Foreword

• Singapore was made part of Malaya until its largely Chinese population proved too daunting for a state attempting to define its national identity by a Malay majority.
• a state that would not simply survive but prevail by excelling. Superior intelligence, discipline and ingenuity would substitute for resources.
• understanding not only the requirements of his own society but the needs and motives of his neighbours.

Preface

• public order, personal security, economic and social progress and prosperity are not the natural order of things, that they depend on ceaseless effort and attention from an honest and effective government that the people must elect.
• a viable nation linked by trade and investments to the major industrial countries, and a successful hub for the dissemination of goods, services and information in our region.

Part I. Getting the Basics Right

• I was keen to have our women do national service as Israeli women did, because that would reinforce the people’s will to defend themselves.
• ensure that the SAF remained subordinate to the political leadership by keeping important functions such as manpower and finance under civilian officers in the defence ministry.
• A country’s defence capability has to be continually upgraded as new technology, especially information technology, is incorporated into weapon systems.
• A credible defence capability helps to lower the risk of rash political acts.
• They looked for political, economic and financial stability, and sound labour relations to make sure that there would be no disruption in production that supplied their customers and subsidiaries around the world.
• The key to success was the quality of the men in charge.
• “Look here, the financial world begins in Zurich. Zurich banks open at 9 o’clock in the morning, later Frankfurt, later London. In the afternoon Zurich closes, then Frankfurt and London. In the meantime, New York is open. So London hands over financial money traffic to New York. In the afternoon New York closes; they had already handed over to San Francisco. When San Francisco closes in the afternoon, the world is covered with a veil. Nothing happens until next day, 9:00 am Swiss time, then the Swiss banks open. If we put Singapore in between, before San Francisco closes, Singapore would have taken over. And when Singapore closes, it would have handed over to Zurich. Then, for the first time since creation, we will have a 24-hour round-the-world service in money and banking.”
• The MAS has all the powers of a central bank except the authority to issue currency notes.
• GIC’s most important responsibility was to allocate our investments between equities (stocks and shares), bonds (mainly bonds issued by the governments of developed countries) and cash.
• My cardinal objective was not to maximise returns but to protect the value of our savings and get a fair return on capital.
• From their responses I concluded they were not awake to the dangers of being inbred and of failing to be outward and forward-looking in an age of rapid globalisation.
• Major financial centres like New York and London concentrated on protecting not the different market players or the individual investors, but the system itself.