From Gerald Giam’s blog:
While I believe Singaporeans accept that in all investments there will be ups and downs, Temasek and the government cannot hide behind this flimsy excuse for realising as large a loss as this. This is a national scandal! Where is the accountability? None whatsoever, it seems.
The CEO of the company is allowed to retire gracefully, saying she has “no regrets”. So what will cause you to leave with regrets, Ms Ho Ching? A $10 billion, or a $100 billion loss of our future generations’ money? Since Temasek is a wholly owned company of the Ministry of Finance, I don’t think they can just claim they are a private company that is accountable only internally.
The Minister of Finance must answer to Parliament and to the people for this staggering loss of Singapore’s reserves. The government needs to be reminded that the reserves belong not to them, but to the people of Singapore, and more importantly, our children and future generations. —-
From the Financial Times:
Temasek Holdings, the Singapore state investment company, has pulled out of its investment in Bank of America, selling its 3.8 per cent stake in the US group.
The disclosure on Friday of the sale follows an announcement by Ho Ching, Temasek’s chief executive, that the company is to cut its target for planned investments in developed economies and invest more in emerging markets.
Temasek is estimated to have lost at least $2bn on an investment foray that began with it taking a stake in Merrill Lynch in December 2007 for $5bn.
Temasek injected another $900m into Merrill last July and became its biggest shareholder, with a 13.7 per cent stake. It held 219.7m Merrill shares at the end of 2008.
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All the anger here are for nothing, politics is simply not for the average man on the street. What we can conclude is that LHL is not even 1/2 as capable as his old man.
To invest in BoA, in the first place, is a bad investment.
To deicde to cut lost now is indeed a very smart move! After this bear market rally, the DOW is going to plunge to greater low. Basically, all the big american banks are bankrupt. How can the US government say that it is too big to fail? The only way is that they will print more fiat currency out of thin air to support the bank. However, that is not true wealth. That is diluting the present value of the currency and will eventually cause the greenback to devalue. I am glad that GIC has quickly use this rebound to get out of this investment.
I’ll be even more happy if GIC will spend a few millions S$ to buy an investment report from me before they make any such big investment. If only they have done so, it will safe Singapore from all this big losses.
Oh!
I see. They have missed the march rally? OMG goodness…their investment acumen is really bad. This bear market rally is almost predictable. They should wait for the rally and then get out in May-this month.
I think they should really pay me for some investment reports befor ethey make any move.
Just get these irresponsible ruling party out of the office and stop sucking blood from the citizens and throw them into the ocean bed and still can boast how efficient they are in governing the nation. In no time, the country is going into bankruptcy soon.
48) very hsien on May 17th, 2009 12.31 am
the 66.6% are the sabo king. those who supported pap, are partly to blame. our future generations have been cursed.
They made a big bludder and we the citizens have to suffer for their mistakes. What the hell is this supposed to be? just throw them out for good.
between pap & others what is ur choice? understand the underlying meaning,
pap=LHL, LKY, GCT
others=rojak of uncertainties but unrelated to LKY
to choose pap is to continue to let ur daddy take the steering wheel but there’s zero option on destination, to choose others is to learn to take control, but inevitably there will be a transient stage where things will run amok e.g. riots, chaos, lootings…these things also happened before LKY’s team took full control
My fellow Brudders,
talk is cheap… dont just bitch about things. do something about it when you have the opportunity
aiyoyo
there goes commoners $$$, any recovery plans by the elite(s) that made mistake?
resolutions? what’ll happen to our CPF? take out when 80years old?
s$6.8bn how many jobs can be saved? (not sure how much SPURS is offering?)
aiyoyo
Let us be objective when criticising the government. There is too much emotion here.
It seems to me very unreasonable to ask the policy makers to pay back when investments go bad. It is not the same as NKF case. One is about bad judgement the other is about deceit for personal gains. It is not reasonable to ask any office holder to pay back from her personal funds money lost ,if the manner in which the lost occured, was not executed under criminal intent. At most we can ask for their resignation or demotion.
The Finance Minister said that though Temasek lost the money, they did “far better than other investors”. There was no statistics to back this. Does anyone know where to find the statistics? If the statement is false we need to expose it and start another round of discussion. If the statement is true, it is something we just have to accept, just like good healthy people being killed by SARS..
andylau – no regret? simple, then pay us back with ur personal saving. doesnt matter how many generations, our decendents can always wait .
You heard this chinese proverb: 羊毛长在羊生上? High losses will drain our returns on CPF. This is why the government is raising HDB to exhorbitant prices such as $700k HDB, money will be trapped and never able to be withdrawn. Higher losses will force the government to take them back from the citizens. Once affordable HDB is now beyond many.
Iskandar, #59
The point is not the get statistics to back up the claims that we (as a singapore sovereign fund) did less worse than other investors.
I can agree with you that such investments were not made with criminal intent. However, there is no logic in paying a person an exorbitant salary, if all he/ she could do is chalk up losses (whether they are better or worse) than other investors. There is no school of thought in the business world that teaches us that. Ask anyone who is in business or commercial world, and they will tell you that you pay the person to add business value, (not to perform less worse than others). In this case, financial returns.
To any policy maker/ head who tries to give a different spin to this, I say please…. take responsibility and don’t turn us into a laughing stock further when the damage is done.
Unlike the British, Europeans and Japanese whom have a culture of shame on wrongdoings, and offenders will remoresefully relinquished their positions voluntararily(some Japanese even commit suicide), Sporeans generally lacking in social gracious, will just withstand the shamefullness, poker-facedly.. Aping the economic policies of the Americans, we have turned out to become shameless cheats like them.
Times magazine named Ho Ching top 10 women in the world 2 yrs back.She should now rank No.1 for lossing billion of S’pooreans’ money.Why there isn’t any Commissiom of Inquiry held to investigate this wrong doing. Is it because she is PM’s wife.I suggest we stage a protest at Hong Lim park to demand govern conduct in inquiry into this matter.The Lee’s family should make to pay back what they had lost.
Pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
We pay big bucks, still get monkeys. How to justify the multi-million pay packages we are doling out?
Since, we are always talking about outsourcing. Maybe, we should just do it!
Look a T Holdings now, we are using a foreigner to run and manage. If assuming he does perform. Great!
If not, just another scapegoat with multi-million golden handshake.
Where are we headed?
We are all doomed mates!
Re. #61, #59
Everyone can agree that The policy maker made a bad mistake of judgment. I also agree that same should step down graciously… which she did. What else does the public want? Hang her like somewhat said here.. .. This is barbaric criticism. As long as it is not a criminal intent, and the loss of public funds does not result in personal gain, i believe even in china if someone make a mistake like this, there can’t be hanging. The culprit should be sacked and shamed in public at worst. .. if there is evidence that he/she ignored advice of contrary views.
Yes i agree that she should not get voted in to get those awards and it was not gracious of her to accept them in the light of such losses and public sentiments, but let’s stop all this childish stuff about hanging her and getting her to pay back from own pocket.
Actually I dont agree that the westerrners or other leaders are more gracious than singaporeans. Bush hoodwinked the whole world to believe that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction. Did he apologise to the world? OK, Saddam Hussein was not exactly a saintly leader anyway, but that’s not the point.
THERE ARE NO SAINTS OUT THERE. Vote in an opposition into singapore parliament, they also will end up behaving like swine just like the incumbents. I have a very negative view of politicians. In this dog eat dog world, don’t expect too much even if there are opposition in parliament. The will go down and down and down anyway, it is a horrible life to lead in these days. Life was much better and fairer 20 years ago. Do remember.. year 2012 is doomsday… check out the internet on more information on this.
The government keep saying that Temasek performance is comparable or better than other investment company, but let them be reminded that Temasek is NOT like other investment companies. Temasek money is from the hard working people of Singapore, unlike investment companies who invest on behalf of the rich people. The risk that Temasek takes MUST NOT be the same or higher than that of investment companies. There MUST be accountability and heads must roll. The president is suppose to look after our country reserves, so please speak up!!
Can someone advise how does this affect the mere mortals ?
I mean singaporeans are pragmatic.
They only will be interested in things that affect them.
They simply dont care if its non of their business.
64) thumos on May 17th, 2009 1.04 pm
sorry, no offence… but puppet are suppose to do as told, and not ask questions… if you want to be entitled to your 3mil. you know what i mean? :)
63) Tony Fatt on May 17th, 2009 12.22 pm
this is the price to pay for being the 3rd most powerful woman in the world 2007, as according to forbes magazine. it might be that they are dangling the carrot in exchange for all those investment. title doesn’t comes cheap you know? ask any datuk around…
re. 65
Thumos>> it is true that head should roll if the investment gone awry due to bad judgement. But the onus is on us to prove that it was bad judgement, under the circumstances of world chaotic situation. Since it is very difficult to prove whether Temasek acted in foolhardy manner, and we have no idea whether or not it is true that Temasek did a lot better than other investors, i opine that it is not fair to put Madame out on a pedestal and throw stones at her .. at this juncture in time. We need more evidence. That is why we need to examine the Finance Minister’s statement that Temasek did much better than others. I want and demand evidence and statistics from the ministers.
Secondly, I think whether or not the company handling the investments is handling Sinaporean’s money or private investors’ money, is also not a relevant issue. Investment company must earn high interest to justify their existence, regardless of whose money it is. Heads to roll if the investment company lost 31% of the investment, but if it can be proven that everybody else on the planet lost 50% thereabouts, then ok lets forgive Madame and wish her happy retirement.
And who says the Temasek money is poor singaporeans’ money? Temasek money is every CPF account holders’ money. It includes also Madame’s cpf money, The old man’s cpf money, the money of rich singaporeans, smart singaporeans, stupid singaporeans, PAP singaporeans, SDP Singaporeans et all.
#63) Tony Fatt
‘The Lee’s family should make to pay back what they had lost.’
…………………………………………………………
The old man will say to you,”Shut up and sit down. I built up Singapore from scratch. There was nothing much at the treasury in the beginning. Without me there is no Singapore. No reserve to talk about now.”
Start practising our shoe throwing. Wait till HC gives a public speech. LOL
To Iskandar (61)(67);;;;Your naive and idiotic comments reminds me of “TIDAK-APA” attitude that u and your kind were very good in historically;;;;;Your silly defence of the undefensible and your disregard of the billions of taxpayers money down the drain shows up your “ANGKAT-BODEK”mentality. Save us from any more of your comical rantings.
If they make money consistently, they says that they cannot reveal “sensitive” information and the “secret recipe” must be kept secret, then that’s okay. But they consistently lose large sum of state money and yet paid themselves so handsomely, they no longer have the right to say that they cannot reveal the secret recipe and information pertaining to the loss because that will make them the CON-man. They should stop behaving like con-man now, and start giving accountability.
Amidst the emotions of seeing $7B of our money thrown away, we have lost sight of the greater picture. Let’s put it in context shall we… According to Temasek’s 2008 annual review, total assets were 295B. A 7B loss is a 2.5% drop in the portfolio. 7B is a huge number in absolute terms but it is important to keep perspective of the context. As our portfolio continues to grow, the absolute gains/ losses will too. 1% of 10B is less than 1% of 100B.
For all those who are upset about the loss (I am too), asking ministers to give an account/ apology won’t achieve much. What are they going to say? They’ll just give some standard answer…For the right answers to be given, the right questions need to be asked.
1.)Valid concerns have been raised about the silence of the sales. For a firm that claims transparency, such a big sale should have been declared after all that has happened.
2.)What can be done about the investment making process to ensure that we won’t do this again?
3)Some Sovereign Wealth Funds’s did terribly, but some came out relatively unscathed. How can we learn from them? Eg Norway. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/business/global/14frugal.html?ref=business
For me, I am disappointed about this debacle but like Iskandar @ 59 and 67, the only fair way is to judge them by the overall performance. I will withhold final judgment until I see how the rest of the portfolio performed in 2008/9.
Iskandar- A good way to judge would be to wait for the annual report for 2009 review to come out and then to judge based on how the world indexes have done and also other SWF’s performances.
To Iskandar(59)(65)(70);;;”And who says the Temasek money is poor singaporeans money? ;;;;Bro check out the stats before u make such comments;check out the % of the poor people here and the amount of GST and other taxes they pay for your “Temasek money”!!??Or —is it the people’s money??
Unfortunately, what Mr Tharman said today in the newspaper was wrong. Singapore’s SWF performance was one of the worst. Please see this link: http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_337821.html
I have done you guys a favour with this extract:
“The Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) said on Tuesday it had lost US$30.73 billion (S$46.38 billion) from March to December last year. The Council on Foreign Relations, an independent New York-based organisation, estimated that the KIA’s portfolio shrank from US$262 billion in December 2007 to US$228 billion a year later.
Earlier this week, it was revealed in Parliament that Temasek’s net portfolio value dropped 31 per cent between March 31 and Nov 30 last year, from $185 billion to $127 billion. The value of GIC’s investments also declined last year but the numbers were not disclosed.
Even the world’s largest SWF – the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority – has not been spared and may have lost US$125 billion last year, according to a Council on Foreign Relations report. The report said its portfolio of assets is estimated at US$328 billion.
Gulf-region SWFs could lose as much as US$450 billion this year due to the global crisis – equal to the region’s oil income for an entire year – according to remarks made by Mr Henry Azzam, Deutsche Bank’s chief executive for the Middle East and North Africa, to CNBC Arabiya.
Norway’s Government Pension Fund – the third-biggest SWF – has had the worst quarter in its 18-year history, losing 14.5 per cent of its value in the three months to Sept 30 last year. The fund has assets of about US$300 billion. These figures do not take into account steep market falls in October and November. It took a US$500 million hit last year after sinking US$1 billion into refinancing six European and American banks, including Lehman Brothers.”
To Iskandar(70)you said “i think whether or not the company handling the investments is handling singaporean’s money or private investor’s money is also not a relevant issue”;;;;;;Bro if the loss of billions of our singaporean’s hard earned money is not a relevant issue, can u enlighten us as to what is the relevant issue
“I can live with a few more years of LKY but not one more second of LHL”…
LKY please come back and kick that useless, worthless and no-good son of yours all the way to the moon. He and his wife is THE shame of Singapore.
@Iskandar: Read the facts of NKF carefully again. TT Durai did not take money. That is why all they could get him on was some misleading $20k and $5k invoices. He spent money on himself and others, which was all cleared by the board of directors. Some expenditure was perhaps wrong, some perhaps over the top…think John Thain’s million dollar office renos at Merrill. But TT Durai was never convicted of those things. Just $25k. A conviction for $25k, this must be the biggest fraud in Singapore history! I don’t know him nor do I support him. I am just looking at the facts!
Now assume the Temasek board said yes to the Temasek boss (for reasons best know to the board) Now how many billion is lost again? The magnitude of the loss over the period in question, is on its face, grounds for good concern. TO SAY “But the onus is on us to prove that it was bad judgement,” is absolutely bizarre! How would anyone every prove what went or did not go on in the boardroom? Its disclosure that is required, unless of course we unleash the sae fury that NKF received on Temasek (with the media hounds unleasehed of course) But will that happen? Say the decision to buy ML was a frolic, say an OTT frolic, again remember, I can decide not to donate to NKF, can I decide not to contribute to CPF??? So which error or breach was more egregious on its face? Which party should be more accountable, which loss was greater from both an absolute and comparative viewpoint?
Sometimes its not always about how who else in the market did? And we must bear in mind most countries have press hounds that are not subject to the Newspaper and Printing Acts or have a viable opposition or just pressure groups that actually work.
What is being asked is accountability, and accountability requires disclosure. Just consider the problems the ALL UK MPs are going through now. The UK Parliament refused disclosure on expenditure previously. They said trust us. Look what happened when pursuant to the relevant Freedom of Information Act all ther receipts were disclosed.
I am not saying some skullduggery took place in the Temasek case, but the magnitude of the loss cries out for disclosure! Or is that too much to ask and we should wait for a $100B loss first.
>LKY please come back and kick that useless, worthless and no-good son of >yours all the way to the moon. He and his wife is THE shame of Singapore.
if old man see this, old man will get heart attack & die eye open wide
Wonder why she is called Ho Ching?
In the 14th century, there was a eunuch admiral called Cheng Ho, who spent his life at sea visiting and touring the world, at the expense of China for over 30 years.
He could convinced the dynasty that these voyages were good for diplomatic causes and could bring back interesting artifacts like a giraffe. But basically, he was just happy to put a financial strain on China with no results.
Finally the third generation emperor put a stop to this senseless squandering…
Umm.. maybe reincarnation is true after all… and history does repeat itself ..
#80) hobo
‘ @Iskandar: Read the facts of NKF carefully again. TT Durai did not take money.’
…………………………………………………
At last we have one citizen brave enough to speak the real truth and not the half truth by the media and the general population. I have heard neighbours, friends, colleagues and educated people comdemning him a cheat who had squandered millions of donated money.
What is the moral of the NKF story? Unless you are a staunch PAP member don’t sit on any NGO committee. This adivice is too late for R Yong, now a bankrupt.
Imagine what the big loss can do:
1. Help the blind not to sell tissue paper at hawker centres
2. Help the handicapped and blind musicians stop their entertainment …..ugly sight @ MRT stations and Underpath.
3. Help poor retirees make ends meet
4. Help retrenched workers
5. Help loan seeker not to resort to loan sharks
6. Help those who need help…………….etc…..etc
Re. #61, #59, #70, #76, #78, #80 ……… #75
First of all let me clarify that i am NOT in support of Madame for losing billions of dollars, never mind it is poor singaporeans money or rich singaporeans money. Every cent is important, any investment banker who performed badly for its clients must surely account to the clients for the manner in which the losses occured!!!!! Let ‘s not be partisan and divide and say with much emotion, you (“Madame”) lost the poor man’s money, you (“Madame”) pay up. A rich man whose money is lost by Madame has every equal right to demand for accountability. We must not get emotionally involved, or else the incumbent will have every reason to think that the opposition are stupid. We need to be more objective and not make careless statements to the tune of ” Shoot Madame~!! make her pay!!”. “These are uncivil and un-intellectual approaches, simply because there is not an iota of evidence that personal gains were made. She was doing her job, of course in a way which leaves much to be desired.
Whether she did a bad job or a good job , you cannot ask her to pay the losses, as she did her job with no pre-meditated, evil, intent of personal pecuniary or other gains. And since she stepped down voluntarily, it is a gracious move to some extent , but to close the gap we definitely need to catch her before she leaves, to give a full disclosure of the circumstances leading to the loss, as #80 had so clearly expressed.
Yes there is an urgent need to REQUEST FOR FULL DISCLOSURE and also evidence that our Investing authorities losses are “far better than others” as spoken by Finance Minsiter. If the statistics show otherwise, there is good ground to demand to sack him because it is telling outright lies to the population of singapore. This is an objective approach and more logical way to proceed.
PS>>>> I applaud the mail of #75 RighteousSinga which answers my original question to some extent; i wonder if #75 will be so kind as to calculate for us in percentage terms what Kuwait Authority, and the Norway, etc. others mentioned, as the figures in his mail, were absolute numbers and we can;t test whether our Finance Ministers’ figure of 31% lost is really “not as bad as others”.
3) Zelphon on May 16th, 2009 1.39 pm Well done !!!
4.6B can do wonders to our economy…
———————————–
Your statement not clear as you did not specify the currency.
In Sing Dollars, based on my mere mortal mental calculation, it is around
SGD$ 6.66 Bn .
Ok, usually I am at the sideline listening to grudes and complaints in TOC. But this incredible huge loss at the Temasek really pissed me off and prompt me to write something to flush off my anger.
First, Temasek made the mistake by buying too early into US financial stocks, such as Merill, and at the same time, GIC bought into Citi, UBS, etc. Monthly later when the financial storms became worse, GIC (Lee Kuan Yew as chairman) & Temasek (Ho Chiong as CEO) excuses themself by saying it it for LONG LONG term investment, so there is nothing to worry about.
Now, when the US financial stocks was at its low in 1st quarter, then Temasek sold them off taking huge loss (~S$7 billion, enough money for $3500 for every singaporean). After that, US financial stocks surged like no tomorrow.
Then they came out with stupid execuse — diversify. I want say, diversify your FOOT. Even amatuer can tell the bad timing they sold the stocks and hence to alleviate the damage, they use Staits Times to mislead people believing their exit strategy is right.
Now, the one thing that anger me so much, is that there is no accountability !!!! WTF with singaporean nowadays? Its such a huge loss and yet, no one, no opposition MP, no who what so ever seem to be openly voicing out their dismal. Posting in TOC is not going to help in anyway. We need to strongly and aggresively criticise these top people in Temasek & GIC for their worst performance as CEO or fund managers, and ask them to account for it. Resign of whatever.
Well said MR HOBO(80);;;To people like Iskandar and Righteous Singa(75) who purport to take the centrist position on this issue,stop beating around the bush because there is no middle ground where this issue is concerned for the very fact that LKY and his PAPy party ,during the last 40-50 years of his imperial rule never ever gave anybody the middle ground to stand on–it was always”you are with us or you out”—therefore,at this juncture the people has had it to the hilt —and what goes around comes around–sooner or later
Iskandar @ 85.
I admire your stand but unfortunately your voice of rationality is being lost in “the Crowd” . You would be advised to understand the futility of doing so.
http://www.amazon.com/Crowd-Study-Popular-Mind/dp/0486419568/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242571413&sr=8-2
SWF’s are not transparent at all and only Norway and Singapore reveal their performance.
Firstly,
From the article provided by 1cent @77:
Abu Dhabi Investment Authority lost 38% last year. ( I wouldn’t trust the article though because the figures aren’t from the source directly. Just some estimate from the council of world relations
Norway (You can get this off their site) : Down 23% last year
Singapore: We don’t have their annual figures yet but according to minister. Down 31% from March to Nov 2008
MSCI world index: Down 42% last year
You now have the basis of comparison. The question is who do you want to compare Temasek with? I suspect friendlier people will choose the MSCI World Index and Abu Dhabi while less friendly people will choose Norway.
Note to readers: Norway’s fund in my view is truly a model of transparency. Their performance wasn’t great last year but they did very well relative to their peers.
http://www.norges-bank.no/templates/article____41397.aspx
Also to add to RighteousSinga @87, KIA lost about 12%.
Anyway, Temasek lost 38band GIC lost 25%. Therefore, in total these 2 lost about 100b. In our terms, if we divide our population by 5 (est. size of household), we will see that each household lost about $100K. Almost the price of a 3 room flat they are charging.
Iskandar, #85,
My advice is for you to read my threads very carefully please, else, we are just going round in circles.
I said nothing about hanging her.
I also said nothing about getting her to cough out money for the losses.
I merely addressed the issue from a business performance perspective, and when either the individual/ company makes a blunder like this, just take responsibility, instead of merely using other records to mitigate the perception on damage.
Some brainwashed dudes, who think they are ‘rational’ but actually are beating around the bush remind me of that old story where this guy has got his house on fire , but instead of calling the fire-fighting people ,he goes around asking ;;how did my house catch fire huh? did they use kerosene to burn my house down huh?who burn my house down huh?will they black or white huh?
PAP should submit application for Guiness World Records:
(1) Biggest loss in Singapore corporate history.
(2) Biggest loss yet no regret CEO in Singapore corporate history.
to 64) Andrew,
‘pay peanuts get monkeys, we pay big bulks we still get monkeys’ – hahah.. looks like we pay more big bucks and we get GOLDEN monkeys !
Some questions need to be answered by the caretakers of the People’s funds:
-Why is that the Finance Minister failed to disclose this exit from BOA in the April sitting of Parliament? Because no one asked? Look at this. T only answered when queried by Bloomberg !
-Where is the accountability to the People of Singapore – Can those who voted PAP go and look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself this question:
If someone you authoriesed to use money from your account (nevermind that they tax you from all over the place to get this in actuality) for investment and lost it. Don’t you think you would expect them to tell you?
Have a sense of proportion please. You are killing the rest of us by your blind support.
WAKE UP now or your children Will Suffer MORE !
Let me summarise by throwing all or most of the personal attacks-postings and immature comments. I find that the main issues of substance are as highlighted by #77 1-cent , #87 Cant believe that., #80 hobo and #89 RighteousSinga. (Low Thia Khiang and Chiam See Tong, where are you… please, consider to use these material as base for finding out more about this terrible losses of singaporeans’ money)
Firstly that the Finance Minister appears to have given distorted information saying that our losses are less severe than other investment agencies of other governments. (PS> I also noted a comment that suggested that the losses has to be adjusted to the size of the population. If this argument is turned the other way, that means, if we have a small population size, we are not allowed to think big and expect big returns… or another way of saying if you are a poor man please dont think of becoming multimillionaire, work according to your size…. It is threading on thin ground…) Reference: mail #77
Secondly, from 87) Cant believe that, who is perhaps an expert investor, it appears that the Govt must be fools to buy high sell low. Though i am not savvy in these matters, it makes me wonder why they can be so stupid. Are there mitigating factors we do not know about?
Thirdly, it is the government’s duty to disclose and also ensure accountability.
I think it is important for opposition parties and concerned citizens to take up the challenge on urgent basis,.. to expose the truth. Of what use is the opposition party, and of what use is this TOC forum, if no objective, non emotional approach ensues to get to the root of the problem. We have ourselves to blame for years of the incumbent’s iron grip, if we continue to remain silent or if we continue to pass emotional personal comment whenever incumbent makes mistakes. Let the personal, emotional, hate comments be confined to kopi-tiam chats but we have to the raise the standards of debate when in comes to writing, to effectively challenge the incumbents, otherwise there is absolutely no hope for Singaporeans, now or ever.
Remember Dec., 21st, 2012 is doomsday, so what the heck. Sudah-lah!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3895341627365179412
Thank you.
I think we are only hearing the first part of the story. What abt Citi shares? C’mon, they are intelligient enough not to pour out all the big news all at the same time.
Short sell now !!!!, this is a profit of a life time without any risk.
We also can use the word “No regrets” but instead for the profit at their expenses.
Yes, they did far better than other investors. Like Warren Buffett who from the start said they’re toxic investments at the start?
Did we get our position on the Board at these banks? did we get our strategic place among these huge banks?
anyway, easy to criticise when in retrospect. But i just cant help it – finger pointing is such a singaporean pastime isnt it? The govt went in with their eyes open, so what to do, its happened and we should move on.
just pity how much that $6b could have done for fellow struggling singaporeans.
The only words I can say to the elites sitting in the glass tower is STUPID…STUPID.
People, don’t let emotion overtake your judgment; yes, I know that Mdm Ho lost many Gazillions of dollars for us but I think asking her & family pay up is definitely not the answer. And believe me, there’s no way she & her next 10000 generations could repay that amount!! Perhaps, someone with divine power gave her an exit door for her to disappear gracefully & hope this will just blow away, but trust me, this will remain long in the minds of Singaporeans or at least those other 34%.
I am just an ordinary guy like most of you & the only thing I wanna know is WHO made those decisions & I really mean WHO really is the decision-maker in all those losses? Is it really Mdm Ho or could it be she has been misled by some ivory-tower million dollar scholars all this while (these useless buggers are everywhere, isnt it!!). It’s not just the bad decision to invest in those banks but also investments in ABC Learning, Micropolis, Dao Heng, ShinCorp & many others. I do believe that investments are like gambling; you win some & lose some. However, it seems like whatever Temasek invested in, it’s always going broke or some sort!! !! I am just wondering which company would give awards to its employees for doing a horrible job; if I were that person; I would be too ashamed to even wanna be nominated!
it’s obvious the person who blows that billions away was Lee Kuan Yew himself.
Ho Ching listens to this old man.
Mr Lee says one thing to the people in his ward (about long term investment), he does another thing behind, thinking nobody will notice.