Quote of the Day

"Now, in the budget speech, I mentioned, this was the time the world looked very well. When I started we had a small deficit budget. Then in two years, I balanced the budget. The following year, there was a budget surplus. Because I had to deal with my boss then, who wanted to spend for the tallest building in the world, longest bridge in the world, biggest city in the world, the best airplane for him in the world, I had to hide intelligently a lot of funds. How did I do that? I put it under contingency—to be there in the future. 5 billion under special fund for the future generation. We put a special trust for the future generation. Now, you have a surplus. You increase your allocation for health and education. You have a surplus. You keep some for the future generation, under special fund that cannot be touched. Now, after I was sacked, the entire money was done away with: they have squandered everything; there’s nothing in the budget. We are back to a very serious deficit of more that 4% today."

- Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia's former finance minister

Related Podcast;
Anwar Ibrahim for the Presidential Fellows Lecture Series at World Bank