Maybe we can, maybe we can't

"[Temasek and GIC] are in fact well-positioned to buy good quality assets at prices that are attractive from a long-term perspective."
- Senior Minister of State for Finance Lim Hwee Hua

Let's look at their "good quality assets":

1. Merrill Lynch had been taken over by Bank of America, BofA had to be bailed out by the US Government.
2. UBS just posted the worst loss in Swiss corporate history.
3. Citigroup is splitting in two.
4. Barclays wrote down 8 billion pounds in 2008.

And I personally believe that their loss is actually much more than being reported, for several reasons:

1. The S$58 billion loss was only recorded between March and November last year, meaning that it has not even taken into account losses from December onwards.
2. It has not taken into account losses made by the GIC, another sovereign wealth fund that probably handles even more money than does Temasek.
3. They keep comparing their performance with the MSCI Singapore and Asia ex-Japan indexes because they said 60 percent of Temasek’s assets are in Singapore or Asia. Why are they comparing it with those indexes when their losses were concentrated in the US and Europe? If 40 percent already translates to S$58 billion loss, I dare not imagine what it’ll be like for the remaining 60 percent. Asian stocks generally track the US stocks, which are generally in bad shape, so that doesn't bode well to their "long-term investment".

The Straits Times, The Business Times and Channel News Asia all downplayed the loss, like it's perfectly normal to lose S$58 billion in 8 months. And they don't answer the most basic question of all: How did these really smart people lose so much within so short a time frame? What happened to accountability?

A netizen commented on The Online Citizen that Temasek and GIC should peg their performance to the top 10 percent best performing stocks in the indexes, instead of the average performing stocks, because after all their pay is pegged to the top 10 percent highest earners in the private sector. Singaporeans don't pay ministers millions of dollars a year for them to deliver an average performance.

Is change possible?