What is KJ's problem?

[aurvandil]

KJ's press conference last Fri.

http://theonlinecitizen.com/2012/07...m-press-conference-on-high-court-application/

TOC was present at Kenneth Jeyaretnam’s press conference with lawyer M Ravi this morning. Below is a transcript of a statement Mr Kenneth Jeyaretnam delivered and his answers to some of the questions by members of the press and TOC.

Good morning. I’d like to thank you all for coming today. As you know on 6 July 2012, I filed in the High Court to request a judicial review of the government’s loan of US$4 billion dollars to the IMF.

Before I answer your questions I would like to take a minute or two to clarify some points.

As you know we have been trying to get an answer from our Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam and President Tony Tan Keng Yam about our Republic's loan commitment to the IMF.

So far, there has been no request for approval, no debate and only one question tabled in Parliament and this was clearly a stage managed exercise rather than a genuine backbencher protest.

It is an appalling situation that it seems to take a court filing nowadays for a citizen to get an answer.

· I have brought this action in my personal capacity as an ordinary Singaporean. That is because I believe this issue is too important to be restricted to a narrow partisan political view. I know that the majority of Singaporeans, if not all of them, have concerns over their CPF savings and our reserves.

· Many Singaporeans are similarly concerned about government accountability and transparency. They would like Singapore to be a better place and they recognise that, a government fully accountable to its citizens, is a necessary condition for improvement.

· Let’s be clear, the amount of the loan is not inconsequential. To put it in context, US$4 billion (S$5 billion) is:

o Over twice the amount the government allocated in Budget 2012 for healthcare subsidies.

o More than the total budget allocated to Health in 2012.

o More than forty times the amount MCYS has allocated to help needy families.

o On a per capita basis it is more than three times the amount provided by the UK and 2.4 times what Australia, a much wealthier country, has provided.

· The US and China, as of this moment, have offered nothing. Ditto Hong Kong whose economy is of a similar size to ours.

· These other countries, which have pledged, have universally done so after proper robust debate, up against sometime severe opposition even public protests. In the UK, government backbenchers referred to it as “Bailout Bull”; one of the government MPs said “You might as well take the money and throw it into the nearest rubbish bin”.

· Nations which pledged also seem to have used the promise of a loan as a bargaining tool, demanding something for their own citizens in return before giving away their money. Japan and Brazil being prime examples.

What has our government got to show for the speed with which it agreed? The loan commitments involve the potential use of our reserves or government savings that come from taxes on the people of Singapore.

This matter is now sub judice, so I am not going to comment on the merits of the case other than to say that the government's arguments do not seem to have advanced beyond 1997.

I am sad to say that some sections of the state media headlined their reports of this High court filing with the statement that the MAS had said that the loan commitment was not unconstitutional.

This flagrantly disregarded the fact that the matter is now sub judice and could be interpreted as contempt of court. I will be taking legal advice on this separately.

· I will add that questioning the IMF loan commitment, given with a complete disregard for the right of Singaporeans to know what is done with their precious money, is only one step towards transparency.

· I have also written to the Finance Minister and to the IMF asking questions about discrepancies in the Budget and in the government’s finances. I believe we have a right to know – indeed we need to know – what has happened to the huge surpluses extracted from our people through years of fiscal austerity. Fiscal austerity, which really amounts to neglect of our people’s welfare.

· We will continue to try and force the government through every means at our disposal to provide hard figures on the returns on the people’s money and why they appear to be so low.

In a robust democracy, a government does not hide behind technicalities and dispense with the need to make itself accountable to its people for the use of their money.

Thank you.

Question & Answer Session

Q: What do you hope to get out of this? Do you just want an answer from the government?

A: Not only do we want an answer, we want the government to follow the due constitutional process.



Q: Why bring this case up only now, when there were other occasions of the government using funds in a similar manner? For example the Indonesian loan in 1997?

A: I was not in Singapore during that period and was not engaged in this effort on behalf of the citizens, to try to find out what was done with our money. The arguments made by MAS have not advanced beyond 1997 and it is a completely different world now.



Q: What about GIC and other uses of State funds?

A: I don’t want to get into semantics over different assets, but the main point of my High Court application is to call for transparency and accountability on what is done with our reserves.



Q: You mentioned that there is a different mood now compared to 1997, so how confident are you that your action will succeed now?

A: I’m not familiar about what happened in 1997 but the then that argument that Parliamentary approval was needed got rebuffed with Latin phrases. These are issues that still need addressing now, we need an answer. The public mood is certainly different as people more aware of their rights.

 

[Thick Face Black Heart]

Actually the most successful quants are those who recognize that they cannot beat the markets because the EMH is unfortunately true. What you can do however is use your quant skills to create ever more complex instruments which get around the rules and restrictions regulators put up to try and control the markets. You earn a shitload of money but in the process cause an economic collapse.

Bro, you're going off at a wide tangent here unfortunately.

Anyone who has followed investment and markets news over the past decade will surely know the EMH is a fucked up piece of shit that has been proven wrong time and time and time and time and time again (repetitive I know).

Do you realize CAPM has zero respect in the investment industry now, but is merely used as a marketing tool for UNEDUCATED investors?

You can beat the market, yes, because markets are forever inefficient and there's always a lot of dumb money driving valuations to either extreme (whether overvalued or undervalued, both situations can be exploited).

And I am not in any way shape or form connected to finance. This is common knowledge.

What has happened in recent years is that banks got too big to fail, and allowed too much leverage, and it is ultimately leverage, aided by toxic derivatives and other exotic instruments, that caused the collapse. The problem is one of regulation and governance.

The IMF is free from these problems, fortunately.

That's why we don't need to worry about an IMF collapse. The world will collapse first, and that is what we will need to worry about. If the IMF collapses, trust me our losses will be in the hundreds of billions, not 4 billion. That's because the SG GOVT has not disclosed a lot of dark pools of liquidity it is in control of.

Let me assure you and your sidekick GMS the 4 billion will be the least of our concerns.

 

[Thick Face Black Heart]

You're now KJ's spokesman? He's got double first from Cambridge. You want to wave your second upper at him?

2 1s and 2-1 a lot of difference you know.

Goh Meng Seng wants to stand for election under RP in 2016. Well, its going to be uphill for him. KJ is still upset over the loss of 30+ members some of which GMS took in. There's pride issue here that needs to be resolved first.

Wanted to add my 2 cents worth to the PRC housing thing but Jw5 did such a good job of chopping that guy up. That chap is a moron who can't even differentiate between a criticism directed at him and a criticism directed at a cohort of students.

 

[aurvandil]

This is really not true. The EMH is an Efficient Market Hypothesis. It is not an Omniscient Market Hypothesis. A lot of the documented inefficiencies which apparently contradict the hypothesis are only observable from hindsight. At the time when they occurred, they were not recognized as inefficiencies.

On EMH and CAPM being used to con investors, I think you are probably referring to the PR material churned out by people trying to sell you unit trusts or ETFs. Like all things in the investment world, these are wrapped beyond recognition from the original theory and hypothesis.

And then of course we have those snake oil salesmen with the claims of the EMH is rubbish and how they can beat the market with all sort of fancy techniques for a small annual "management fee" of 3% to 5%.

Bro, you're going off at a wide tangent here unfortunately.

Anyone who has followed investment and markets news over the past decade will surely know the EMH is a fucked up piece of shit that has been proven wrong time and time and time and time and time again (repetitive I know).

Do you realize CAPM has zero respect in the investment industry now, but is merely used as a marketing tool for UNEDUCATED investors?

You can beat the market, yes, because markets are forever inefficient and there's always a lot of dumb money driving valuations to either extreme (whether overvalued or undervalued, both situations can be exploited).

And I am not in any way shape or form connected to finance. This is common knowledge.

 

[Thick Face Black Heart]

I have no objections to the IMF Pledge, despite my pretty low opinion of the IMF
Anybody who can't understand the need for it, needs to be parachuted into Latin America at the height of it's debt crisis
Maybe the simple exercise of buying bread in the midst of hyperinflation will serve as a wake up call

The problem is "mechanism control" as Scroobal puts it
This IMF Pledge and govt response to KJ's criticism, makes use of the same "mechanism" as that other Pledge made years ago (during the Asian Crisis) to Suharto.
So, I agree that some adjustment in "balance" needs to be done

What's so difficult about buying bread???? All you need a wheelbarrow full of cash. Surely if you can eat bread you can push a wheelbarrow?

I think you and Scroobal have also missed the bigger picture. The mechanism of pledging a loan to an institution like the IMF is not a big issue. The bigger issue is control of reserves and accounting of the reserves, which are in the hundreds of billions. That is one massive black hole that no one outside the inner circle can get a grip of. And that's pretty fukcing dangerous of SG.

 

[Thick Face Black Heart]

We were trying to save Suharto and our cronies (vested interests)
Was there really a need for blood money when the mafia boss was on his knees?
Was that decision really S'pore 1st or certain S'porean interests 1st?
I really wonder (till this day)

That's how international politics is played. Every govt does this. There are no saints in the world of intl politics.

 

[Cruxx]

That's how international politics is played. Every govt does this. There are no saints in the world of intl politics.

No saints in politics? Look no further than the Scandinavians. Why the hell do they take in so many 3rd world asylum seekers and donate so much foreign aid? What's in it for them? For god's sake, stop internalising the balderdash of kuan yew. That joker knows fuck all about politics, biology, economics, finance, morality and paedagogy.

 

[londontrader]

That's how international politics is played. Every govt does this. There are no saints in the world of intl politics.

That's true,

Bailing out corrupt dictators, business cronies etc..
How do we know about these unsaintly behaviour? Because a free press and some form of Parliamentary oversight usually manages to bring all that shit to the surface and take political leaders to task.
That accountability is all that I'm asking for
The govt shouldn't be able to hold private meetings, decide private deals and then bury the issue

 

[londontrader]

I think you and Scroobal have also missed the bigger picture. The mechanism of pledging a loan to an institution like the IMF is not a big issue. The bigger issue is control of reserves and accounting of the reserves, which are in the hundreds of billions. That is one massive black hole that no one outside the inner circle can get a grip of. And that's pretty fukcing dangerous of SG.

Nobody missed the big picture,

The mechanism that allows the govt to make transnational pledges with our money is a subset of the same mechanism that allows them to shove our reserves into that black hole.

What's so difficult about buying bread???? All you need a wheelbarrow full of cash. Surely if you can eat bread you can push a wheelbarrow?

Problem was that you kept needing a bigger wheelbarrow!
Then you got to join the other queue for big wheelbarrows!

 

[londontrader]

This is really not true. The EMH is an Efficient Market Hypothesis. It is not an Omniscient Market Hypothesis. A lot of the documented inefficiencies which apparently contradict the hypothesis are only observable from hindsight. At the time when they occurred, they were not recognized as inefficiencies.

That's why markets are efficient conditional on the current information set, search technologies etc...
I see that you're read up on Granger and timmermann

 

[aurvandil]

Problem was that you kept needing a bigger wheelbarrow!
Then you got to join the other queue for big wheelbarrows!

Unless of course you happen to own a farm growing wheat.

 

[londontrader]

· Let’s be clear, the amount of the loan is not inconsequential. To put it in context, US$4 billion (S$5 billion) is:

o Over twice the amount the government allocated in Budget 2012 for healthcare subsidies.

o More than the total budget allocated to Health in 2012.

o More than forty times the amount MCYS has allocated to help needy families.

Which makes my point that the govt has more than enough money to help Singaporeans. It just lacks the political WILL to spend more on helping.

· The US and China, as of this moment, have offered nothing. Ditto Hong Kong whose economy is of a similar size to ours.

What KJ didn't say (and people should know):

1. The USA can't pledge to the IMF this time round because Congress in a political gridlock and the President is seeking re-election.

2. China did pledge 43 billion eventually

In the UK, government backbenchers referred to it as “Bailout Bull”; one of the government MPs said “You might as well take the money and throw it into the nearest rubbish bin”.

Well this is the same House of Commons that earlier approved a total ceiling of 40 billion for UK commitments to the IMF
30 bn committed before + 10 bn currently pledged = 40 bn
So they voted for the Bailout Bull themselves earlier!
Can't take UK politicians seriously

· Nations which pledged also seem to have used the promise of a loan as a bargaining tool, demanding something for their own citizens in return before giving away their money. Japan and Brazil being prime examples.

Singapore drive a hard bargain with the IMF???
We're usually willing to take things up our asses
I think KJ over estimates our place in this world

In a robust democracy, a government does not hide behind technicalities and dispense with the need to make itself accountable to its people for the use of their money.

That's the real point
Similarly, KJ should dispense with his allegations of the govt acting ultra vires
really, why does the govt need to act ultra vires when they had 100% control over how to draft that particular piece of legislation in the first place ie. I don't need to break the rules because I get to write the rules!

KJ should debate the substance of the particular piece of law and not the technicalities

 

[londontrader]

Which Behavioral Model in particular are you looking at? In the quant world, new is not always better. Very often, new models are really old models with new names and a very minor twist. Maybe it is because I remember DMs too but I believe that Game Theory is the best analytical technique to model this crisis.

There is interesting work on "coalitions" and bargaining. No time for details now.
Game Theory is quite divorced from the kind of Quant work done in finance
in fact, a lot of quants don't really know much game theory (shocking isn't it)

In the quant trading world, new is the only name in the game
That's your temp edge and you need to deploy it fast enough and quietly enough to make the $$ before competitors catch on
Of course there are quants who come up with "New" models that are actually "old" stuff repackaged.
No surprise that it doesn't work!

Game Theory is interesting now because the crisis has taken a political economy dimension
Most macroeconomists are uncomfortable with political economy, even if they know anything at all about it

I know all about economic grandstanding to make a name for yourself. What I meant was that no one has done any serious work post-nightmare which can stand the scrutiny of their peers. As i said before, we have pretty robust results up to the point of whether the Europeans can get their act together to save themselves. Beyond that, the permutations are so varied that there isn't any way to predict what will happen. As a general point, you should only stop and spend 1 minute to listen to quants who are honest enough to admit the limits of their data and methodology.

It's difficult stuff with few historical reference points.
So I understand the gap in knowledge
That's why we're literally staring into a black hole
Should be scary enough for Europe to get it's act together eventually

I also remember the lira, the franc and when there were actual pits in Simex.

Still got a few lira currency notes
And I actually stood near the SIMEX pits and even had a chat with the likes of Nick Leeson at Barings (before he went belly up)

If you look carefully at the manifestos, what they are really saying is Austerity for everyone else ! Within Germany itself, no one is talking about belt tightening for Germany. As things go, life is pretty OK for the average German and the average German is determined to keep it that way. There is the fear that if they commit fully to the saving of Europe, they will join the rest of Europe in the hellhole of debt and austerity. These survey findings are coming out in poll after poll which leads me to believe that we are probably understating the risk of the Europeans failing to get their act together.

That's why I think they need to "cheat"
Like some of them cheated to get into the euro zone in the first place
The German leadership knows what they need to do, their just busy trying to

a. Get some one else to share the pain
b. Finding the ways to "cheat" the system

Quant models are almost always a disaster if you use them to trade the markets.

Absolutely NOT!
When you get them right and time it right
The profits are spectacular
It's like walking in the dark and you're got the only torchlight

The EMH is true 99.99% of the time. For a quant to find a stable anomaly, the person would have to use math which is literally from Star Trek and completely beyond the capability of their peers.

That's why I know that you're not in the business or at least not current
Anomalies can be found all the time and not by geniuses
Why? Because financial markets are endogenous
Our very own actions and reactions (changing regulations for eg.) create these distortions

Finding the anomaly is one thing, Usually not that hard
The golden bullet is putting it all together as a trading strategy
That's much harder ie. extracting the value as opposed to extracting the signal

For the short run, it is always possible to generate super normal returns without cheating. It is called "getting lucky".

Yes, statisticians take that line
We traders, on the other hand, keep seeing the same lucky bastards day in and day out
Some of these statisticians have even crossed the line onto the trading floor, precisely because they see the same opportunities
The trick like I said is putting it together
We can spot the same signal but we can't all exploit it successfully
That takes skillful trading

If you know the likely inputs and outputs of any trading technique, you can use non linear soft computing techniques to either reverse engineer the technique or create a proxy which is 80% t0 90% accurate.

That's the signal extraction part
You're got to get the operating strategy up too (harder)

Hence if you have someone show you stable super normal returns over the long run

It's a conman if he's claiming to do something simple and stable (no innovation) over the long run
That's why Madoff looked funny

No disagreement here. 65% to 75% chance of this happening. The problem is that 25% to 35% chance that the world as we know it might fall off a cliff and having no idea what will precisely happen if that scenario comes to bear. To say that if that happens we won't really miss that US$4 billion is not very much comfort. Still knowledge has its privileges and I am sure that you have some contingency plan in case the worst happens so you don't end up in the breadline.

Let's face it, all this is way beyond S'pore's control
That's why we won't miss the 4 bn when we're in the deeper shit
But we should still make that pledge and perhaps quibble over the amount
Why? because we want to be a good neighbour in case we need help down the road
it's that simple

I'll be 1st in the breadline
Why? Because I work in a bank ie. the first to die!

 

[aurvandil]

This is one of the most interesting and fun debates in SBF in a long time. To add to it, here's something from Micheal Lewis. For those who don't know who he is, he is the guy who wrote Moneyball which was recently made into a hit movie.

In 2011, he came up with a new book about the crisis in Europe. He went on the Today Show on Comedy Central to talk about it. interesting and humorous stuff for anyone who wants to understand more about the crisis in Europe.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/t...sive---michael-lewis-extended-interview-pt--1

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/t...sive---michael-lewis-extended-interview-pt--2

 

[aurvandil]

Absolutely NOT!
When you get them right and time it right
The profits are spectacular
It's like walking in the dark and you're got the only torchlight

It is actually when the profits are spectacular that things get really scary. When you discover what is an anomaly, it is usually when there is a failure with whatever your model is predicting. If you decide to exploit it, you never really know whether the anomaly is real or if you have made a mistake with your modelling. If you make a ton of money, you don't know if you are a genius of if you just got lucky. Spectacular profits are the worse because they invite greed. There will be pressure to make ever bigger bets to exploit the anomaly, real or imagined, before it is exposed. This almost always leads to things ending badly.

If you are not too ethical about things, you can of course just hide behind the math and ride it until your luck runs out. When the losses come in, you blame it on how the anomaly has been exposed. Hopefully you would have set some trading rules to limit the losses so that there is an overall gain that is above what the market has been returning.

I don't know how you have managed to stay so long if you have been in the markets long enough to remember the Simex pit trading days. Most of the people I know from that time got out a long time ago.

I'll be 1st in the breadline
Why? Because I work in a bank ie. the first to die!

That's being melodramatic. With your skill set and experience, I am sure you can set things up so that you'll do ok if the worse happens. As I said before, it is ok to have hyperinflation and people buying bread with wheelbarrows of cash if you happen to own a farm growing wheat.

 

[londontrader]

The Euro500billion warchest was declared when EU decided to increase its warchest from the initial Euro800B to 1.5 Trillion, with IMF contributing to 500B to it. Apparently, if you look at the trend from 500B vs 250B and now, 1.5trillion vs 500Billion, there is a certain proportionate burden instilled. i.e. IMF is expected to take up one third of financial burden in saving Europe.

When did the IMF agree to actually spend 500 bn?
BTW, a war chest is a contingency pool not a commitment to actually spend all of it (such decisions on large amounts require approval from the membership)
When did the IMF commt to 1/3 of anything?
IMF risk management deals with hard ceilings ie. an actual $ value, not proportions of unlimited amounts!
Check your facts!
You shouldn't toss misleading numbers around like that.

MDR I Trust, part of it comes from IMF and IMF funding comes from who?

The IMF also generates it's own income you know! So, it can very well pay into the Trust itself.

When Singapore put up pledges, the terms are that IMF will pay Singapore an interests if the funds have been utilized, isn't it not?

S'pore is treated like the other members who pledge
If the money is called, it earns the SDR interest rate

Thus, the case study is still valid. If things didn't work out well and from the example you have cited, the public presentation would just be the forgo of interests but Singapore gets paid back its initial funds loaned to IMF.

No it doesn't
The Case Study is based on S'pore's quota contributions (like I stated in my post)
As you should know by now, S'pore pledge is treated as over and above it's IMF quota contribution.
The monies pledged (if called) are bound by different IMF terms
got that?

As you have pointed out, there is no need to have a "default" to IMF to speak of. May be I should stop using the word default here. Let's say these funds Singapore pledged has been activated to be loaned to the PIIGS. After some years, the interests and capital payments by these PIIGS were too heavy on them. IMF, under strong influence of G8, decided to "forgive" their loans and wanted countries like Singapore to write off part of their loans to IMF as well. Please remember US has not contributed anything and it would just agree to it. The EU members would definitely agree to that. That would practically effect a hair cut to our loans to IMF. We may or may not recover fully the capital funding, even after taking interests payment into consideration.

2 things to highlight here:

a. The PIIGS don't just borrow from the IMF (if they need to). There will be more borrowed from the EU and private sector simultaneously. If the repayments become too burdensome, they can abandon payments to everyone else and just repay the IMF (like Argentina did). Why? Because the IMF has preferred creditor status and a default to the IMF makes the PIIGS persona non grata in the financial world. Unless the respective govts (and people) want to be treated like Afghanistan, there will be no IMF default to speak off.

b. S'pore's pledge (if called) becomes a bilateral loan to the IMF. Therefore, S'pore has to agree to change the terms and accept a haircut. Nobody else can agree on behalf of S'pore. Nobody can force S'pore to accept a haircut, unless S'pore wants to. That's the legal framework that governs BILATERAL loan agreements!

Your point about "implicit guarantee" doesn't stand. As long as there is no obligation on the part of members to come up with funds to repay back every pledges, it means no guarantee.

Go check up on the meaning of "implicit"

The IMF is a cooperative
A co-op survives because of it's members' support
Therefore, there is an "implicit" (understood though not directly expressed) guarantee from the IMF's collective membership

 

[londontrader]

It is actually when the profits are spectacular that things get really scary. When you discover what is an anomaly, it is usually when there is a failure with whatever your model is predicting. If you decide to exploit it, you never really know whether the anomaly is real or if you have made a mistake with your modelling.

When a Quant says "spectacular" he means imaginery profit from his model
When a trader (me) says "spectacular", he means actual real $$$$ earned from trading the model
Clear?

Mkt anomalies exists because of market failure or the lack of complete markets
or many other things that mkt microstructure economists spend their careers writing about

If you make a ton of money, you don't know if you are a genius of if you just got lucky

That's right, it could be blind luck ie. statistician's view
But why do the same people keep getting so lucky doing what they do?
If it's truly luck, shouldn't random people have a chance of being lucky?

Spectacular profits are the worse because they invite greed. There will be pressure to make ever bigger bets to exploit the anomaly, real or imagined, before it is exposed. This almost always leads to things ending badly.

Correct!!!
That's what happened with the recent JP Morgan scandal
What started as successful trading transformed into reckless behaviour
That's why risk management is crucial (absent in the JP Morgan case)
IF things work as they should, there should be controllers (more powerful than traders) on the floor to limit exposure to risk.

If you are not too ethical about things, you can of course just hide behind the math and ride it until your luck runs out. When the losses come in, you blame it on how the anomaly has been exposed. Hopefully you would have set some trading rules to limit the losses so that there is an overall gain that is above what the market has been returning.

That's why traders should have no say in risk management!

I don't know how you have managed to stay so long if you have been in the markets long enough to remember the Simex pit trading days. Most of the people I know from that time got out a long time ago.

Because I don't think I am more clever than other people, all the time
Hubris is the main ingredient in trading blow ups
Why am I still around? Because I enjoy it & don't fancy a cushy retirement in the South of France (at least not yet)

Talking about the SIMEX Pits brings back fond memories of the colourful characters in those days (I don't just mean the jackets)
Like Richard Loke (you might be familiar)

That's being melodramatic. With your skill set and experience, I am sure you can set things up so that you'll do ok if the worse happens. As I said before, it is ok to have hyperinflation and people buying bread with wheelbarrows of cash if you happen to own a farm growing wheat.

Yeah, I've been in the line enough to put away lots of wheat for a rainy day
Problem is that I store all that wheat in places that might blow up in the impending crisis!
Maybe I need a bigger mattress to stuff all that wheat!

 

[londontrader]

This is one of the most interesting and fun debates in SBF in a long time. To add to it, here's something from Micheal Lewis. For those who don't know who he is, he is the guy who wrote Moneyball which was recently made into a hit movie.

Yes indeed, And I'm spending too much time here!

Michael Lewis also wrote "Liar's Poker" - I read that in my youth and wanted to be a trader for all the wrong reasons!
It would be nice to be young and naive again

 

[londontrader]

Unless of course you happen to own a farm growing wheat.

Not a bad idea
My former boss now runs a sheep farm in Devon (loss making, no matter for him with his accumulated wheat!)
He calls it therapy for his years in financial mkts

 

[Thick Face Black Heart]

The draw on the reserves was not because the govt didn't the operational funds
The draw was to allow future govts to share the cost of these projects
Why? because they argued that these are asset enhancing projects and the current govt shouldn't pay for something that only future govts get to enjoy
got it?

Your reasoning would be right if there was power sharing in singapore parliament.

If the PAP is confident of forming the govt for the next 2-3 election cycles with overwhelming majority, then that won't be the reason.