In his hot air and vacuous and meaningless budget statement to the nation last week, the Honorable Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, true to form, cited a well-rehearsed litany of what he claimed his Government has been able achieve in the course of what many serious observers have described as the lost years in our difficult task of freeing the people of Ghana from the debilitating pangs of poverty that have gripped a whole swathe of the population of Ghana.