Dark Clouds Are Gathering

When informed that the new statutory board set up to investigate real estate miscreants had already received 150 complaints, there was something oddly lackadaisical about Mah Bow Tan's response. The National Development Minister said he was not surprised by the number. Does that mean he knew consumers were fleeced by the real estate industry all along and he stood by doing nothing? Was he in cahoots with them in ramping up the housing prices? Why has he never questioned the legality of the COV (cash over valuation) scam that arbitrarily and capriciously inflates the officially documented market valuation of a property?

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has now promulgated that Singapore's fast-rising home prices are "worrying", as real-estate lending accounts for more than 50% of total loans in the banking system. That same statistic is as low as 2% for Korea, less than 15% for Indonesia and the Philippines, and below 20% in Hongkong and Thailand. Even in China, where famed short-seller Jim Chanos is betting his own money that the country is experiencing a massive property bubble, the number is below 20%. At 51% of advances, Singapore banking sector's exposure to property is the highest in East Asia, followed by Taiwan (42%) and Malaysia (38%).

Not too long ago, the MAS dismissed the effects of US's quantitative easing, which other countries recognised as fuel for asset bubble formation such as in property markets. And that's on top of Singapore's own unique problems of HDB construction shortfalls and competition from foreign buyers. It is noteworthy that MAS's own annual Financial Stability Review is consistent with ADB's observations: that household debt has been growing at a faster rate in recent quarters - fuelled by housing loans which account for the bulk of household borrowing. Need we add that the servicing of those loan commitments are also diminishing the CPF funds that are supposed to be parked for a retirement safety net?

Don't we have an expensive in-house "forecaster" who is supposed to scan the future for dark clouds? Mah, like the rest of his colleagues, is obviously depending on the short term memory spans of Singaporeans to erase the multiple instances of bad governance. Of the flood of complaints, he said, "I would expect this to taper off over time."

Truth In Advertising

It was déjà vu all over again when I read Ms Lau's letter to the press about being led on a wild goose chase by Courts Bukit Timah for a non-existent $399 laptop. The caveats in said item advertised were "from $399" and "limited sets - one set per customer", clear warning bells for any savvy street-wise shopper.

I was in Jurong East a fortnight before and happened to browse the outlet there when one harried sales assistant asked another colleague for help about a customer's query for a TV on offer. Latter said a clipping of the ad was conditional for the special price (check the ads, pure bunkum). Just then, another early bird shopper came along, newspaper ad in hand, wanting to buy a computer on offer. This time the storyline was, "Sold out! There was along queue before the shop was open!" Just for the heck of it, I piped in and asked about a USB harddrive advertised. "We don't carry that in this shop," was the response. You gotta give credit to those guys for creativity.

Since consumers in Singapore do not have a Ralph Nader to champion their cause (Consumers Association of Singapore is a lost case), don't expect the CEO to be dragged to court (the edifice Alan Shadrake is accused of blaspheming, not the mega-store taking bargain hunters for a ride). Not when poster child Terry O'Connor has recently been given a special foreign talent spread in the papers, praised to the heavens for his "sort of chutzpah that you do not learn in school" when he lambasted his own chairman for a hiccup in the store's roll-out plan. "I don't have a temper but I do have a strong sense of fair play," quipped O'Connor ironically.

"All I want on TV is products at great prices, packages and so on," the native of Liverpool, UK, who left for Singapore in 1993, is quoted as saying about his sales strategy. All the customers want is just some truth in advertising.

Happiness Is A Favourable Set Of Statistics

Based on research done by professor Ruut Veenhoven who runs the World Database of Happiness at Erasmus University Rotterdam, here is a list of the top 10 happiest countries in the world in ascending order:
10 - Luxembourg
9 - Guatemala
8 - Canada
7 - Sweden
6 - Australia
5 - Finland
4 - Iceland
3 - Austria
2 - Switzerland
1 - Denmark

Quantifying happiness isn't an easy task. Researchers at the Gallup World Poll went about it by surveying thousands of respondents in 155 countries, between 2005 and 2009, in order to measure two types of well-being. Denmark(10) again tops the list, followed by Finland(2), Norway(3), Sweden(4), Netherlands(4). Singapore is tied at 81st spot, shared by Hongkong, Japan and Iran.

Yet American author Dan Buettner is claiming in his new book that statistics from three sources, including above two, pointed to Singapore as the happiest place in Asia. According to him, Singapore has all that correlates to happiness on a worldwide level: 1) tolerance, 2) status equality, 3) security, 4) trust, 5) access to recreation and financial security.

Whoever he talked to obviously didn't brief him about these correlations: 1) filial piety over shelter for Mas Selamat morphed into a political race card, 2) perceptions of citizens relegated as 3rd class denizens, 3) gangfights and fatal stabbings in shopping malls, 4) "subsidised" public housing ending up as unaffordable market value transactions, 5) after a life time of toil, CPF savings are insufficient for retirement.

Buettner got this right though: There is no question that Singapore shows that happiness can be manufactured or engineered through government policy. He explains the magic of the statistics, "When it comes to manufactured happiness, I don't know anybody else on the planet who has done a better job than (MM Lee) has, and I know there will be lots of people laughing at me right now." When people are mandated to be happy, that's not funny Mr Buettner, not funny at all.

The Monk, The Clown And The Minister

Hey, Money No Enough is my line!

Venerable Shi Ming Yi (Chinese: 释明义) was the darling of Singapore socialites (the government awarded him the Public Service Medal in 1996) when he rappelled down highrise buildings and froze his rocks in ice to raise money, lots of money, for Ren Ci hospital. He has done his time for his $50K crime, but somehow it ain't enough for some people. The gala dinner of Nov 21 to mark his 20 years of service as an abbot apparently has raised the ire of some folks in the Buddhist community. Maybe it was the price tag of $1,000-a-table, maybe this was only his 18th and not 20th year. A nun said, "He's climbed too far up, and now he has a long way to fall."

Trangressions of the flesh are apparently more forgivable in Sin city. Jack Neo's 2 year- extramarital affair with 22-year old model Ms Zhong Jiayan and his sexual harassment of Foyce Le Xuan, 25, could have turned real nasty. Fortunately he had a direct line to George Yeo. It was also convenient that his 46-year-old wife Mdm Irene Kang said she already about the affair a year ago, and WikiLeaks was not a threat then. Nobody even bothered to slap the cross dresser with a court order to stay 100 m away from any nubile aspiring Fann Wong wannabe.

Hence no heads were turned when the philanderer was invited to grace Education Minister Ng Eng Hen's launch of the ITE Performing Arts Higher Nitec programme for 2013. MOE has had its hands full recently with school girls making out on camera in a premier JC, horny female teachers coupling with male students and a principal making hits on their favoured male staff - and getting away with it. Ng Eng Hen seems to take all these shenanigans in good stride, as if it was all a holistic exercise in public education. Let's see if Jack Neo's new film will feature lots of teenagers in Sexy Japanese School Girl Uniforms.

The Truth Can Be Pretty Nasty

Now we know why no food stamps will ever be distributed in Singapore, and healthcare will never be free. Even Dr Toh Chin Chye had maintained that citizenry should be entitled to free medical services. Agence France-Presse's report of the Wikileaks has this quote:
"MM Lee noted that he had learned from living through three and a half years of Japanese occupation in Singapore that people will obey authorities who can deny them food, clothing and medicine.”

There is an exception to the rule of course, as in the freebies promised by his son in the coming election budget. Singapore's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has issued a stern statement chastising the leak, saying that disclosing such confidential document would only "serve to sow confusion". And screw up the whole election strategy.

Given the many parallels that abound in the family influences on Singapore and North Korean style government, say succession plans, the other disclosure in the US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks is disturbing: “They are psychopathic types, with a ‘flabby old chap’ for a leader who prances around stadiums seeking adulation.” The laps around the pool and a strict exercise regime may have gotten rid of the flab around the waist, but the part about seeking world stage adulation is pretty obvious. The unsavoury comments about another country's head of state were found in a document detailing a conversation between Lee and US deputy secretary of state James B. Steinberg in May last year. It's not too late to cancel your Christmas holiday plans for Pyongyang.

But what should really rile you is his justification for giving special treating to PRC scholars or new-wave Chinese migrants: "MM Lee noted that his own experience as a student in the UK had left him with an enduring fondness for the UK. When he spent two months at Harvard in 1968, an American professor had invited him home for Thanksgiving. This was not the sort of thing that happened in the UK, and Lee had realized he was dealing with a different civilization. In the future, China’s leaders will have PhDs and MBAs from American universities, he predicted.” Taiwan's Foreign Minister Chen Tan-sun detected just as much when George Yeo spoke at UN's General Assembly in 2004, "It was nothing but an effort to embrace China's 'balls', forgive me using such a word".