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2009 The Singapore Model – Where from; Where to?
Filed under Opinion

Is the Singapore Model a “Mud Buddha Crossing the River”? (Chinese idiom: ?????-???? Mud buddha crossing the river, can hardly save oneself). Does the Singapore model have any residual study value?

Singapore’s lap-dog media has routinely lauded the PAP government’s brilliant capability.
Among them is a report on 30th Nov 2008 with very typical wording: “Ever since China’s reform and opening up, many leaders have visited Singapore and also learnt from Singapore’s numerous effective methods. Moreover, in recent years many officials, academics and journalists have expressed deep interest in the PAP and Singapore’s political model.”
Clearly, the PAP and their supporters both think that the Singapore model is feasible, and can become a reference study for other developing nations.
However, Western academics have been doubtful of the feasibility of the Singapore model for many years. The 2008 Nobel economics prize recipient Paul Krugman wrote an economic commentary in 1994 disputing the so-called Asian economic miracle, and thought that Singapore’s economic growth benefited from the increase in foreign investments and not via gains in economic productivity.
Similarly, American political academic Samuel P. Huntington had always doubted that Singapore’s political system can persist in the post-Lee Kuan Yew era.

Is the new Singapore model proceeding towards a “eating, drinking, whoring and gambling” and “don’t care black money or yellow money as long as can make money” model?
Will Singapore degrade into a “laugh at the poor but not at the whore” kind of pragmatic society?

Today, ravaged by the financial thunderstorm, under the climate of a decelerating world economy, the Singapore model is a Mud Buddha in the water. The residual value of the Singapore model is to act as a negative educational example: one-party-rule, one-person-party is not beneficial to the long term development of a society.

The post-Lee Kuan Yew era has already begun.
Singapore must proceed towards political openness; moulding a society where a hundred flowers can bloom is the only feasible direction for Singapore’s transformation.
Hopefully after the Mud Buddha disintegrates, out of the muddy puddle will emerge an untainted and fresh new lotus blossom.

One wonders what the Tekka market analyst, Mr Goh, thinks of this.

By Lingling Wei from Wall Street Journal

GIC faces US$575 Million Losses On Manhattan Apartment Complex

One of the biggest, most high-profile deals of the commercial real-estate boom is in danger of imminent default, say people familiar with the matter, signaling the beginning of what is expected to be a wave of commercial-property failures.
The sprawling Manhattan apartment complex known as Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town — acquired for $5.4 billion in 2006 by a venture of Tishman Speyer Properties and a unit of BlackRock Inc. — is running out of cash. As of the end of September, it had $33.7 million left of the $400 million in interest reserves set up to service its debt, according to the people familiar with the matter. At its current burn rate of about $16 million per month, the reserve could be depleted before the end of the year, the people said. Others have said the venture could avoid default until February.

Realpoint estimates that the property is worth only $2.1 billion now, less than half of the purchase price. By that measure, all the equity investors and many of the lenders, including Government of Singapore Investment Corp., or GIC; Gramercy Capital Corp.; and SL Green Realty Corp., are in danger of seeing most, if not all, of their investments wiped out. Hartford Financial Services Group, which bought $100 million of the debt tied to the property, said it has “sufficiently reserved for ths asset in the first half of this year.”

Mr Goh says: Animal spirits are talking.
Yep as long as its not about the spirits of Temasek.

I think musical chair spirits is more apt description for all these glowing reports. But compared to price doubling
of small marine linked counters when they placed out new shares at huge discounts to "strtegic investors" the overall market is still saner.
Most likely persons to hold overpriced shares are the all the
retail players when the music stops.
Oversight? I don't see any.

Good article. Same principal applies to recent property market in Singapore. Only difference is instead of brokers, property developers/agents are glowing over the prospects of the investment in properties.It is unfathomable to see people paying millions for shoe-box apartments in hope of appreciation or rental yield.