A friend said:

Paying top dollars for top talent to lose top dollars.

Seems like Singapore Inc is bleeding all over the world – at a time when Singaporeans are struggling to keep up with record inflation.

What on earth is the govt doing??

This was what Finance Minister Tharman Shanumgaratnam said:

“They make these decisions for commercial reasons based on calculations free of any influence from the government. (Channel NewsAsia)

Singaporeans’ money is given to temasek / GIC to invest. They lose money and our Finance Minister is effectively washing his hands clean of them, wanting nothing to do with them.

Amazing that such a policy can be defended by so-called top talent people.

Cannot blame the gahmen lah because their brain despite their fantastic credential is just as simple as ABC. They are no different from con-men who lost the money and pretend nothing has happened, and quickly move on.

Anyway, lose money never mind, as usual just invent new excuses to dig money from the citizen aka the money tree, after all citizens in Singapore are slave and can be exploited easily. Can’t help thinking that the gahmen are paid millions to invent excuses for money and coverup

Anyone who to guess what is their next excuses to dig gold from citizen ?

Last time to help the poor, now how about increase GST to help the middle income earner ?
Increase GST and ERP charges to help baby boom ?

The gahmen can give so much cock telling us how smart and wise are their policies and investment, but when it is time to deliver the result, the performance is so freaking pathetic and beyond words.

As usual, no gahman is going to be responsible for the loss of investment, but the citizen is responsible for all of it and endup paying for the loss. Now, waiting for more distraction coming from MSM, and looking forward to the gahman’s creative and moronic excuses for more ‘money-raising’ activities.

More good year !

NOt only IBA is doing us now, but the companies that Singapore has invested in also doing us !

“The collapsing listed property trust sector has turned up some extraordinary developments but, as Mayne notes, “if even the Singapore government’s vehicle is in trouble with total debts of A$1.5bn, things must be really crook”.

And, when you sit down to tabulate the – er, less lucrative – among Singapore Inc’s Aussie experiences of late – “terrible” is Mayne’s word. Singapore Power laid out A$8.14bn in cash for the Alinta east coast assets last August and then failed to flip it into SP Ausnet. This has left Singapore Power lumbered with A$17bn in debt and the same power assets are today probably worth about A$6bn.

Singapore Inc’s Temasek meanwhile ploughed A$400m into ABC Learning at $7.30 a share 12 months ago and has watched almost 90 per cent of that evaporate.

Similarly, the decision to take a one third interest in the Myer Melbourne property play at a valuation of A$600m now looks ridiculous, as does the $717.5m purchase of a half share in Westfield Parramatta in April 2007 on a skinny yield of about 5 per cent.

On top of the recently not-so-profitable Singaporean investments in western banks, the shine is beginning to look distinctly duller on Singapore’s famed investment acumen.”

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2008/07/28/14760/singapores-australand-shocker-down-under/

Now is Temasek and GIC doing the citizen now ?

The good thing in this case is that it’s a A$400 million investment and not A$4 billion. On this, the loss is meagre compared to LKY’s egoistic blunder. However, collectively, the LEEs have lost a fortune for Singaporeans.

Anyway, there’s a mitigating factor that we can wait up to 30 years for the investments to bear fruits.

Harrison,
this is just a tip of iceberg. There are still many money-losing investments by our super-talented gahmen. Whereas others are talented in gaining return, ours are genius in losing $$$. Not surprising consider that our gahmen are contrarian. The world go left but our gahmen go right. Suggest everyone start reading newsweek, economist, FT so to understand what our gahmen are investing. Prepare for brutal truth.

Are there any accountability to bad investments by the Government? Are they governments, gamblers or what? These kind of publicities (losing the taxpayer’s money) proved how incompetent they are. These prodigal spendings must call for a STOP before the tiny nation SUFFER under their domain. GREED is the bottomline of all these losses! PLEASE, I PLEAD, your PRIDE carries a PRICE your PEOPLE must bear! How could you justify when you permitted the tax-payers’ money to be used these ways at the first place. Go to the Government! But you are the GOVERNMENT!

One thing for sure: make money or loose money, all the key people still collect their millions dollars.

If the voters continue to be blind to what is happening to us as citizens and continue to vote blindly. They will do us in …..FOR GOOD.

Ask Goh Chok Tong to monitor the acc of Temasek and GLC ? These are billions of dollars investment, whereas TC of Low TK is only a few peanut. Temasek and GLC can lose billions of our national reserves, and the CEO and the old man still can be the head, are they not at fault ? bad investment, wrong timing, they still want to go in, after 30 years, you can see the fruits, but two of you already in the grave, who is accountable ? your great grandson??

If this investment still go on, without foresight, I am afraid in 5 years , sinpore will be ruined by the pap govt.

The power structure of the mafia and the triads is no different to that of a political party running a government. To retain power and to reinforce his legitimacy in the hierarchy, the leader need to satiate whatever is the primary motivation of his lieutenants to ensure unquestioning loyalty. Of course it would be much better if he has something on file about them which they would not want the world to see.
I would recommend the book, “Boss Of Bosses, The fall of the Godfather’, by Joseph E. O’Brien & Andris Kurins to illustrate the points I made.

Don’t forget the $3.4+bln going into the sinking ML. Ah, then the logical argument will be we bought it at a bargain and when the market recovers in nYears time, we will reap huge profit or is it ‘puff!’. As if the common Singaporeans are idiots. God knows how much more. Citibank could be the next one? Then next could be UBS and on and on. It’s just mind boggling. If this is so the call Top talent strategy, then the street karang guni man can do better.

The day you hear the rumour that the daughter-in-law and her father -in-law are not speaking to eachother, all you rich people can pack your bags and fly out of here. As to the rest, put your head between your legs and kiss your a** goodbye.

PM Lee seems comfortable with GIC and Temasek bleeding, suits him in a way because father and wife have to be extra nice to him. LOL

We should view the investments by GIC and Temasek as very long term.
Only LKY and his daughter-in-law have such great vision to see so far ahead.
Our great grand children will be very thankful for such investment strategies. LOL

Has anyone ever thought whether the magical figure of an average 18% yearly returns on our GIC or Temasik investment is fake ? As I have yet to see any substantiation from the Gahmen, my suspicion that it may be fake is without doubt a valid one.

Until and unless I am proven that my suspicion is baseless, I would actually believe it if someone were to tell me that all these figures have been massaged by those put in charge. Especially when we are so often kept in the dark about our losses, whether they are paper losses or actual losses.

“Has anyone ever thought whether the magical figure of an average 18% yearly returns on our GIC or Temasik investment is fake ? ”

If LKY can even lie under oath and get away, what cannot be done to statistic ?

So, after all these lessons learnt, LKY and Ho Ching can go on the talk circuit. The whole world will be keen to learn from them on, “Pitfalls to losing billions and still retaining thy seat.”

Alan Wong,

Perhaps, LKY is referring to the 18% returns on what’s remaining in GIC & Temasek rather than on what they are supposed to have overall, accumulated and compounded.

Eg. 18% of $200 billion and $500 billion is a mind-boggling difference. No transparency means anything can be interpreted according to one’s flavour.

You know how gamblers fall into the abyss? Double the bet, double the bet . It must come my way, how many times can the ball fall on black? It surely must fall on red sometime. That’s why when mankind starts dying off on our abused planet, the last ones standing will Ah Longs.

RH: Stupid people are stupid in small ways. Clever people are stupid in big ways. Therefore, clever people are stupider than stupid people.

My worry is that some people sees a billion dollars like Monopoly game money. I’m sure sure many of us can recall the times when we don’t have ten cents to our names.

they will ask the people to view it in “perspective” – losing a few hundred millions is just less than 1% of our total portfolio – and it is within the “tolerence threshold” and this is just within a short time. We have a VERY VERY long investment horizon, so don’t get misled by short term “fluctuations” and move on!

another approach – “What to do? we couldn’t have foreseen all the events but we are unique, so let’s move on….”

Lets us not talk about GIC or Temasek. I am willing to accept what ever the reason the government in the name of the nation. If we want to talk of transparency and probity, then make is compulsary for everyone holding public office to declare the assets and value. There is no reason for them to hide this fact if there is nothing to hide. Until the day they do this, I will always have doubts in my mind about the true situation. Who are they trying to protect by not imposing this common requirement. The recent amendment to protect MPs and Ministers from any private investigation just adds to this doubt. Not to mention the abolishment isof the estate duty.

Moral of the story is, government cannot and should not get into business.
Whether the 18% is fake or otherwise is not the issue.
It is very questionable more so until the figures are available and made transparent, figures do not lie but people do, and do it all the time.
Our investments are like a bottomless pit, so it seems, and we all hope come the day that this pit will not be too large that it drags the whole country into it.
It just might be after the next election!
The thing now is not the very long investment horizons but the losses that are coming to light all the time. It seems to me that they want to make a quick killing on the investments. Really frightening at how much we are loosing and I think the money cannot be recovered at all because the investment game is changing among the very big players. Some clear indications of our country loosing money are, the delay of construction projects and the high inflation rate ( bleeding us ) and government not doing much to help the situation, and slowing down of the circle / MRT projects. Even the sports hub is delayed!

But a ray of hope here. The ministers’ pay rise won’t be delayed?

Lack of real investing experience is quite obvious. Oei Hong Leong should be consulted before future investments overseas even though OHL may not have an O level qualifications.
Investing in OZ is a difficult game to play to any win win situation as any season operator can tell you.
Indeed the sorry state of affairs is that they never learn from the past experiences.

since Singapore Power is in great debt that explain why our utility charges keep gng up. Now 25cents for a kwh. They are milking money frm people when inflation is at a all time high. Oil has fallen by 22 dollars. I hope to see the same with our utility bills.

Improving hygiene factors like SALARY is NOT likely to Increase Motivation to work

because

Motivation theory guru, Herberg says so.