CORRECTION NOTICE: This article dated 22 October 2023 contains false statements of fact. For the correct facts, click here: https://www.gov.sg/article/factually021123

According to a state media report recently LHL’s anointed seatwarmer-in-waiting, Lawrence Wong, attended a GIC Investment Forum in New York as Deputy Chair. I wasn’t impressed and neither should you be. Please read my reaction below.Dear Lawrence Wong, rather than mouthing the sort of trite cliches and tautologies about global markets that you see printed in the financial press and attributed to junior employees on trading desks, please stop equivocating and telling us that Singapore will collapse if you reveal the value of the reserves.

Explain to us simple folk, who are not as well educated as you are and more importantly do not have the secret information that you and your PAP colleagues possess, why you resort to such elaborate tricks to deceive Singaporeans as to the contributions made by the reserves to actual spending.

Also explain why the reserves need to keep growing ad infinitum when the pool of native-born Singaporeans is declining. Wouldn’t you agree that it’s unfair that new arrivals who haven’t served NS reap the rewards of decades of austerity endured by previous generations?

Recently statistics released by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) showed that the population had risen by 5% in one year. Clearly you have given up on the only way to increase real incomes which is to raise productivity and instead resorted to growing the population again at a rapid rate. This is in order presumably to produce the illusion of growth come election time. This will benefit the reserves in higher taxes yet it’s doubtful that ordinary Singaporeans will see any benefit.

By contrast, in other countries the economic argument for new immigrants iis that they will help to service large national debts. But this is not the case in Singapore. Your Government appears to be sitting on $3 trillion of assets as well as land reserves worth possibly another $10 trillion.

Why won’t your Government consider paying Singaporeans a direct dividend from the reserves, say, a minimum income of $1,000 per month rather than the elaborate smoke and mirrors foolery that you indulge in.

I cite just three examples here:

1.transferring most of the Net Investment Returns Contribution into long term funds;

2. using subsidies from the Budget for HDB purchases to enable HDB to pay a higher price for land. This money goes directly into the reserves and to “subsidise” Singaporeans into paying inflated prices for smaller and smaller HDB units, whether measured directly in area or more correctly in rising plot ratios. However at the same time you allow SLA, which is under the Minister of Law, to so mismanage its land reserves that the rents for GCBs sitting on huge areas of land and rented to the Minister for Law and his colleague, the Foreign Minister, to be way out of line with rents in the private sector for properties on much smaller areas of land.

3. only giving us one half of the MOH accounts by hiding MOH Holdings behind a paywall. Instead of $17 billion in health expenditures subsidies for Singaporeans only seem to amount to about $8 billion.

When can we expect some honesty from you and your master rather than being fobbed off with childish and economically illiterate nursery stories about the need to save for a rainy day or pictures of you posing as some kind of investment wizard?

I’m waiting for your answers but expect only silence or the use of your repressive POFMA weapon by which you think you can bludgeon Singaporeans into shutting up and not asking inconvenient questions.

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