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MAS: Appoint your own investigators!!!

makapaaa

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
From today's Today Pg B2:
"...... companies that sold the DBS High Notes 5, Lehman Minibonds and Merrill Lynch Jubilee Series 3 LinkEarner Notes will name independent parties, as a result of a deal hammered out by MAS and the bank...".
Why must a regulator like MAS "hammer out a deal" to get banks to name a third party to oversee its the "complaints handling process"? MAS has not even met aggrieved investors who are mostly retired ordinary Singaporeans to see what is needed for them to seek redress but it has already met the banks to negotiate this deal in which the banks will choose their own third party to handle the complaints. Investors who originally trusted these banks that sold them those products are now expected to trust the banks to appoint "independent" third parties? Did we not pay our govt enough to meet ordinary Singaporean investors collectively to help them resolve this? Where is the leadership??!!
Among the first thing the HK govt did was to meet the investors to hear them out. The next thing they did was to initiate an investigation into mis-selling: [Link]. Singaporeans you did not pay your govt enough to do all this for you!!!
“Having conducted several meetings with Minibond investors in the last few days to hear their grievances, we have decided to conduct formal investigation into allegations of mis-selling by certain licensed intermediaries,†says Martin Wheatley, chief executive officer at the SFC.
Now the MAS will take action based on documentation from the banks aided by these third parties appointed by banks instead of conducting its own investigation. This will entirely undermine any case that investors can put up because they have to now give their evidence to the bank first for processing. What is the MAS doing??? Where is the leadership in all this?
"We are conservative investors not risk takers. It is my mother's hardearned cash, and she is 78, why would she want to place her money in risky investments....if a robber comes to rob your house, the police will pursue and try to recover your stuff. Surely, the same idea should apply in this scenario " - Ms Koh, whose mother sunk $200K into Minibonds, Today, Pg B1
.
Perhaps we don't pay our leaders enough to feel the outrage as the lifesavings of old ladies are lost. Why is the MAS hammering deals and meeting with banks that have acted so irresponsibly and greedily in this whole episode? Ordinary Singaporeans are not worth meeting? Shouldn't MAS be organising any collective action to recover their lifesavings instead of Tan Kin Lian. We are told that we have world class govt, leaders without whom this nation will sink. ...leaders who will stand along side the people in their time of need and crisis. So where is the leadership???...Where?
 

makapaaa

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/09/news/sing.php

Singapore announces 60 percent pay raise for ministers<!-- /headline --><!-- subhead --><!-- /subhead --><!-- byline -->
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SINGAPORE: How much money does it take to keep a Singapore government minister happy? The government says a million dollars is not enough, and on Monday it announced a 60 percent boost in ministers' salaries, to an average of 1.9 million Singapore dollars, or $1.26 million, by next year.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong will see his pay jump to 3.1 million Singapore dollars, five times the $400,000 earned by President George W. Bush.
In this nation where the bottom line truly is the bottom line, the argument goes, you've got to pay to get them and you've got to pay to keep them.
"If we don't do that, in the long term, the government system will slowly crumble and collapse," Defense Minister Teo Chee Hean told reporters last month.
As the minister who oversees the civil service, Teo announced the pay hikes Monday, saying: "We don't want pay to be the reason for people to join us. But we also don't want pay to be the reason for them not to join us, or to leave after joining us."
<!-- sidebar --><!-- related articles -->It is a pay system created in 1994 by Singapore's founder, Lee Kuan Yew, pegging the salaries of government ministers and top civil servants to the money they might earn at the top of the private sector.



Defending the system last month against an unusual public yelp of pain, Lee Kuan Yew painted a horrifying picture of a Singapore governed by ministers who earn no more than ministers anywhere else.
"Your apartment will be worth a fraction of what it is," he said, "your jobs will be in peril, your security will be at risk and our women will become maids in other people's countries."
Singapore has one of the most efficient and corruption-free governments in the world.
It is Asia's second-richest country after Japan, with a gross domestic product per capita of about $31,000, and Lee said it could well afford to pay its leaders top dollar.
The total of the salaries before the increase amounted to 46 million Singapore dollars a year, he said, or 0.13 percent of government expenditure - 0.022 percent of gross domestic product.
Under the government's formula, ministers are to be paid two-thirds of the median of the top eight earners in each of six professions: accounting, law, banking, engineering, multinational companies and local manufacturing.
There has been no public sign of discontent among the men and women who run Singapore, but last month the prime minister noted that they were earning just 55 percent of this benchmark.
"We don't want pay to be the reason for people to join us," Teo said Monday in announcing the pay hikes. "But we also don't want pay to be the reason for them not to join us, or to leave after joining us."
Talk of the impending pay increase drew an outcry here for weeks that included letters to newspapers and an online petition that has collected more than 800 signatures.
The average Singaporean earns something over $2,000 a month, and the government has voiced concern over a widening gap between rich and poor.
The ministerial raise comes three months ahead of a 2 percent increase in the sales tax.
Mohamad Rosle Ahmad wrote in a letter to the editor: "I am sure Enron and Worldcom paid more than top dollar for their top executives, and look where their companies are now - six feet under."
Lee Kuan Yew, whose title is minister mentor, said naysayers like this need a reality check.
"I say you have no sense of proportion; you don't know what life is about," he said last month.
"The cure to all this talk is really a good dose of incompetent government," Lee said. "You get that alternative, and you'll never put Singapore together again."
He presented himself as an example: "A top lawyer, which I could easily have become, today earns 4 million Singapore dollars. And he doesn't have to carry this responsibility. All he's got to do is advise his client. Win or lose, that's the client's loss or gain."
The Straits Times newspaper quoted him as saying his current salary as minister mentor was 2.7 million Singapore dollars.
Money may buy happiness for a government minister, but some Singaporeans suggested that other motivations should also come into play for government service.
"What about other redeeming intangibles such as honor and sense of duty, dedication, passion and commitment, loyalty and service?" asked Hussin Mutalib in the Straits Times' online forum recently.
Carolyn Lim, a prominent writer, suggested in an essay in The Straits Times that Singapore needed a little more heart to go along with its hard head. "Indeed, a brilliant achiever without the high purpose of service to others would be the worst possible ministerial material," she wrote.
"To see a potential prime minister as no different from a potential top lawyer, and likely to be enticed by the same stupendous salary, would be to blur the lines between two very different domains."
The minister mentor brushed aside concerns like that.
"Those are admirable sentiments," he said. "But we live in a real world."
World leader salary comparison <!-- /headline --><!-- subhead --><!-- /subhead --><!-- byline -->
According to a government announcement Monday, the prime minister of Singapore will draw an annual salary of slightly more than $2 million starting next year.

A look at how that stacks up:
President George W. Bush: $440,000
Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain: $370,000 (187,000£)
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan: $360,000
<!-- sidebar --><!-- today in links -->http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/25/asia/india.php

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Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany: $350,000 (261,500 euros)
 
Z

Zombie

Guest
You had a fight with friend.
Not happy, you go to his father.
You want his father to punish the son(your ex-friend by now).

Father don't care, you KPKB.
Father is fair and thinks his son is right, you KPKB.
Father tries to get someone else to look into the problem, you KPKB.

Father wacks son on the spot, you go hurray!

Very Asian style. :biggrin:
 
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