Wednesday, June 06, 2012

Understanding Singapore's reserves

Here are some important questions to be asked about Singapore's reserves.
http://singaporemind.blogspot.sg/2012/06/issues-raised-by-christopher-balding-on.html

3 comments:

yujuan said...

The secrecy surrounding our 2 SWFs has always been bugging citizens here, not helped by the fact that the Lee family and their close relative, President Tony Tan are in complete charge of our National purse strings. No one else has access to any info about them.
Many citizens worry nervously whether their CPF savings are still with the CPF Board, but if you read Professor Balding's article on our SWFs, he had no doubt that our savings are still there, but at what amount, he could not make a guess.
However, it is disturbing to see the Govt increasing the minimum sum practically every 2 years, this dun allay our fears that the total CPF savings are depleting faster than we guess.
Those reaching 55 better to make decision quickly to withdraw their savings allowable, to prevent themselves being hit with the new sudden increase in the sum.
We dun buy the argument the increase is inflation adjusted. Those NS Reservice boys may have discovered to their dismay that those Cash Service Rewards alloted
(between $3,000 to $9,O00) are credited to their CPF Accounts - money you could see but can't touch, to be locked up neatly too.
But it is the losses made by our SWFs that is our greatest worry.

Unknown said...

I believe there is great lack of transparency in this whole issue. Of course, it is always possible to fiddle the numbers on pension fund returns. If Temasek earned 17pc per annum like in that post, then I'll eat my shoe! Also, one other interesting article I cam across the in the Daily Telegraph on the huge foreign hard currency reserves in Asian countries: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9310489/Asias-6.4-trillion-in-foreign-reserves-a-threat-to-stability.html This is by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, who for my money is one of the best economic and financial writers around.
invest in bamboo

Anonymous said...

I voted for you as President. How I wish the rest of the Singaporeans did the same. If you had been the President, at least you could help us ask questions now. With Tony Tan as President, he will ensure that skeletons(if any) in the closet will always stay inside the closet. After all, GIC's skeletons are his skeletons because he was in charge before becoming President, if any. Was it the reason why he was PAP's candidate for President? Whatever secrets (if any) will never be out.

We have a useless but highly paid President in Singapore. Sigh. Don't expect him to look after our reserves. He is probably there to prevent another more probing president like Tan Kin Lian.

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