FEB 9, 2015 1
BY SUMIT AGARWAL
FOR THE STRAITS TIMES
IT IS a simple fact of life that we're all getting older. Not just older as individuals, but also as a nation.
With more of us living longer, pressure is building to make sure that we can look after ourselves in what is (rather tweely) referred to as our golden years.
The challenge is deciding where the boundaries of responsibility lie. How much is down to the individual, and where - and how - should the Government step in?
Here in Singapore, the government advisory panel reviewing the Central Provident Fund (CPF) system has touched on some inevitably sensitive issues. A particularly thorny one is regulation of lump sum withdrawals and the Minimum Sum scheme.
How then should the Government approach this?
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Why central banks are going unconventional
FEBRUARY 10
Who would have thought that six years after the global financial crisis, most advanced economies would still be swimming in an alphabet soup — ZIRP, QE, CE, FG, NDR and U-FX Int — of unconventional monetary policies? No central bank had considered any of these measures (zero interest rate policy, quantitative easing, credit easing, forward guidance, negative deposit rate and unlimited foreign exchange intervention, respectively) before 2008. Today, they have become a staple of policymakers’ toolkits.
Indeed, just in the past year-and-a-half, the European Central Bank (ECB) adopted its own version of FG, then moved to ZIRP, and then embraced CE, before deciding to try NDR. Last month, it fully adopted QE. Indeed, by now, the United States Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the ECB and a variety of smaller advanced economies’ central banks, such as the Swiss National Bank, have all relied on such unconventional policies.
One result of this global monetary-policy activism has been a rebellion among pseudo-economists and market hacks in recent years. This assortment of “Austrian” economists, radical monetarists, gold bugs, and Bitcoin fanatics have repeatedly warned that such a massive increase in global liquidity would lead to hyperinflation, the US dollar’s collapse, sky-high gold prices and the eventual demise of fiat currencies at the hands of digital krypto-currency counterparts.
Who would have thought that six years after the global financial crisis, most advanced economies would still be swimming in an alphabet soup — ZIRP, QE, CE, FG, NDR and U-FX Int — of unconventional monetary policies? No central bank had considered any of these measures (zero interest rate policy, quantitative easing, credit easing, forward guidance, negative deposit rate and unlimited foreign exchange intervention, respectively) before 2008. Today, they have become a staple of policymakers’ toolkits.
Indeed, just in the past year-and-a-half, the European Central Bank (ECB) adopted its own version of FG, then moved to ZIRP, and then embraced CE, before deciding to try NDR. Last month, it fully adopted QE. Indeed, by now, the United States Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the ECB and a variety of smaller advanced economies’ central banks, such as the Swiss National Bank, have all relied on such unconventional policies.
One result of this global monetary-policy activism has been a rebellion among pseudo-economists and market hacks in recent years. This assortment of “Austrian” economists, radical monetarists, gold bugs, and Bitcoin fanatics have repeatedly warned that such a massive increase in global liquidity would lead to hyperinflation, the US dollar’s collapse, sky-high gold prices and the eventual demise of fiat currencies at the hands of digital krypto-currency counterparts.
Monday, February 9, 2015
Young Singaporean employees are top earners in Asia
HRM Asia
02 Feb 2015
At an average monthly income of US$3,060, the salary of Singaporeans in their twenties is the highest among several Asian countries.
Young Singaporean employees top the chart with an average monthly income of US$3,060. According to a recent 10-country survey of young people in Asia by Japan's Hihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei), the salary of Singaporeans in their twenties is the highest among several Asian countries.
The survey looked at the financial status of 2,000 college graduates in their twenties in ten countries: China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia.
South Korea and Japan come in second and third respectively, where young employees receive a monthly salary of about US$2,127 and US$1,874. China ranked fourth with US$1,355 per month.
Vietnamese entry-level employees earned the least in comparison with US$340.
[Note: It is $3060 US dollar. That's about S$3600 - $4000 (depending on exchange rates).]
02 Feb 2015
At an average monthly income of US$3,060, the salary of Singaporeans in their twenties is the highest among several Asian countries.
Young Singaporean employees top the chart with an average monthly income of US$3,060. According to a recent 10-country survey of young people in Asia by Japan's Hihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei), the salary of Singaporeans in their twenties is the highest among several Asian countries.
The survey looked at the financial status of 2,000 college graduates in their twenties in ten countries: China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia.
South Korea and Japan come in second and third respectively, where young employees receive a monthly salary of about US$2,127 and US$1,874. China ranked fourth with US$1,355 per month.
Vietnamese entry-level employees earned the least in comparison with US$340.
[Note: It is $3060 US dollar. That's about S$3600 - $4000 (depending on exchange rates).]
Sunday, February 8, 2015
To fix rat menace, we need to clean up our act
Feb 07, 2015
In the space of just two months, a spate of rat-related incidents and infestations have hogged the headlines.
In December, Singaporeans were horrified by an online video that did the rounds, showing a hilly area next to Bukit Batok MRT station crawling with rodents.
Next, at the opposite end of the island, Punggol residents also reported numerous rat sightings, prompting the Pasir Ris-Punggol Town Council to take action.
Then, last week, the National Environment Agency (NEA) announced that it had found rodent activity in the false ceilings of 14 food and beverage establishments in the Marina Square shopping centre.
It conducted inspections after a customer found a rat in a tray of vegetables at Hotpot Culture, a restaurant in the mall. A photograph of the stew complete with the furry dead rat also did the Internet rounds.
After the Bukit Batok infestation was highlighted in the media, readers wrote to The Straits Times to complain about rats in neighbourhoods such as Ang Mo Kio, Yishun, Marine Parade and Jurong.
Is the rat problem getting out of hand? What more can be done to curb it?
FENG ZENGKUN, ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT
Singaporeans' cavalier attitude towards the disposing of food waste must change if rodent explosion is to be prevented.In the space of just two months, a spate of rat-related incidents and infestations have hogged the headlines.
In December, Singaporeans were horrified by an online video that did the rounds, showing a hilly area next to Bukit Batok MRT station crawling with rodents.
Next, at the opposite end of the island, Punggol residents also reported numerous rat sightings, prompting the Pasir Ris-Punggol Town Council to take action.
Then, last week, the National Environment Agency (NEA) announced that it had found rodent activity in the false ceilings of 14 food and beverage establishments in the Marina Square shopping centre.
It conducted inspections after a customer found a rat in a tray of vegetables at Hotpot Culture, a restaurant in the mall. A photograph of the stew complete with the furry dead rat also did the Internet rounds.
After the Bukit Batok infestation was highlighted in the media, readers wrote to The Straits Times to complain about rats in neighbourhoods such as Ang Mo Kio, Yishun, Marine Parade and Jurong.
Is the rat problem getting out of hand? What more can be done to curb it?
Saturday, February 7, 2015
Court Rulings Don't Confirm Autism-Vaccine Link (Conspiracy Theories)
2013
Emily Willingham
There’s a post making the rounds courtesy of something called “Whiteout Press” with the headline “Courts confirm vaccines cause autism.” It’s spreading across sites, through chains of elementary school parent communities, and onto radars of other communities that overlap. In other words, it’s viral. If only there were a vaccine for it.
The post itself is a cobbled together retelling of stories everyone’s already known for years. Whiteout Press might have been surprised to learn about this “ongoing story,” but each element of it has been widely reported in the mainstream media over the last decade and a half, in exceptional detail.
The centerpiece of the “courts confirm” article is the 2012 finding of a local Italian court that a child was diagnosed with autism a year after receiving an MMR. The court, in linking the two things, relied very heavily on the retracted and fraudulent 1998 Wakefield MMR Lancet paper and the testimony of a single physician, hired by the plaintiff’s attorney (widely known for advising parents on how to avoid compulsory vaccinations). The physician, Massimo Montinari, it seems, has written a book on how vaccines cause autism and peddles an autism “cure” that he’s devised.
Italian courts, provincial or otherwise, are not known for basing their rulings in science. They are, after all, part of the system that led to a manslaughter conviction of six scientists for not predicting the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake, disregarding completely the obvious fact that such predictions are not, in fact, scientifically possible. In a similar way, the Italian court that made the MMR-autism ruling–the centerpiece of this latest “courts confirm” tripe–ignored completely the science made available to it and focused almost solely on the retracted Wakefield paper and a physician with a COI in making its decision. A decision that is, by the way, under appeal.
Friday, February 6, 2015
Territorial disputes can be set aside: PM Lee
Feb 06, 2015
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong spoke on the rise of China, rivalries in South-east Asia and the pragmatism with which a small country secures its influence in an interview with German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung during his visit to Berlin this week. Here is an edited translation.
By Stefan Kornelius
MR LEE HSIEN LOONG is Prime Minister of a small country with a big name and influence that should not be underestimated. The city-state Singapore with its 5.4 million inhabitants might seem tiny next to the major Asian powers. But as a traditional trade and transfer hub with excellent relations to all regions in the world and with Western thinking prevalent among its political elite, Singapore has always been arbiter, interpreter, and a microcosm for European and American projections of South-east Asia.
Mr Lee, 62 years old and Prime Minister for 101/2 years, went to school in the West and rose to the state's pinnacle after a long military and political career. It was certainly no obstacle that his father and Singapore's founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew turned the city-state into what it is today: A multi-ethnic small state with a good track record for integration, led with a firm hand, governed de facto by one party, strictly geared towards increasing prosperity, and friends with both China and the United States.
During his visit to Berlin, Mr Lee emphasises in an interview with Sueddeutsche Zeitung that this traditional role of balancing between major players is not just part of Singapore's central political understanding but also of most other South-east Asian states. "Everyone in the region wants to make friends with China and gain from the opportunities from its rise," says Mr Lee. "But at the same time, they would like the region to be open, to be stable and to maintain the relationship with Europe, America and the rest of the world."
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong spoke on the rise of China, rivalries in South-east Asia and the pragmatism with which a small country secures its influence in an interview with German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung during his visit to Berlin this week. Here is an edited translation.
By Stefan Kornelius
MR LEE HSIEN LOONG is Prime Minister of a small country with a big name and influence that should not be underestimated. The city-state Singapore with its 5.4 million inhabitants might seem tiny next to the major Asian powers. But as a traditional trade and transfer hub with excellent relations to all regions in the world and with Western thinking prevalent among its political elite, Singapore has always been arbiter, interpreter, and a microcosm for European and American projections of South-east Asia.
Mr Lee, 62 years old and Prime Minister for 101/2 years, went to school in the West and rose to the state's pinnacle after a long military and political career. It was certainly no obstacle that his father and Singapore's founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew turned the city-state into what it is today: A multi-ethnic small state with a good track record for integration, led with a firm hand, governed de facto by one party, strictly geared towards increasing prosperity, and friends with both China and the United States.
During his visit to Berlin, Mr Lee emphasises in an interview with Sueddeutsche Zeitung that this traditional role of balancing between major players is not just part of Singapore's central political understanding but also of most other South-east Asian states. "Everyone in the region wants to make friends with China and gain from the opportunities from its rise," says Mr Lee. "But at the same time, they would like the region to be open, to be stable and to maintain the relationship with Europe, America and the rest of the world."
Fizzy drinks age you faster? Load of gas
FEB 5, 2015
BY ANDY HO SENIOR WRITER
SOFT drinks might age you as much as smoking does. This was how the media reported a study published recently in the prestigious American Journal of Public Health. And the media did get it right: The paper did come up with that finding.
It was published in a top journal, with molecular biologist Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California at San Francisco as one of its authors. She shared the Nobel prize in medicine with two others in 2009 for pioneering work on telomeres.
A telomere is a loop found at the tip of each chromosome, and it prevents genes from being lost during cell division. It is like the plastic tip at the end of a shoelace - it protects the chromosome tip from fraying, which is important because broken DNA tips left unrepaired lead to cell death.
Because cells must be replaced over time, they divide. But because telomeres get shorter with each cell division, they eventually become too short. When that happens after repeated divisions, the cell cannot divide any more, so it dies off.
BY ANDY HO SENIOR WRITER
SOFT drinks might age you as much as smoking does. This was how the media reported a study published recently in the prestigious American Journal of Public Health. And the media did get it right: The paper did come up with that finding.
It was published in a top journal, with molecular biologist Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California at San Francisco as one of its authors. She shared the Nobel prize in medicine with two others in 2009 for pioneering work on telomeres.
A telomere is a loop found at the tip of each chromosome, and it prevents genes from being lost during cell division. It is like the plastic tip at the end of a shoelace - it protects the chromosome tip from fraying, which is important because broken DNA tips left unrepaired lead to cell death.
Because cells must be replaced over time, they divide. But because telomeres get shorter with each cell division, they eventually become too short. When that happens after repeated divisions, the cell cannot divide any more, so it dies off.
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