Recently as you all know,  I have been playing Singapore’s favourite question game, “You Ask Me I Ask Who”.

The Finance Minister, the MAS , the President are all avid players.

Even the Stats Department turned out not to have the stats and went somewhere else. When they told me

“Dear Mr Jeyaretnam,

We would like to clarify that we were unable to provide you with data …as these are not available in our database. We have since checked from other data sources for the data series for 1980 to 1997.”

That changed the game to   “I asked you, you asked who?”  Seriously! The stats dept checked other data sources for our stats.

“You asked who? The CIA?”

But I suppose the President won this game when his office was snookered into responding to my second letter.

His secretary’s secretary literally replied, “You Ask Me I Ask Who”.

On Friday I wrote to the head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde. Three working days later I received a phone call from her office assuring me that they had my letter and that it would be passed to Ms Lagarde. A written acknowledgement came shortly thereafter (see below). Nothing very exciting but this global institution has shown one lone Singaporean more respect than his own government has.  And a great deal more efficiency.

Dear Mr. Jeyaretnam,

We acknowledge receipt of your letter addressed to the Managing Director.

Regards.

Corinne Danklou

Office of the Managing Director”

Shame on you Minister of Finance! Shame on you Mr. President!

Published by kjeyaretnam

I'm a Singaporean economist who became an opposition activist. I blog to provide an alternative to the porkies that the Pinkies tell. It just so happens that my alternative is the truth. That's why I've never been sued in any civil or criminal court no matter how hard hitting my criticism. I'm quoted and interviewed and asked to speak across the world but largely censored in Singapore in an effort to silence my political opinions. The left hate me because they think I split their vote and because I eschew their outmoded economic models. Models that don't work. The Right and the Conservatives hate me because I'm a liberal. I'm not sure what the middle think of me. I don't think there are more than a handful of people in the middle, here in Singapore. I'm a Singaporean born and bred, dual heritage, my parents Singaporean established here before the State of Singapore was created. I'm not Eurasian. I read economics at Cambridge and could be broadly described as from the Keynesian school but I believe in interventions. I was formerly a successful hedge fund manager. After economics and politics my greatest interests are history, film and Makan. I run but I run so I can eat like a Singaporean. View all posts by kjeyaretnam