Me & My Money Series (Sunday Times)

[specuvestor]

The AFC was nothing compared to the 1987 recession.

Was there an '87 recession? You're referring to '87 PanEl triggered stock mkt crash? It didn't affect me as I had not started investing in stocks.

I can only remember the recession in '85 - '86. I don't remember it was as severe as the AFC one. Perhaps, mainly factories closure and the majority who'd lost their jobs were the low wage workers? If factories, that means mainly Malaysians and females, as most were in factory jobs.

IIRC, it was around this time that BG Lee gained political prominence with the job of bringing Singapore out of recession... The rest, as they say, is history...

PS. I always thought that the '85 - '86 recession was self-inflicted to force Singapore out of labour intensive to Capital Intensive industries, but recently, I read that it wasn't true... funny... must be getting old and memories becoming fuzzy...

Did some checking, PanEl was also in '85, not sure what happened in '87...

There was a Black Monday in 1987.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday_(1987)

yup 87 black monday and Alan Greenspan came to save the day. Stock investors got burnt but any recession IIRC was mild where our MRT plan was escalated. Then the desert shield started in 1990.

PanEl was bad but most people yet to invest in stock market. I would think the AFC is the worst financial crisis we Singaporeans have experienced past 30 years

Compared to the prior 2 great wars, Spanish flu, Great Depression, Cuban nuclear crisis, oil crisis, Vietnam war and subsequent red terror and Khmer Rouge domino theory... I'm glad I had it relatively good as not sure how I'll survive those.