iphoting's Sink

Today, I’d received a piece of mail addressed to me in my former school’s letter head. Inside, it’s a copy of the invitation to an ‘inaugural reunion’, printed on letterhead.

I mentioned this letter to a couple of friends and all have concurred with me their suspicions. The most amusing part was that suspicion greets us the moment we receive anything in the mail from the school; what a great way the school administration has brought us up to be!

The usual questions we asked ourselves were – Where’s the food? Where’s the entrance fee? Where’s the programme? What’s their motive?

We made a few guesses... A survey on university acceptance? A chance to sell us something? Maybe more speeches to teach us what to blog about?

The joke is, the letter reads pretty like a multi-level marketing (MLM) invitation, if not for its name.

What do you think?

Taxes have always been unpopular but necessary to fund the government. It also has an effect in limiting the money supply, similar to the effect of increasing interest rates.

Inflation on the other hand has always been the pain in every financial planner’s neck. It’s easy to bring it up and extremely damaging to control and reduce it.

I’ve been wondering lately about the recent spate of price increases and the seemingly unrelated inflationary pressures.

Given the dichotomy of the credit freeze and the spiralling increase of prices, based on money supply theory, both effects should cancel each other out. However, I’m guessing that as this effect is not in equilibrium and hence further money supply manipulation is required.

As mentioned, one of the effects of taxes is to reduce the amount of money flowing in the economy. Though possibly effective in annulling the cash injections by the central bank, it is highly unpopular and enacting it is not an option in technical recessions. The GST trump card however can’t be used again as it has been played this year. The next possible avenue to do so would be in the pricing of commodity items which everyone needs, desperately. Something that just functions like a tax but with another name.

And so, conveniently blaming the market, we see a 21% hike in tariffs with little reason.

Do I make any sense? What do you think?

Does this read like a condolence letter to you if not for the word ‘condolences’?

30 September 2008

Mr Kenneth Jeyaretnam

Mr Philip Jeyaretnam

Dear Kenneth and Philip Jeyaretnam

I was sad to learn that your father, Mr Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam, has passed away.

Mr JB Jeyaretnam was a Member of Parliament for Anson constituency from 1981 till 1986, and a Non-Constituency Member of Parliament from 1997 till 2001. He used to engage in heated debates in the House. Perhaps it was because he and the PAP never saw eye to eye on any major political issue and he sought by all means to demolish the PAP and our system of government. Unfortunately, this helped neither to build up a constructive opposition nor our Parliamentary tradition. Nevertheless, one had to respect Mr JB Jeyaretnam’s dogged tenacity to be active in politics at his age.

However, our differences were not personal. In 1993, one of you (Kenneth) wrote to Mr Goh Chok Tong, who was then Prime Minister, to say that you found employers in Singa­pore reluctant to offer you a job, and your only explanation was that the employers felt the authorities would not welcome your employment because of your name. Mr Goh replied with a letter which could be shown to prospective employers, to say that the government did not hold anything against you, and that employers should evaluate you fairly on your own merits, like any other candidate, because Singa­pore needed every talented person that it could find. Mr Goh had previously made the same point to your brother Philip, whom he had invited to lunch. I am therefore happy that both of you have established yourselves in Singa­pore.

Please accept my deepest condolences.

Yours sincerely

Lee Hsien Loong

They better hope that there isn’t such a thing known as retribution.