Change MacBook Refresh Rate

Previously, I was researching on changing the refresh rates of the MacBook because I find that there seems to be something missing. I found that looking at my previous Fujitsu laptop a much better experience than looking at the MacBook.

Anyway, these are the steps to change the MacBook refresh rate:

1. Use the native resolution 1280 x 800
2. Get the program to change the refresh rate at http://www.madrau.com/switchres/SwitchResXControl.zip
3. Run the SwitchResX Control application
4. Ensure the Settings of is at Color LCD
5. Click on the Custom tab
6. Click on the + tab
7. Change the vertical scan rate to 70Hz. Ensure the rest of the parameters are the same
8. Save the settings and Click OK
9. Reboot
10. Open System Preferences > Displays
    
11. Choose 70Hz under the Refresh Rate
12. Reboot
    

These settings works fine on my Macbook. However, if you've encountered any problems, in the SwitchResX Control application, there's an option called Factory Settings. I've got this information from here.

I hope this helps...

Temasek and GIC returns

I refer to a section of the reply given by Jacqueline Poh, from the Ministry of Finance:

The current arrangement thus enables all CPF members to earn fair and risk-free returns on their retirement savings, while benefiting from the good performance of GIC and Temasek through the annual Budget. This is the right way to help Singaporeans save for their old age, and enjoy peace of mind in their golden years.

I think she missed the main point. The point is that up to now, there's no law or formula stating that some of the returns of GIC and Temasek should be channeled back to Singaporeans. This lack of transparency is causing Singaporeans to be over-active in their imagination. Given the government's track record of using law or formulas, it's a wonder why up to now, no such formula has been enacted.

I refer to the recent bonuses given to the MINDEF personnel. A formula was introduced where the GDP increase was linked to their special bonus. Is it so hard to enact a law that says returns above x%, xx% of it will be returned to Singaporeans as a form of bonus??

As the saying goes... Take money easy, give money hard. Give raise easy, give benefits hard.

CPF to include compulsory risk pooling??

I believe the MPs really do not have any idea what is insurance! Risk pooling is first of all, done on one person's CHOICE, not because it is compulsory. Why is it on a person's choice is because we think that we can beat the odds and end up benefiting from the product. Another reason for insurance is because we want our loved ones to be well taken care of. The key word is loved ones. The 2 main purpose for insurance, at least for me. Currently, the MPs are taking away these 2 main reasons, and forcing us to accept it??? I hope that after 6months of deliberation, they will wake up their idea on what exactly is insurance!

Furthermore, under both the annuities products currently provided by Income, and Great Eastern, both has a clause that says that the person will get back at the very least, the principal which was paid to them, minus the payouts given out. That's one of the main reason why people do go into annuities. There's an assurance that I get at least my money back, and the family can use it. There is a reason why structured deposit was so popular in the past, although it's a crappy product that gives you less interest than the Fixed Deposit. Anyway, you take that clause away, it becomes a money making machine for the insurers.

Under Great Eastern's product fact sheet, it's also stated that there's a 50% chance of a man living to 80 years old, and a woman living to 85 years old. As a guy, I have a less than 50% chance of living to 85 years old!

Can you please tell me which insurer is going to provide this annuity product? I want to work for them because they are going to be rich! This whole CPF annuity thing seems to be something that was proposed by the insurer, to their benefit, and not to our benefit.

If this annuity does not get resolved, the government will face this when election comes by, and be assured that the Singaporeans WILL remember this.

Feds cut their benchmark interest rates by 0.5% in September

This month is really interesting to see how the central banks function.I have written a post before on why the Feds should not cut their interest rates. I was quite disappointed when they cut by 50 basis points. Why is this so?

Simply put, cutting the rates would leave to a devaluation of the USD, and majority of all the transactions in the world is dominated in ... ... USD. I'm not an economics major, but putting it simply, demand and supply being constant, currency loses value, therefore price increase. Now the Feds have cut their interest rates, inflation will go up across the board for the WORLD, simply because most transactions are denominated in USD. Look at the price of oil and you can see the effects. Just because of that cut in the interest rates, I think the price of oil will hover average around USD70 per barrel instead.

It seems to me that the US is warning the world. Play fairly, otherwise, I will make sure everyone loses. Why is this so?

1. USD currency loses strength
2. Inflation goes up higher for the rest of the world due to the world's dependencies on USD
   
3. The rest of the world's currencies strengthen to combat inflation
   
4. US Companies find it less attractive to invest in other countries
5. US Companies invests back into US, instead of other countries
6. Other countries hit by the double whammy of higher inflation, and lesser investments
   

Again, let me say that I do not major in economics, but this is a logical conclusion I can gather from what's happening. Everyone loses in this case, including the US. I sure hope that they maintain the 4.75% rate for at least a year. China and India should stop being in denial and take concrete steps in reigning in their growth, and ensuring their trade surplus is reasonable. Pollution is going up too fast, global warming is here. Food crops harvests are getting lower.

Just imagine... USD loses value, price goes up. Crop harvests yields are lower, price goes up too. These are essential goods. Hyperinflation coming? This is not impossible, and there's no running away from it if that path is taken.

How to live your childhood dreams

I came across this lecture by a Professor by the name of Randy, from the Carnegie Mellon University. He has contracted pancreatic cancer, and he only had 3-6months of good health. He gave his last lecture in the university, entitled How to live your childhood dreams, also popularly known as the Lecture Of A Lifetime. This is the link to his full lecture. It's about an hour and a half.

It's very thought provoking, and might lead you to re-think on how you live your life, and how you see things. There were many take-aways throughout this lecture. One of which goes something like this: When there's a time where you made a mistake, and no one said anything about it, that means they have given up on you.

All should watch this video. It was done by ABC news. It's a streaming video so make sure you have one and a half hours to spare. :)

For those interested in the alice project, the website is here.

Updated: Finally know what's a fakehead from this post here. Darn. I'm slow...

Wait 6months for CPF Annuity Report??

Here I was waiting for the full picture of the CPF changes to come this month, and the most important one I am interested in was missing.

I am very curious. Who is the original person who recommended annuities to resolve the longevity issue? Did this person do enough research on what on earth is an annuity? Who is going to pay for this additional 6months of "research" into this annuities issue? Why isn't this done before the announcement by the PM during the National Day Rally?

Knowing the way politics work, what the PM said during the national day rally will still stand, even if we're totally unhappy about it. Still, my earlier comments still stand on annuity. There is no way anyone (at least me) will put any money into any annuity if we're not guaranteed our principal. However, there can be variations to this stand.

In our current setup, a minimum sum of $120,000 will allow a person to receive $1,275 for 20 years after 62 years old, according to the CPF calculator in the CPF website, after adjusting for inflation. Since the annuity is going to be compulsory, and there's nothing we can do about it, based on the concept of risk-pooling, a larger base of users will mitigate the risk for the insurers.

Therefore, if this whole minimum sum is pushed into the annuity at age 55, we should be able to get at least $1,000 per month, for life from age 65 onwards. This is just my guess though, as I'm not related to the financial industry, and I'm guessing using the trends of the current annuities. I still strongly think that the principal, minus the payouts, SHOULD be returned to the family. We did not pay our taxes (GST included) just so that the government can raise their own pay, and force us to subsidize others when our families might be in need of the money. This doesn't add up.

However, annuities itself is not without risk. That was why I was lamenting the fact that CPF is no longer risk free. We're subjected to policies changes, and now annuities. The risk for annuities, based on my understanding:

1. The risk of the insurer going bankrupt due to various reasons like bad management, bad investment decisions, or just plain unlucky.
   
2. The risk of the payout being insufficient due to a possibility of high inflation in our golden years, thus eroding our purchasing power.
   
3. The risk of not living long enough.
   

Ultimately, insurance is all about risks. The insurers are betting that you will not live long enough, we are betting that we'll live till a 100.

Inflation is up 2.9%!

Just like the media to play down the rate of inflation. It was reported the other way around that the average inflation rate is 1.3%.

Why we should not use the average inflation rate? Because the inflation rate increase is not one-off! It's because of the government insistence of increasing the GST rate, just before the subprime mess blown up. Inflation rates are going to be at least 2.6% from now on for a period of time. Food prices are shooting up due to global warming, plus the oil price. The CNA news article even got the July inflation wrong! July inflation was 2.6%, not 2.1%.

Let me rephrase the news article.

Inflation is up 2.9% (August) compared to a year ago.
Inflation is up 0.3% compared to July.

My guess is that the average inflation should be around average 1.8% this year, using an average of 2.8% until the end of the year. Next year it is going to jump even more.

Now, what's our bank interest rate? 0.25%
Now, what's our FDs for < $50,000? <1.2% for most banks.

Oh yeah... This is great!

Locking your Unattended Mac

For those who are used to the Windows machine, there are some short cuts that would lock your PC when you leave it un-attended. For the Mac however, it's hard to find such shortcuts. I have researched and found a few ways of locking your mac.

1. Sleep your computer. You can refer to the keyboard shortcut post here. Do note that once your computer goes to sleep, so does your upload/download. The equivalent is also to close the lid of the Mac
   
2. Click on your account name on the top right hand corner of the Mac, and click on Login Window.
3. Please refer to the securing your mac post here to enable password prompt for the screensaver. After which, use your Finder, click on the Macintosh HD, and goto /System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/, and drag the ScreenSaverEngine application to your toolbar. If you need to lock your computer, just click on this icon to activate the screensaver. Since you have enabled the password prompt, it will prompt you for the password if you touch the Mac.

Hope this helps...

SMRT Prudent Management??

Saw an article previously that said SMRT will appeal to PTC, saying that to reject the hike because of high ROTA is penalizing prudent management. PTC said that their decision is not subjected to any forms of appeal.

Prudent Management?? Let me list down the prudent management:

1. Letting the screens meant to show the train arrival show more advertisements than telling us when the train comes.
2. The ratio of the number of screens showing the train arrival time and the size of the station is very inadequate. Sometimes even if they show the arrival time, you can't see it because it's too far.
3. The announcements sometimes announce that a certain train is coming at a certain platform (e.g. Platform A). Point is, unless you have very good eyesight, you would have absolutely NO IDEA where is platform A.
4. Singapore, being a multi-racial country, should have canned messages that speaks in 4 languages. SMRT used to have that. Now, very rare. Sometimes, we even get broken english spoken through the telecom.
5. Insufficient train maps at the station. I've taken trains in HK and Shanghai, and when I lift up my head, I could see the train map at every fixed interval along the track. Seems like only City Hall and Raffles Place have this in place. All train stations should have it. Prudent management??
6. Insufficient train maps in the train itself. Enough said.
   
7. Stuffy trains during peak hours. Saving on aircon??

So based on this prudent management, they deserve a hike in fares??
I still strongly believe that PTC should have a SLA, like the taxis. Failure to hit a certain level, and you'll get fined. Now if you adhere to the service level, and have high ROTA, THAT is prudent management. This is called taking advantage of the monopoly status, and minimal capital re-investment.

Proposed Compulsory Annuity vs MediShield

I love to link things up which I find similar. Now I see a very close pattern between the proposed annuity and MediShield, and I think the government would like to link both of them together as an example. Why the linkage? Because like MediShield, the proposed annuity is suppose to be low-cost, and provide a basic level of service. There will be additional "riders" which will increase the level of service. However, that's where the comparison ends.

Insurance is always treated as an expense. Why? Because you're buying something to offset a risk of something happening. Therefore, in the Medishield case, the base premium is very low, with a base level of "service", and therefore it worked.

For the proposed annuity, its a different ball game altogether. Annuity is NOT treated as an expense. It's like an endowment policy. You buy into the product, with the expectation that you will get something back in return, regardless of any conditions. In all the annuity and endowment products you see in the market (at least in Singapore), you will get something back. Sometimes you might not get back all your principal (that's another matter) but the key point is that you get something back. According to the bits and pieces announced, it seems like this is NOT the case for this proposed annuity.

This is definitely a big no no. Annuities, although offered by insurers, are not treated by the general public as an expense. It's treated as in investment product offered by insurers. In the case of annuity, every product that I know of will at least give back the principal to the buyer. Therefore, no matter how much you tweak it, this basic condition should still be there!

How to address the issue of longevity? I have another solution outside of annuities. Why not inflation-linked bonds?? The Singapore government can always issue special inflation-linked bonds designed just for the CPF-SA account (Should rename to the longevity account). Therefore, the payouts will increase in proportion to the inflation. This inflation-linked bonds can even be "linked" to GIC/Temasek returns.

This will silenced the critics in a few ways:

1. The purchasing power will not be reduced since the bonds are inflation-linked
2. In some way, the government is channeling the returns of the investments back to Singaporeans, instead of locking it away in some mysterious place, causing so much resentment.
   
3. Since its inflation-linked, the power of compound interests will increase our retirement funds substantially, therefore increasing the chance that our funds will not run out.
   

After which, the owner of the funds could have some options on withdrawal. They can spread it out to maybe 85 years old, 90 years old, 95 years old, etc etc. This will depend on the individual.
I hope some good will come out of this. If they really force us to buy an annuity where we are not guaranteed our principal, I will find some way to remove almost everything from my CPF. With the government changing the CPF rules every now and then, it is no more risk free.