A city-state located at the tip of the Malay Peninsula with a population of 5.2 million, Singapore is arguably the most successful among the four "Asian Tigers" — a group that also includes Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea.
When this former British colony became a fully independent country in 1965, its per capita gross domestic product (GDP) was a lowly $511. Today, that figure has risen to $60,900, making Singapore wealthier per capita than the United States.
Singapore appears at the top of the annual global economic rankings with astonishing regularity, outranking the United States by almost every measure. Singapore has been ranked as the easiest place in the world to do business. It also boasts the #1 airport in the world. And by 2020, Singapore will likely surpass Switzerland as the world's largest offshore wealth management center.
Lee Kuan Yew: Singapore's George Washington
I've written about Singapore before and a Singapore-based exchange-traded fund (ETF) was also a recent recommendation in the Alpha Investor Letter.
But it wasn't until I read Lee Kuan Yew's "The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World" this week that I realized how much Singapore owes its success to the vision and determination of a single man.
Lee Kuan Yew was prime minister from Singapore's independence in 1959 until 1990, when he allowed his hand-picked successor and now his eldest son to succeed him.
Although few Americans have heard of him, Lee Kuan Yew is the eminence grise of the global diplomatic community, and is universally admired across several political generations. Even Richard Nixon speculated that, had Lee lived in another time and another place, he might have "attained the global stature of a Churchill, a Disraeli, or a Gladstone."
At the same time, Lee Kuan Yew is a controversial figure. And his methods for lifting Singapore by its bootstraps to developed market status are both jarringly honest and relentlessly politically incorrect.
Although Lee Kuan Yew defines himself as "a liberal in the classical sense of that word," chances are you'll disagree with him whether you stand on the left or the right of the ideological spectrum.
If you are a bleeding heart liberal, you'd be appalled at Lee Kuan Yew's insensitivity to diverse points of view.