http://www.singaporepublictransport.blogspot.com

This requires the government to waive the stamp duty for purchasing a owner-occupied property, and other impediments imposed by government HDB loan financing.

If commuting can be reduced, say, by 30%, it will produce the wonderful effect of reducing road congestion, reducing the demand for buses and trains and lead to a more comfortable journey.

I am somewhat sad, that nobody take up this point. Maybe, I am too idealistic and impractical? Am I expected too much?

The sad thing is there is lacking of such substances from our expensive gahmen and ministers. After listening to these gahmen in speech and questioning from time to time, I realize that their answer is simplistic, ‘naive’, insulting, lack substantial understanding and knowledge, and therefore their only argument is defensive and taking the worse case to backup their claim. I wonder is it something to do with their tour of duty or their ego or their ineptness ? Capable Ministers who do well in certain ministry suddenly been switch to other ministry, and military personal been post as chairman or executive. And ministers and others who have script written by scholars to ensure right thing and rhetoric are been said. I wonder how these ministers and many officials can make such important decisions without themselves understand what happening on the ground. There is fallacy to think that academically-capable gahmen can perform any task excellently. I really doubt so even if they have capable people around helping him because it takes time to earn respect and examine thing.

Wish you become a model for the generation of leaders serving the country.

Why did our GIC bought a stake in citibank? In Dec 2006, CITI has a market value of $280 billion dollars and now a mere $120 Billion. A lost of $160 billion roughly 6 times of bear stern. With great write offs in CDO in billions of dollars, i just cant imagined GIC will even think of investing more money in it.

CITIBANK is too big to managed and might have to be broken up into two eventually. That will make our GIC investment ever more trickier. Of course, we have UBS too. Lets wonder what will happen to world no 1 weatlh management UBS ( CITIBANK was world no 2 in wealth management) more job cuts ard 8000, closed more branches and reduced operating costs? Finally i think the only solution is to raise more capital and thats bad for GIC. Really bad. The long term solution is to keep away from banks until more visible signs appeared for GIC to spend our reserves again. Bearing in mind, Singaporean’s life savings are at stake we dont want to be 100 years old to see our cpf money, thats not long term.

If in the end, no clear outcome still exists, then a mutual respectable agreement to disagree should be on the table among all parties. That is how cross-learning and cross-education comes about.

Dear Singaporean,
I agree with you. I hope that the powerful people are more tolerant about opinions, and may even forgive the occasional oversight.

At present, most people only dare to speak up in the internet, because their are anonymous. I hope that more people are willing to speak up with their name, so that other people can judge them in a more credible way.

I make it a point to be non-judgemental in giving my views. I express my opinion and state the reason to back the opinion. I do not try to pass judgement on other people’s opinion. I just “happen” to have a different opinon or different point of view.

This is not just being safe. It is being fair to other people.

Here is a further reply to your point in (76). As the imaginary MAS director of regulation, I will issue certain guidelines on suitable products that does not require my approval.

The traditional products, such as savings account and unit trusts do not require approval, so long as the charges are below a certain cap, and there is no game of chance involved (apart from the market risks).

However, if you wish to introduce products with an element of chance (such as a gambling product or options that are not traded on the market), you will require certification by independent financial experts. I will refer it to the experts, so that there is no conflict of interest.

Most of the products that “rip off” the customers fall in this category. They have high upfront charges and give doubtful value to the consumers. After buying the products, the consumers are locked into it for many years. Anyway, I will set caps on the upfront charges to be at a reasonable level.

Insurance products that take away two years of savings will not be approved. If the customer wants to pay this kind of fee to the insurance agent, they customer can pay it separately and directly. It will not be part of an approved product.

Do I still get the job as imaginary MAS director of regulation from the imaginary Finance Minister, aka Keow Teow Man?

Thank you for your kind response.

With your contribution to TOC (which I read often), I hope, in time, this platform will be as popular if not more than the sycophantic msm.

Being your previous customer, I benefited from the major illnesses policy when I suffered a heart attack many years ago. The claim helped me feed and educate my kids when employers and the government gave up on me. As far as they are concerned, I was as good as dead. When you are over 40, you are over the hill. When you are hit with a dreaded disease, you are as good as 6 feet under! This is Singapore Inc! We are as good as what we can contribute to the economy. If we can’t, we become a burden and our past contributions doesn’t mean squat!

Though the heart attack did not kill me, I’m sure the indignity of begging for public assistance from the MIW would have triggered another heart attack and finished me off! Thank you Insurance!

The decision made years ago to protect my wife & kids paid off and I am grateful. If not, I would be dead now instead of having the opportunity of writing to you.

I salute your courage to tell it like it is. I hope, I sincerely hope, to see more people with talent, experience and expertise like you, Ms Catherine Lim, Mr Aw and Mr Leong Sze Hian extract the wool pulled over our eyes by the arrogant eleetists and their media dogs!

We need rational insights, responses and actions to truly build a democratic society based on justice and equality so as to achieve happiness, peace, prosperity and “golden age” for ALL!

Thanks again for your precious time.

Sincerely,

feedmetothefish

KT Income can submit many applicationsas you wish, provided that you pay a processing fee of $500 for each application.

I do not hesitate to reject applications that are frivolous. This will be accompanied by a reprimand to KT Income.

If KT Income complain to the Finance Minister, so be it. I will tell the Finance Minister that I have approved a lot of suitable financial products, and they are submitted by financial institutions who decide that it is better to be ethical and give good products to the consumers.

At the present time, the system encourages product issuers to “rip off” the consumers, as it is more profitable for them, and legal as well.

If Keow Teow Man is the Finance Minister, I hope that I can get this imaginary job as “MAS director of regulations”.

I must thank You for the interactions and I must say I am very comforted that You will be enlightening us lay people with your many years of experiences and expertise in the Insurance and other Financial products.

The people have been and being exploited for many years and exploitative aspects of our market realities and practices sadly are also practice by our so-called National Schemes Planners. You have informed us here of a 30 Page Print and almost everyone who owns a HDB Unit can understand What You have said. Almost all of us who bought HDB Flat, Insurance and Financial Products do not read all the Rules and Regulations in all these products. Even if we do, we are unlikely to understand much of the legal jargons used in them and there is always the danger of missing the super fine prints in advertisements, annual reports and announcements.

All in all, I will say the market place is full of frauds and hidden dangers and regulators have failed very miserably in the face of all these malpractices. It is indeed sad that Netizens have realized that our regulators have been very much ineffective and inclined to side with the businesses instead of protecting consumers.

Well, not to bother You too much, I will just say it is good to have You here in TOC and I wish You will enjoy our companies(interactions). And You and your family have happy and healthy livings.

Yours sincerely: patriot.

Thank you for your response. It seem that you have decided to continue this discussion here and it would be impolite for the KTM not to at least leave one reply for you. Note however that the KTM would rather continue our discussions at his KT stall because he is aggrieved by what he perceives to be irresponsible moderation by the TOC moderator.

If you do not wish to continue this discussion it is fine too and you are welcome to have the final word here at TOC. Thank you for your patience.

It will not be possible for the product issuer to answer my (b) and (c) questions, so the product will never get approved by me.

Wah, isn’t it somewhat extreme to issue disclosure requirements that are not satisfiable?

While the KTM still doesn’t understand completely what you mean by (b) and (c), he does not believe that your requirements are impossible to satisfy. It is just not plausible for MAS do something like that. In fact, let’s imagine that you are the MAS Director and KTM is CEO of the imaginary KT Income, and you issue this new directive. This is what the KTM will do:

KT Income will kwai kwai follow your instructions and submit the data to you as required. Whatever PhDs you have, the KTM will also similarly employ to spit out the numbers you ask for. Throw in the partial differential equations, Black-Scholes, kitchen sink and all. Somehow, there will be these magic numbers all backed up nicely with data and charts. :-P

That’s not it. The KT Income will not be submitting just one product for approval, but a whole range of products (10?) ranging from almost riskless bond-like products to the high-risk products. Why? The KTM is merely probing your system. You cannot possibly be blocking the bond-like products. The question will be: where is your threshold and how do you actually do the regulation?

If your threshold is too low, the KTM will complain to the Finance Minister that you are killing the financial sector and Singapore can kiss it’s pipe dream of becoming a financial services hub goodbye. :-P And it’s not just a complaint letter. The complaint will be a big stack of documents demonstrating to the Minister in no uncertain terms that MAS has disallowed a product that is comparable to products available in other major financial centres like New York or London – and you can go figure how to explain to Minister. The KTM’s numbers will be correct (‘cos they will be generated by this army of PhDs in the back room). :-)

Ding-dong enough and something will eventually get through ‘cos KT Income has the resources to play this little game with the MAS bureaucrats. And what happens after that? Two things:

(i) What is submitted to MAS for approval and what is printed in the marketing brochures are not exactly the same. There no lies of course! By why the omissions? “Aiyah, not our fault. We did try to print (b) and (c) in our earlier versions, but we found out that the customers couldn’t understand and didn’t find it useful. We want to help the customers understand and so we only print useful information in the product description.” Actually hor, you want us to print also never mind, since like you say, nobody understands anyhow.

(ii) There will always be risks – and if the product tanks, whose fault? Well, MAS has already checked and approved, so KT Income cannot accept responsibility. MAS’s approval means that we had already done our due diligence. Any losses arising are an act of God (or MAS’s failure in its checks. Complacency?)!

Be aware that an approval process will have the unintended side effect of implicit endorsement. There is no reason why MAS would in its right mind want to accept responsibility for the downside of a financial product. It might not be MAS’s fault, but will the people understand? :-) Damned if you do; damned if you don’t.

Frankly, the KTM does not disagree with the spirit of your proposal. Surely, protecting the people cannot be wrong. He just doesn’t believe that there is a practical implementation of what you’re proposing. We can continue our discussions here, or if not, we can end this discussion here.

I strongly believe that there is a place in the free market economy for non-profits, cooperatives and state schemes to serve the public. They play an important role to moderate the profit-drive sector.

The KTM agrees strongly with this statement and thanks you on behalf of his fellow Singaporeans for your services rendered as CEO of NTUC Income. Thanks again for sharing your views with the KTM. :-)

I strongly believe that there is a place in the free market economy for non-profits, cooperatives and state schemes to serve the public. They play an important role to moderate the profit-drive sector.

Our government leaders have the belief that the free market and profit-driven enterprises can produce the best results through competition. This is partly true, in the areas where competition can work best.

But, there are many areas where competition does not work well, such as in financial services and health care. The economists call it “market failure”. I call it “exploiting the ordinary people”.

Regulators have the duty to protect the interest of the ordinary people. In recent years, they have neglected their duty. They have the mistaken belief that the competition and disclosure can solve the problem.

Look at disclosures in the financial services sector. It has been ridiculous. The product issuers can disclose a lot of details that are incomprehensible to ordinary people.

For example, there is a disclousre in the life insurance policy that the “effect of deduction” is $100,000. What does this mean? It means that the product issuer and the intermediary takes away $100,000 from you during the lifetime of the contract. It is daylight robbery, but the general public does not understand it. This information is hidden within 30 pages of printed output.

Back to your question. Yes, if there are more ethically runned businesses in our economy, most ordinary people will be more comforable in Singapore.

These businesses can be runned efficiently and are entitled to make a fair profit. But they cannot be allowed to make excessive profit by cheating or short-changing the consumers.

My entire paper is actually aimed at driving this point home – and at the role of regulators!

thanks for your response. The ‘ifs’ and ‘shoulds’ in your response are ‘doubts’ in my understandings of National Schemes all these years. I now feel consoled that the understandings are quite fitting to the ‘ifs and shoulds’.

And may I add that ‘if’ our essential goods and services providers did not ‘push’ for better bottomlines(profit/revenue), most of us ‘should’ be living much more comfortable now. Do You agree?

I am much obliged, from: Yours truly; patriot.

Some national schemes in other countries are runned on a subsidy basis, i.e. the deficit in the scheme is covered by taxpayer’s money.

In Singapore, the national schemes, such as CPF and Medisave, are runned on a non-profit basis. If the scheme shows a surplus, it should be returned back to the participants.

However, there is a tendency for the scheme to keep the surplus as a reserve, in case they are needed to cover losses in the future. The problem is that the reserves can grow to be too big.

We need good managers to manage the scheme, so that there is a proper balance between keeping the cost low (as a non-profit scheme) and keep them solvent (by accumulating some reserves in good years). This requires someone to take the responsibility. The trouble is: in Singapore, most people do not want to decide.

During the time that I was CEO, you can consider the schemes of NTUC Income to be almost non-profit, as it is a cooperative. I am not sure whether this still concept applies today, as it is now under a new management.

Kin Lian; may I ask, with reference to the Quote, are You saying the National Schemes are not run for profits and gains? Personally, I do not find any of the Schemes benefitting the people much except for those families that get some helps from the schemes(insurance related) for some reimbursements and claims for medical bills and when death occurs to an insured person. Do You consider NTUC Products under the so-called National Schemes?

Are there National Schemes that allow citizens to make money without much risks? I thank You!

patriot.

Dear Feedmetothefish

I prefer these schemes to be managed by the CPF, rather than passed to the private sector. There is no advantage in having the private sector to manage these schemes. They are not able to improve efficiency, reduct cost, or give better service compared to CPF.

Sadly, there is a mistaken belief that the private sector is efficient. This is not the case.

You have raised a privacy issue as well. I think that the insurance companies are required to sign an agreement to respect the privacy and are not allowed to use the data for their own marketing. I think that this should be all right, and that it is not being abused.

I prefer national schemes to be managed nationally. Do not give it to the private sector, which are profit drivern.

Item (a) is quite clear. The KTM however doesn’t completely understand what you mean by items (b) and (c). He would be most grateful if you can elaborate on “benefits” and “estimate cost of benefits”. Benefits = ROI? What’s estimate cost? Please pardon the KTM for his ignorance.

Dear Keow Teow Man,
The product issuer tells the financially naive investors that their money is invested in certain combination of shares or bonds that will give certain yield under certain circumstances in the future.

The ordinary folks have no way of calculating the probability of the “happy events” occuring. As a financial expert, I will not be able to calculate this probability as well, but I guess that the chance is very, very small.

What happened? Most of these “happy events” did not occur. The investor is likely to get his principal back. In some cases, they lose part of their principal – as they were not aware about the risks.

I understand that some of the structured products are invested in CDOs. They have not matured yet. Let us see if the investors can get back their principal.

As the so-called MAS director of regulation (if I ever get appointed), I will never allow this type of “rip-off” to happen. It will not be possible for the product issuer to answer my (b) and (c) questions, so the product will never get approved by me.

Why did the government regulate gambling? It is to ensure that the consumers are not “rip off”. They should be given a fair game of chance, and may pay some loading to cover expenses.

Sadly, this kind of protection does not occur, when financial products are concerned and reputable, trusted banks are involved.

And I just like to add that MM Lee Kuan Yew can say anything he wants now because thirty years(or maybe tommorrow) down the road, even gods will not be able to make him answerable to anything he has ever said. I am 101 percent sure!

patriot.

Sorry.

feedmetothefish

Bro, with the crazy gerrymandeering and suka suka change electoral boundaries, so easy meh? Oh, I’m sure inflation will affect election deposit in 2011 too!

Is Kway Teow Man working for the Hen man?

To Mr Tan Kin Lian, may I ask this: Was it ethical for CPF to transfer public Medisave policies/accounts to NTUC Income and Great Eastern Life (or was it AIA?) many years ago without the consent of the policy holders. Through the transfer, the 2 insurers had access to the personal particulars of hundreds of thousands which I think was worth much as it would lead to new business. No, I do not blame the insurance companies involved. I’m just sad that the CPF Board can just walk all over us without any respect for our privacy!

Meanwhile, I feel that the reserve in GIC & Temasek is just a mirage where the general population is concerned! They may be real to the Lee family and selected Eleetists. Surprisingly, some MPs don’t even know squat about it! Then again, if our late President, Mr Ong Teng Cheong, had to go through the cesspool and still not find what he needed to know, who are we to know?

Pardon my cynicism, but I feel very strongly that our reserve is similar to Mas Selamat Kasturi.

What is our reserve? (Who is Mas Selamat?)
Where is our reserve? (Where is Mas Selamat?)
How big is our reserve? (How do we describe Mas Selamat?)

It’s for them to know and for us to find out?

Who are we to know? Does it matter if we know?

We just want them to ‘stay together and move ahead’ with us with our reserve! Not tell us that “u cant touch this” until 5, 20 or 30 years later!

Meanwhile, they touch, they play!

We wonder.

Who’s money is it anyway?

feedmetothefish