When I say that this is the greatest swindle in modern times, I really mean it. This is because its not a one time deal, where the perpetrator gets caught and goes to jail, e.g Bernie Madoff. IT'S AN ONGOING SWINDLE. This is the worse part, even after you have taken out the down payment for your HDB flat from your CPF, it is still continuously drained monthly to service the loan. In other words, billions of $ are still being swindled from the citizens each and every year for the forseable future. As alluded to earlier, if decide not to play the game and instead fund the monthly payments from your own salary and not the CPF, than your CPF money is being ravaged by inflation when its being paid only 2.5%. They have had decades to refine the whole system and close all the loopholes and enhance the exploitation.
Unlike a commercial crime case, the victims have no legal recourse. They cannot complain to the police. There are no prosecutors to investigate and charge the PAP, because they are the govt. Even though all the elements of criminal fraud are there. Including misrepresentation i.e. saying that you own the flat when you don't. Also Price manipulation and anti-competition/anti-trust actions by taking over 80% of the land through legislature that would not be upheld in any independent democracy. This forces people to go to them as they are in many cases the sole source of housing. What is happening here is that one entity controls and owns 80% of the land and 90% of the housing. Land is a limited resource in SIngapore. They than sell this limited resource for a high price. And peopel are forced to buy it from them because there is little or no other alternative. Another name for this is called Price Gouging or Economic Hoarding. This is illegal in every country in the world, including communist ones like China. The recent case of the California Electricty crisis of 2008 is a good example. Companies like Enron colluded and manipulated electricity prices in California resulting in 800% price increases, through economic witholding and price inflating. Guess what. The state of California brought them to court and won. These electricity companies had to pay back billions of $. The problem with SIngaporeans is they don't realize a price gouge when they see one.
One only has to read the papers to see there is no shortage of real estate pundits giving their prognostication on the market, as well, there are tons of real estate agents. But I have yet to hear one of these professionals explain it to me in the way I have done in the first post. Which leads me to believe that these people are just plain ignorant about it. This is another hallmark of a swindle. Keep the victims in the dark, feed them misleading or no information, and rely on HDB and MND to hype the product and get in more suckers.
The worse part is that there is not a squeak about this from the oppo parties. I don't know whether they realize the depth of this problem or whether they are just happy to sit there and collect $16,000 a month salary. They should address this issue on their manifesto and state what they will do about it if elected into power.
