All Aboard

Wall Street jumps on Fannie Mae.

So said the morning news aboard the morning's 95 bus as I made my way to work. Poor old Fannie!

Fannie is in fact a US company that specialises in financial products. The constant stream of financial data reminded me that Singaporeans enjoy a good punt on the share market.

Not surprising when one considers the absurdly low interest rates for fixed term deposits in the banks here. In New Zealand we can get 8.95% percent on an investment over $100,000. The going rate in in Singapore is less than 1%.

A middle income family could not afford to live off bank interest and so shares and property are very popular options for investment.

Currency trading is another popular past time either using the money changers that can be found in most malls and shopping centres or the banks themselves.

At time of writing the Singapore dollar is rising against the US greenback and the NZ dollar which is good news. The latter currency though continues to maintain what I believe to be an artificially high level given the financial underpinning of the NZ economy.

Has the "credit crunch" come and gone? Nobody is sure if the worst is over and as a result the tills of Singapore are not ringing as loudly as they did a year ago.