Blowin' In The Wind

Trillionaires! (In Singapore dollars)

What a year it has been! Singaporeans have emerged richer, not poorer, from the recession. Total household net wealth is now estimated to be a trillion Singapore dollars (about $720 billion), says the Monetary Authority of Singapore, continuing the success story told by the Singapore Department of Statistics, which announced in September:

Singapore household net wealth grew marginally by 0.3 percent from 952 billion Singapore dollars in 2007 to 954 billion Singapore dollars in 2008.

Amazing, isn't it, that while wages dropped, the economy tanked, and corporates haemorrhaged red ink, the people grew richer?

 
Look at the figures from the MAS Financial Stability Review for November. It's not as if that household assets haven't gone up and down with the economy. They hit a low in the first quarter of this year when the economy shrank by as much as 10 percent compared with the same period last year. But look at them now. Wow!

With 20/20 hindsight, MAS explains:

Thinking out of the box in a Singapore library

I love the playful design of the Bishan Public Library with its narrow glass cubicles jutting out of the facade like so many books pulled out of shelves.

 

The rows of books are visible from the outside, too, from the back of the library, through its wide-open glass walls.

 
I love this openness, this letting in the light, for that is what knowledge is, revealing what was unknown before.

This glass box of a library in Bishan is the culmination of thinking out of the box.

Instead of a staircase, there is a long, wide ramp to walk up to the second level. Only from there begins the flight of stairs to the upper two floors.

Vive la difference.

One can even draw a moral from such innovations in a library.

For what is knowledge but learning something new?

It's common to think of scholars, scientists and intellectuals as desiccated eggheads.

But no one pushes the envelope more than they do, upsetting old ways of thinking, offering something new.

Those glass cubicles jutting out of the facade, suspended in space, poised on thin air, defying the laws of gravity, are not just a decorative element in a library.

Justine: Lawrence Durrell's romantic classic

Love --- wanton, all-consuming, passionate love --- is the theme of Lawrence Durrell's classic romantic novel, Justine, set in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria just before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Two couples are inexorably drawn to each other in a romantic entanglement that ends in death and separation and the birth of a girl who finds a home with the narrator, the English schoolmaster Darley. She is the motherless child of the woman who loved him, by the husband of the woman he loved.

Sounds complicated?

Such are the toils of love when the woman at the centre is Justine --- the beautiful, imperious, elusive Jewess, Justine, who, the narrator learns from an autobiographical novel written by her former French Albanian husband, can never give or take satisfaction in love because every time she has sex with a lover, she re-imagines being seduced as a young girl by a relative.

But that makes her no less desirable to the narrator and her present husband, "Prince" Nessim, a Coptic merchant prince, who are both hopelessly in love with her.

Others pay the price. The husband has his revenge --- or so it is believed --- on the relative, who dies in a duckshoot accident.

And the other victim is Melissa. Sweet Melissa. The Greek cabaret dancer who loved the narrator unconditionally --- and knew, though they stayed together, Justine was the woman he loved.

But, instead of leaving him, she told Nessim about the affair he was having with his wife.

That was how she ended up having a baby by Nessim --- two dejected lovers seeking consolation in each other.

Singapore's stratospheric per capita trade

The 21 member-states of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) meeting in Singapore today include three of the world's biggest trading nations --- America, the world's biggest importer and third biggest exporter, China, second in exports and third in imports, and Japan, fourth in exports and imports. Only Germany, the biggest exporter and second biggest importer, is not a member.

But Singapore beats them all in per capita trade.

Singapore's per capita trade totals a staggering $156,419, more than 80 times as much as China's and almost four times as much as Germany's, the world's biggest exporter. Only Hong Kong comes close, with a per capita trade of $119,905. America's is just over $13,000. China's? $1,796.

Look at the charts. The top per capita traders tend to be small or medium-size economies, as you can see.

All the figures are from the World Trade Organization (WTO). Check the various country profiles on the WTO website. Click here for the Singapore profile.

 

No wonder Apec 2009 in Singapore will focus on “longer-term” issues such as promoting trade and market opening as the group’s members emerge from recession, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said.

Welcome to Apec 2009, Singapore

 
The gateway shows no sign that the Istana (presidential palace) is one of the venues of the upcoming Apec 2009 meeting in Singapore, which will be attended by leaders from around the world. But cross the road and you will see these decorative signs in Istana Park.

 

The welcome signs are everywhere at Suntec City, the other venue.

At the entrance.

Tharman: Once upon a time in the West...

Singapore Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam knows his history.

While praising the "uniqueness" of Indian democracy, he defended the East Asian model by pointing out that democracy used to be limited in Britain and America too.

"It was not until 1930 that Britain got Universal Suffrage. The US did not get Universal Suffrage until 1965," he said.

He was referring to the 1965 Voting Rights Act which made it easier for Southern blacks to register to vote after the 1964 Civil Rights Act ended racial discrimination.

Britain gave the vote to women from the age of 21 only in 1928. Only older women, from the age of 30, had been allowed to vote in Britain since 1918. 

Mr Tharman recalled: "In Britain, before the Reform Act of 1832, only 1.8 per cent of the adults had the vote. After that Act, 2.7 per cent got the vote. After the Second Reform Act of 1884, 12.1 per cent got the vote."

But while democracy was limited, there was stability, economic growth and the middle class grew, he said.

Neatly, from there, he segued to the East Asian model. "A group of men (usually men) centralised power, planned in the long term interests of the country and executed those plans quite smoothly. Some of these countries did not hold elections…

"But, on the whole, the countries progressed. People received education, were empowered, the infrastructure developed, the economies grew steadily."

The Idea of Justice: Amartya Sen

Security is important and we will make sure we do our best to have a safe and uneventful meeting, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said when asked if he expected any disruptions during the upcoming Apec meeting. Unlike the IMF/World Bank meeting, Apec has no arrangement for engagement with civil society groups and the rules for civil society and for public demonstrations in Singapore are not going to change for the meeting, he said.

Ordinary people like me also don't want any trouble. The government is right in maintaining the tightest security in view of the terrorist threat.

The Nobel Prize winning Indian economist Amartya Sen, however, expresses a different view in his new book, The Idea of Justice. In the concluding chapter, Justice and the World, he writes in the section, Justice, Democracy and Global Reasoning:

Active public agitation, news commentary and open discussion are among the ways in which global democracy can be pursued, even without waiting for the global state. The challenge today is the strengthening of this already participatory process, on which the pursuit of global justice will to a great extent depend. It is not a negligible cause.

The average Singapore monthly salary

Here are the "average monthly nominal earnings per employee by industry", according to the Monthly Digest of Statistics Singapore, October 2009.

They have fallen back to 2007 levels and productivity has plummeted, too, as mentioned in my previous post.

The "average nominal earnings per employee by industry" was 3,609 Singapore dollars (about $2,575) in the second quarter of this year --- less than the 3,773 Singapore-dollar average pay cheque in 2007.

Here's another way of looking at the same figures.

Average monthly nominal earnings are computed using data from the CPF Board, says the report. They include bonuses but exclude employers' central provident fund (CPF) contributions. The figures include all full-time and part-time employees who contribute to the CPF and exclude all "identifiable self-employed persons", the report adds.

The actual figures are given in my previous post.

Singapore productivity falls sharply, average wages drop to 2007 level

Singapore productivity has gone down sharply, according to the latest government data. It started before the recession, dipping slightly in 2007, then plummeted last year --- and hasn't hit bottom yet.

Average wages have also fallen back to 2007 levels. The "average nominal earnings per employee by industry" was 3,609 Singapore dollars (about $2,575) in the second quarter of this year --- less than the 3,773 Singapore-dollar average pay cheque in 2007.

See how much productivity has fallen?

All the figures here are from the Monthly Digest of Statistics Singapore, October 2009.

Productivity fell by 0.8 percent in 2007, then by 2.9 percent in the first quarter of 2008 before things went from bad to worse. The drop was 7.1 percent in the second quarter, even worse --- 9 percent in the third quarter --- then went into double digits, plunging 11.9 percent in the fourth quarter and a shocking 14.7 percent in the first quarter of 2009. Singapore was then in full-blown recession.

But the slide did not stop even when the recession ended. Productivity fell by 6.2 percent in the second quarter. Back to single digits at last!

More find jobs through Singapore government agency

More than 3,000 people in Singapore found jobs through the Workforce Development Agency (WDA) in September --- up from fewer than 2,000 in August and just over 2,000 in July. Hirings were lowest in May when just over 1,600 people found jobs through the government agency.

More job seekers are visiting the WDA's Careerlink Centres --- over 14,000 in September, up from 10,000 in August. There were 13,000 job seekers at the centres in  June and July, and 12,000 in May.

These figures from the WDA appear in the Monthly Digest of Statistics Singapore, October 2009.

There were no details about the jobs provided, only this chart.

More than 13,000 people have found jobs through the government agency since April this year --- almost the same number as last year.

Jobseekers can visit the WDA website for more information about how it can help them.