Sales, Social and Tech

This is one of the occasion I support a Government's move. The increase in property stamp fees is a good preventive against a possible influx of money overseas which will result in high inflation. For new Singapore buyers, this is good news for them. For sellers, not that good. For the  Real Estate Developers Association of Singapore, they were very disappointed with this increase stamp duties Wrote Channel NewsAsia , REDAS said the good take-up rate in the primary market is driven by the increased number of new launches and unique selling points of certain projects. It is not indicative of a return to a speculative market. REDAS believes given that the local economy is expected to slow down next year, the measures are untimely. REDAS must be suffering from short term memory lost. In the crisis of 2007 -2008, we saw the prices of property shoot up even when the Singapore slowed down. The flux of today's economic problem is that there is too much money chasing fo...

Stagflation is a situation when an economy faces low or no growth, coupled by high inflation. The Singapore government have been constantly highlighting that Singapore faces low growth or no growth in 2012 and will be followed by inflation. Stagflation seems unavoidable in 2012. The last time the world economy saw stagflation was in 1979. The solution was to drastically raise interest rate. This was proven effective in 1979 and the US economy recovered in 1983. One has to wonder if any central government will want to raise interest because bond prices have an inverse relationship with interest. So if interest rise, more would want to sell their bonds to take advantage of the high interest rates.  However, are Singaporeans ready for this possible raise in interest rates? Especially in the housing market.

The 2008 financial crisis is about to celebrate its 3rd anniversary and we are nowhere clear from it. News reports are appearing that US regulators are suing banks for billions for the crisis. Wrote The Slate , The lawsuits came through. Late in the day Friday, the Federal Housing Finance Agency sued Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Barclays. The federal regulator also listed Nomura Holdings, HSBC Holdings and Credit Suisse Group as defendants, reports Bloomberg . The suit relates to losses on more than $41 billion in subprime mortgage securities that were sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Many of us may not understand how this crisis began and we are looking at signs that it could happen again, especially with rising property prices in Asia. Below are two set of videos I found that helps explain the crisis of credit. There are lessons to learn here. Property prices, especially in Singapore, where it is always expected to rise and never fall, is facin...