After insisting that CEO Ho Ching, the wife of Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, did not leave Singapore state investment company Temasek due to losses and bad performance, we now get a different story from Temasek’s balance sheet.
It seems that Temasek has lost 31% of its holdings in the past eight months. That is about $39 billion. That’s billions with a big B!
Now this figure isn’t that surprising to me as everyone in Singapore knows that Temasek made some big bets in the financial sector last year, especially in the U.S. I don’t think there’s any need for me to tell you how Temasek’s $5 billion investment in Merrill Lynch is doing now.
The timing of the revelation was also understandable. With a new CEO in charge in Chip Goodyear, they would want to start on a clean slate and as such need to announce the results.
What surprises me is when I got home and read the newspaper. The Strait Times has somehow managed to get a few fund managers to say that Temasek’s result was ‘respectable’. I want to know which funds these managers are in charge of. I want to know because if I have any money in these funds, I will pull my money out immediately.
Like I said earlier; I can understand the timing and even the bad results, but since when is a loss of $39 billion ‘respectable’. This is a perfect example of how in trying to talk up the Singapore government, The Strait Times hurt the government instead.
Singaporeans are not stupid. Most of us accept that last year was a bad year and we can understand why there are losses. However, no Singaporean will accept that a loss of $39 billion being ‘respectable’. Instead of trying to highlight the bad conditions last year and how the $39 billion loss is normal for most investments entities last year, The Strait Times has to try their best to state how good the government is. That more than anything pisses Singaporeans off.
Here’s something no one will argue about: a $39 billion loss is never good, and it is not ever ‘respectable’. In trying their best to put their best foot forward, all The Strait Times has managed to do is to kick the government in the backside.
6 comments:
No price for guessing who the Strait Times work for.
Old McDonald has a farm
E-I-E-I-O
In his farm he has lots of dogs
E-I-E-I-O
With a wag-wag here
and a wag-wag there
Here a wag, there a wag
everywhere a wag-wag
Old McDonald has a farm
E-I-E-I-O
There's such a thing call "too much of a good thing". Which is exactly what The Strait Times is to the governemnt. Respectable?
Didn't you read lately? They have this big report about how the ST has won big time some journo awards - until you get into the details and read that the whole show was WITHIN SPH!
Talk about scratching your own backside!
Surely, the target to impress must be some impressionable school kids and the heartlanders. Maybe it is also for the sanity of SPH's own pool of journalists - this self massage, autoerotism, solo sex...etc.
The future of journalism isn't looking good for Singapore...
There's a future for journalism in Singapore? I mean honest journalism? That's new
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