERSPEND, LIE KY recently told us yet again that if we have no money when old, we have only ourselves to blame and cannot expect any sympathy or help from his govt, EVEN THOUGH WE HAVE PAID TAXES ALL OUR LIVES TO FUND EVERY ACTION OF THE GOVT AND ITS MINISTERS’ LUXURIOUS LIFESTYLES. “There is no free lunch” EVEN THOUGH WE HAVE ALL PAID FOR IT MANY, MANY TIMES OVER.

4. LIE KY LHL PAP have a thoroughly Hobbesian view of themselves, us, the world and the relationships therefrom. Once we have [foolishly, in the 1 and only truly democratic election in 1959] voted LIE KY into power, we have to accept every vice and satanic policy he forces upon us. The speed and ferocity with which he arrested and jailed without trial, shortly after 1959, editors, journalists, political opponents — even opposition MPs, show how bloody his mind and hands are. Almost all were tortured, some jailed 32 years until old age and ill health forced their release. Some died from the treatment. In such a context, it is too hopeful to expect kindness or even reasonableness. These are weaknesses in his Hobbesian worldview.

Although, much effort had been put into to ease the situation of the inflation, the government have failed to realise that there are also a group of poor’s children who are unable to get into the local university studying in private universities (perhaps to get a larger foreign intake in an expense of the local).

Their children are forced to study in a private universities which means that their parents have to spend more in their children’s education and paying lots more in their children’s daily expenses (eg food, transport fee).

Why the government can’t give transport, education subsidies to these children? They are the children of Singapore!! The government failed to recognise that these children are the same group of people who will be serving the NS as compared to the locals in the local universities. Reason normally being given that this is not a local university and this is seriously insufficient to be an answer to this problem.

This suggests that Singaporean in local university is a Singaporean whereas Singaporean in a private university is not. The same old reason is being given when these students tried to apply for the National Service deferment. Dont you think this sounds stupid?

I see this as unequal treatment to two different groups of Singaporeans. I demand the reason for this.

HOUSTON: Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan on Thursday said the U.S. economy is “clearly on the edge” of a recession.

Greenspan said the economy will continue to erode until there is a stabilization of U.S. housing prices.

“We have a long way to go” before housing prices hit a bottom, Greenspan told energy executives at the CERA conference.

High oil prices are dragging on the economy, but the fact that they haven’t done more damage shows its resiliency.

“It’s a burden now,” Greenspan said. He added that it’s “quite remarkable” that the U.S. economy is “able to do reasonably well” with oil prices near historic highs.

Crude oil futures hit above $95 a barrel on Thursday and went above $100 in early January.

Greenspan again — as he had last month — said that the likelihood of the U.S. economy going into recession was “50 percent or better.”

He said the U.S. economy was growing at “stall speed.”

“Stagflation is too strong a term for what we are on the edge of,” Greenspan said.

The subprime mortgage crisis would already have put the United States into recession if U.S. businesses weren’t healthy in part as the result of years of low interest rates, Greenspan said.

“If businesses weren’t in extraordinarily good shape, I have no doubt we wouldn’t be asking if we’re in a recession, but how long and how deep,” Greenspan said.

“Obviously, they (businesses) are not pushed for credit,” said Greenspan.

Banks have cut back lending and will continue tight controls on borrowing until housing prices backed by subprime mortgages stabilize, said Greenspan.

Greenspan made his comments in response to questions by Daniel Yergin, chairman of CERA.

Greenspan said he would like to see additional use of electric cars.

Nuclear power makes the “most sense” to increase U.S. power generation when all trade-offs are weighed, he said. “We have to use nuclear,” Greenspan said.

He said more discussion is needed before any “cap” is created as part of a U.S. cap-and-trade carbon program.

A carbon cap would likely lead to lower economic activity and higher unemployment if one were set before emissions-cutting technology is widespread, Greenspan said.

Greenspan said he doubted that technological advances will solve the problem of growing carbon dioxide emissions.

“If you don’t have a significant amount to trade, a lot of people won’t be able to trade and won’t have the energy they need,” Greenspan said.

(Additional reporting by Erwin Seba in Houston; writing by Bernie Woodall; Editing by Gary Hill)”
UNQUOTE

Study how Greenspan will resolve the many economic and social problems as compared with our own Finance Minister’s perspective.

For years we have seen our Finance Minister’s speeches in parliament during presentation of annual budget. It is a partial budget based on Incomes & Expenditure concept without revealing huge capital gains and extraordinary profits made by all corporatized basic services which stayed concealed year after year giving a distorted view of our surplus or deficit.

Now let us look at the annual incomes and expenditures for 2007 audited account again. Has it contained the Billions chalked up by state land sales, HDB flat sales, JTC land/property sales, URA and LTA sales and all the proceeds from transfer of people’s assets of lands and infrastructures taken over by GLCs upon corporations or privatizations to withhold or cut down government tax spending on basic services to the people?

The extraordinary capital gains made by SLA, HDB, URA have amounted to some $6 billions as reported sometime in 2007.

Has this figure been included in the bottom line of the annual budget?

Singapore government’s traditional annual budget is so far at best a white-wash or window dressing or creative accounting like NKF has done and is not something really creative or strategic enough to drive the economy.

It is reactionary responding to criticisms and trying to patch up unhappiness a bit here and a bit there with a bit of goodies.

To solve the perennial rising costs of living and the stagnated median wages for prolonged periods now since the 1997 financial crisis it is time for our new Finance Minister to present his annual budget reflecting the full incomes with information showing cuts in spending on essential government services due to corporatisation so as to make the tax burdens less onerous and more sustainable (since basic services are progressively passed to GLCs charging full market fees) for the longer term.

The whole Annual Budget should be transparent and not hide any hidden profits or extraordinary gains made by SLA or HDB due to double-charging on lands and infrastructures already paid for by citizens with past tax monies.

Try to eliminate all the hidden profiteering schemes through GLCs put in place by previous government under LKY which so far GCT nor LHL has failed to solve.

Government is elected to serve the people and solve their problems of living, working and competing for a job in this world.

Establish a people-centred annual budget to address root causes of our problems.

Do not hide profits made by SLA, HDB or URA from lands and infrastructures and assets already owned by them and funded by taxes.

Do not double-charge on lands and assets in respect of basic services like medical care, transportation, utility, telecommunication, public and welfare institutions.

Adopt a master economic planning strategy as recommended by Greenspan to save on energy bills and maximise our surpluses to benefit our job creations rather than giving away jobs to UBS or Citibank or Shin Corp.

existing resources to help save costs of operations and off rising inflation and energy costs.

Pass back all such savings including returns from surplus investments and plow back such profits in the form of endowment funds to prevent any further over-taxing and back-charging and under-spending thereby stalling our economic competitiveness.

Since ministers are being paid fullest market salaries (for bill collector jobs) the government should do away with their life pensions which will be a great burden to the people.

As long as the median income is stagnated at around $2000.00 pm, ministers and civil servants should not rely on artificial arbitrary devices like NWC or their own parliamentary votes to increase their salaries by 7-14% as clearly people are being left behind as against the PAP election manifesto or our national pledge.

2. Just ruminating about how computer software has made this sort of thing so easy. Using a spreadsheet, a free 1 from download.com will do, and just 1 day, anyone can input the figures, then swop numbers here and there until it all comes out right [even if wrong, who dares to care?]. With time for the usual 2-hour lunch. Even a siesta in the luxurious bedrooms of the Istana Palace, no Monica Lewinsky, though. For this we pay them S$3,7m + bonuses + perks + concurrent pensions?

3. The obscene surplus is such an embarrassment of riches that the LIEgime has to give some back, as little as politically acceptable, and this is the main reason for any seeming generosity. [Thomson Financial reported a week ago that "The government conservatively projected a 640 million Singapore dollar deficit for the year to March 2008. But by September 2007 it had already recorded a surplus of 6.2 billion dollars."]

4. If they can make such a mind-boggling miscalculation, an error of -S$640m to +6.2b and financial year’s not over yet, what other humongous STUPIDITIES are they committing, too? Decades of OVERTAX & UNDERSPEND habits die hard.

5. All this spending on new hospitals, don’t let it fool you. It’s not for us. Due to the LIEgime’s stupid policies of importing huge hordes of foreigners, now they all need the same facilities and infrastructures we need, so the pressure is on everything, hence more schools, teachers, hospitals, nurses, doctors, pharmacists, etc, more new or revised public transport schemes, etc. Any fool could have seen these coming. When you import a million foreigners, 1/4 of the population, everything has to go up to accommodate them.

6. It is still OVERTAX & UNDERSPEND. But the pressure of a million foreigners is breaking everything at the seams. Now the troubles are starting to show. This Budget is just beginning to reflect the reality of a million foreigners. This is just the beginning. You have been warned.