It's not often that a Singaporean official concedes the limits of the city-state's economic engineering. But the downturn is proving so severe that the Finance Minister said in yesterday's budget speech that the government's stimulus package "will not get us out of the recession," but rather "help avert an even sharper downturn."

That ought to be a wake-up call for Singapore, where government built a modern metropolis by hoarding its citizens' capital, plowing those savings into designated industries and opening itself up...