Dealing with the global crisis

I expect the global economies to go through a difficult time over the next two years. Many analysts and economists are worried about the debt crisis in USA and Europe and the slowdown of the economies in the advanced countries.

We should be prepared for a difficult time for the Singapore economy. We can expect more people to become unemployed.

If I were the Finance Minister, I would implement the following measures:

• Allow unemployed people to make monthly withdrawals from the CPF account. The amount should be sufficient to meet their monthly expenses. This can be for a period of 12 months and may be extended.
• If there is insufficient balance in the CPF ordinary account, allow negative balance to be accumulated (with interest at 2.5% per annum). The negative balance will be recouped from future contributions, when they find a job. If it remains negative at the time of retirement, it can be a charge on the property that has been purchased with CPF funds
• The monthly repayment of the mortgage loan can be deferred during the period of unemployment.

If the unemployed people are not required to sell their property during this distressed time, the property market need not collapse - which was what has led to the problem in the USA and Europe. 

Tan Kin Lian

Live streaming of talk on life insurance

This talk will be streamed live at 9 pm tonight (Friday 23 September).
http://tankinlian.blogspot.com/2011/09/life-streaming-of-talk-get-value-for.html 

Teaching character and values in schools

 I welcome the decision by the Minister of Education to teach values and character in the school syllabus. This is an important lesson to be taught to your young people. It gives them the confidence and guidance on their future decisions.

I advocate teaching of the values of honesty, fairness, positive attitude, courage and public service. These are the values that have guided the important decisions in my life. With these values, I am confident of spending my mind on many issues. They guide me on differentiating what is right from wrong, good from bad. These values form my personal character.

Different people may wish to give different emphasis to other values, such as respect, compassion, care for others and innovation. It is all right for them to choose these other values. I believe that these values are already embedded in  my five core values.

I chose my five core values because I found them to be rather lacking in our society and will make an important contribution to improving life in Singapore.

Tan Kin Lian

Forfeiture of Lifetime membership of Gym

Hi Mr. Tan,
Did you notice the series of letters to ST Forum on the lifetime membership of a fitness club. Some people paid thousands to get the lifetime membership, to have it revoked later (presumably without refunds) because they forgot to pay the annual admin fees of a few dollars. The fitness club makes it not so easy to pay the fees (eg. no giro payment).


I wonder if this can be classified as a scam. But it definitely highlight another issue of prepaying for a product/service.


REPLY
I think that this is an unfair contract term. There is a law against such unfair contracts. I believe that this law is being handled, in some ways, by the Consumer Association of Singapore (CASE).

Active discussion in Facebook

If you wish to discuss some of the issues posted here in my Facebook page, you can create a profile by following the instructions here,