Ah, if only the unhinged allegations of Indonesia's former trade minister, who published several TikTok videos attacking Singapore over the past week, were actually true! What a powerful country that would make the city-state!

Among them, Mr. Lutfi claimed that the announcement that MSCI, the American index & ratings provider for financial markets, was considering downgrading Indonesia's status, was a result of pressure by Singapore.

He accused Temasek and GIC of lobbying MSCI to punish Indonesia, leading to a stock market crash, so that Singaporean state funds could buy Indonesian assets cheaply, after other investors have fled.

Oh, how I wish this was the case. It would be payback of epic proportions.

Just so you understand, if you're not aware, since the beginning of 2026, main Indonesian index has lost around 40%, making it the worst performing stock market in the world.

In absolute figures Indonesian stocks lost over US$330 BILLION in value this year. It's been a wipeout.

Attributing even a portion of this implosion to Singapore would suggest that the city-state has tremendous influence and economic leverage that could almost bankrupt entire nations. Wow!

Alas, that's most likely not what has happened.

Somehow, when Muhammad Lutfi attacks Singapore, he talks about the most recent episode, in mid-October, when MSCI announced a potential downgrade of IDX (Indonesian Stock Exchange) to the lowest status, on par with countries like Jamaica or Zimbabwe.

That, however, resulted only in roughly US$70 billion in losses. As steep as it was, it's only a bit over 1/5th of the total that evaporated out of IDX this year. Why isn't he talking about the rest?

The fact is that MSCI warned Indonesia all the way back in January – long before the haze crisis – that the market practices prevalent on IDX are unacceptable, and that the authorities had to address opaque shareholder structures, unusually concentrated ownership and suspected coordinated trading.

In other words, IDX is seen as a market which rich and influential Indonesians manipulate to make themselves even richer and more influential.

This sounds less like Singapore lobbying, and more like "business as usual", in a country known for its corruption, which is also one of the reasons for its criminal jungle clearing practices, that repeatedly become regional environmental disasters.

The only thing that these desperate social media rants prove is just how desperate Indonesian elites are to avoid taking responsibility for every crisis of their making, while the voters are quickly getting fed up with these blunders.

It would be amazing if someone in Singapore could make a few phone calls and dump hundreds of billions worth of stocks in an unfriendly country down the toilet. But, as successful as the city-state is, I don't think it would or, sadly, even could do that.

It sure sounds great, though!