State Ownership or State Receivership?

Last week or the week before a Straits Times writer inked about the perils of states going the communist way with a plea to maintain the free market economic model.

Fast foward to this week. The US is bailing out banks and automakers for 'public ownership' stakes ..... communist sounding? There should be a public slap on the face somewhere for someone(s).

We may live in a country that was never meant to exist but sometimes I think our writers (and senior writers) who wield much influence with their keystrokes live in a fantasy far more outrageous. And the effects of their fantasizing are more deletrious on our society then any Marxist or Communist efforts or conspiracy!

[Greed is good for all of us {but especially me since I'm a shareholder in so many companies and/or it will uphold the value of my property} and will keep the economy going!]

Today's crisis is a nett result of greed. The same greed which is once touted as so good by current SM Goh Chok Tong. But this greed also allowed for the accumulation and amassing of wealth, in rather limited hands I think, which has further promoted growth.

What happened to this wealth?

How is it that, in an economic model where growth is supposed to be an ever upward inflationary spiral, all this wealth can be wiped out and lost? As far as an unsavvy investor like me who is a financial know-nothing knows there must be willing buyers for sellers. Yes, prices may drop without buyers and in fact it should but this just goes to demonstrate that wealth is once again an illusory pipe dream. Built on nothing but hot air and mumblings secured by orders placed in black and white to buy or sell.

Can such an economic model sustain the world into the future?

Is it not far better to go a semi-socialist route where public goods are handled and owned by the state though this promotes lower rates of economic (sic) growth (double sic)?

And while the US is scrambling to save companies and banks with tons of strings attached the Singapore goverment is scrambling to issue 'bonds' and 'loans' (intentional inverted commas) which may never materialise since they are premised upon banks first making the move to loan these monies out - a proposal guaranteed to fail since banks are highly risk averse creatures by definition.

But perhaps a more important question is: should those who have made the wealth all these 'invisible' transactions pay a price for this degradation in economic conditions for humanity? Or will the argument that these multi-salaried honchos create jobs and thus wealth once again stay the course?

Singapore on the other hand has gone the route of privatisation for most of its essential services. There appears to be no risk of collapse of say Singapore Power or Singapore Telecoms for instance. Why and how is this so given that other similar companies all around the world are struggling?

Could it be that Singaporeans have been paying SO MUCH that firms such as Singapore Power and Singapore Telecoms will not only weather this storm easily but still have funds to buy up foreign entities? I imagine when I pay my electricity and water bills that a good chunk of it is going to buying some foreign company for which I will have no share holdings in much less any dividends or returns.

Where then does this greed end and what price are Singaporeans willing to pay? Especially in light of the fact that there will be more homeless on the streets now since HDB also privatised and has started farming out its loan activities to private banks (who have refused to divulge the number of forced re-possessions of HDB flats to my knowledge). Will the HDB go into practices where Singaporeans, eventually, as a nation could possibly go into national receivership (bankruptcy proceedings)? While the formerly government services but now privatised companies make a killing buying over half the world?

Who is making whose money anyway and aren't we all Singaporeans?

Say what you want about having enough reserves to tide us till Armageddon but for this practice to filter down to Town Councils, Power companies, other formerly State Owned companies forces Singaporeans (a captive market) to pay far beyond true market value for goods and services.

And market value is based on fair competition, which our writers and senior writers conveniently ignore when blurting out their feelings about how the economic situation should be 'handled.' And why is this so? Because our market is so small it does not make sense to have competition?

Then nationalise the services and provide it at a fair price with real accounting for inflation instead of some mumbo jumbo numbers which cannot be compared year on year due to the apparent lack of data collected by the Department of Statistics - who the hell is the chief statistician anyway who allows this sort of rubbish where apples are measured against oranges against mangoes and durians followed by gap years of data?