Massive Flood Cockup Exposes Cracks in the Political System

When everything is going fine and there are no major cockups, it is easy to for a single-party state and all its institutions and appendages to give the appearance of unity and strength, and for the ruling party to cling onto totalitarian political power. However, when something major goes very wrong, such incidents tend to expose the cracks, flaws and fragilities in the system.

What used to look like a unified front starts to turn into infighting and bickering as the little generals start defending their own turf and try to push the blame for the cockup to one another. This happens when the dominant personality at the top - who previously held the system together and imposed discipline on the ranks - starts to fade from power. This also happens when the cockup was clearly part of the system, and when the blame cannot be pushed to the public.

Here is the low down of the turf clashes that have emerged in the aftermath of the flood cockup

Singapore's Addiction to Gambling - in More Ways than One

In the news recently:

MORE problem gamblers sought medical treatment and help last year compared to three years ago.

Fresh figures from the National Addictions Management Service (Nams) showed that 17 per cent of patients seen in 2009 were gambling addicts, compared to 5 per cent in 2007. Nams treats about 2,000 patients a year.

Gambling addiction cases are among the top three form of addictions treated by Nams. Drug and alcohol addiction cases make up about 80 per cent of Nams case workload.

Speaking at the official launch of the Nams clinic at Buangkok Green Medical Park on Wednesday, Associate Professor Wong Kim Eng, Clinical Director of Nams, said the rise in gambling addiction cases is likely due to the increased awareness of Nams and its treatment programmes.

Nams has been operating from its dedicated outpatient clinic since June last year and provides services such as psychiatric assessment, counselling, and support groups for patients and families.

Singapore is getting more and more addicted to gambling in more ways than one.

Firstly, you have the obvious rise of problem gamblers as part of the social cost of the newly opened integrated resorts. While the IRs may have helped Singapore to post record-breaking GDP growth numbers this year, more and more Singaporeans are facing gambling addiction. Anecdotally, a friend of mine working in the psychiatric ward of NUH reports that there has been a massive jump in problem gambling cases being admitted to the hospital.

It is not just the gamblers themselves who suffer, the families of the gamblers pay an even higher social cost. Mothers have to suffer to pay the debts of their husbands, children have to drop out of school because their parents cannot afford school fees. Families break down and social cohesion is weakened.

Pioneer JC Girls' Deaths - The Cost of Singapore's SocioEconomic System

The straits times story of the suicides of 2 JC girls from Pioneer JC is depressing to read and is sad indeed.

TWO Pioneer Junior College classmates died within three weeks of one another by leaping from high-rise blocks of flats about a year ago, a coroner's court heard on Thursday.

Ho Yi Xin, 17, was described as a hard-working student with high expectations of herself. Her ambition was to be a doctor.

The second-year Pioneer Junior College student had been seeing a private psychiatrist since June last year as she was feeling anxious in school and at home. She had problems sleeping and could not concentrate on her studies.

Her last visit to the psychiatrist was on July 3 - the day she was found dead at the foot of Block 533 Jelapang Road in Bukit Panjang. She was believed to have fallen from the 24th storey of the block as her silver-coloured bag was found there.

At an inquiry into her death, the court heard that Yi Xin, an introvert, had confided in her classmate around May last year that she was depressed over a detention form given by her favourite teacher for being late.

Seventeen days later, her classmate, Wong Peek Yian, leapt to her death from her seventh-floor bedroom window at Jurong West Street 81. Peek Yian had found out that she had done badly in her mid-year examination and dreaded to see her vice-principal over her poor performance.

A few hours before her death leap, she had sent text messages to her boyfriend, full-time national serviceman Valentino Lee, 19, telling him that her teacher had advised her not to see him too often.

Our education system, as everybody knows, is a pressure cooker in which Singaporean students face immense social pressures to conform to society's standards.

These social pressures come from multiple angles - from parents who want their children to be doctors, lawyers, bankers or scholars. From the government, which places pressures on teachers to churn out A grades from their students. And from their peers, where everybody is competing to outperform and outscore their fellow students in order to emerge at the top of this rat race, which begins the moment a 7 year old child steps into primary school, and only ends when the child has ended his or her working career (now pegged at 65 years, according to the PAP system)

These immense pressures have a huge psychological and human cost on Singapore's young people, most of whom were never designed to take some pressures. Indeed, how is it possible for every person to be a lawyer, doctor, banker, or scholar?

Singapore Economy is Booming but Guess who is Benefiting? Duh... Foreigners!!!!

Associated Press reports that Singapore's economy expanded at a 18% annual rate in the first half of the year.

Who, however, is the main beneficiary of all this economic growth?

But of course! Foreigners!!! LOL, what is new?

SINGAPORE can expect the number of foreign workers to increase by at least 100,000 this year in response to the demands of the booming economy, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

Speaking to the Singapore media here on Tuesday as he wrapped up a six-day visit to the United States, Mr Lee said the government had taken steps to moderate the number of foreign workers, but a rise was inevitable given the strong growth.

He added: 'It cannot be helped because with the market so tight, if we don't allow the foreign workers in, you are going to have overheating.

'But we are managing the number of foreign workers. Their levies are being calibrated to moderate the inflow.

'But even with that, I would imagine there would be more than 100,000 extra foreign workers this year. I cannot see it otherwise. We have to accept that.'

 Have Singaporeans' wages risen at an 18% annual rate this year? Are you 18% more productive than the year before?

Of course not!!!

The only way for the PAP to deliver its economic growth numbers is to do what it has been doing all along - bring in foreign capital and foreign labour. The PAP is doing exactly what it has been doing since it came to power - increase factor inputs, without increasing factor productivity.

Straits Times World Cup Cockup - What Happened to the Sports Editor???

I found this on the Straits Times website sports section today.

Seriously, I think the editor had too many beers watching the match last night.


LOL!!!

IRS Money Laundering Investigation Comes to Singapore

Just reported in the news today, "HSBC Clients With Singapore, India Accounts Said to Face U.S. Tax Probe". The IRS is investigating possible tax evasion by American citizens through bank accounts in Singapore. This follows a major crackdown on the Swiss private bank UBS for abetting tax evasion.

Just over a year ago, yours truly pointed out the risks that Singapore faced by positioning itself as a low-tax, private banking jurisdiction. I analyzed the UBS tax fraud case, and Andy Xie's accusation of Singapore being a high-rolling money laundering center. I noted that Singapore was rushing headlong into the private banking and casino business, businesses that depend on a sustained influx of large amounts of private capital, that often comes from illegally derived sources, or that is seeking to evade taxes.

The bloomberg article notes:

Several weeks ago, Downing toured Singapore, Hong Kong and Beijing, meeting with regulators and bankers about offshore tax prosecutions. He spoke to tax lawyers at a conference sponsored by New York University on June 18.

“We just took down the largest private wealth management bank in the world,” Downing said, referring to UBS. “Do you really think we’re going to have trouble doing the next one?”

The Problem with the US Economy

In his latest Op-Ed column in the New York Times, Paul Krugman makes the point that the US needs to continue transfer payments and extension of unemployment benefits to those who are suffering the worst of this economic recession (the poor AND jobless). Krugman is right that engaging in "austerity" by cutting these transfer payments is "penny-pinching in the midst of a severely depressed economy" and "is no way to deal with our long-run budget problems."

Krugman is addressing that group of Republicans who dogmatically oppose everything that the Democrats bring to the table (including financial regulation) simply because they are Republicans and that is what Republicans do (oppose the democrats) and not because they have any genuine understanding of what "Austerity" is. That word has been bandied about too much and has been misunderstood and conflated (wrongly) with genuine fiscal conservatives (like Roubini) who understand that releasing life support too quickly will plunge the economy back into depression (unlike the phony republican 'austerians', who ran massive budget deficits during times of prosperity with their misguided wars, and who pushed for the kind of deregulation that got us into the GFC in the first place). It is unfortunate that the Republicans have hijacked and adulterated the fiscal consolidation argument to further their dogmatic agenda (and have fooled many people in the process), but at least in the context of this blog post we can call them out on their bullshit.