Hantu Laut
Barrack Obama won overwhelmingly.He got 297 Electoral votes, more than enough to secure the the Presidency.He will become the 44th President of the United States.
It was a thrashing for the Republican and for John McCain.
Well done America!
Congratulations! Barrack Obama.
A dawn for new world order.
More to follow.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
The World Is Watching You
Hantu Laut
The US Presidential Election is coming to a close.The world would know who would be the next US President in less than 24 hours.Would the Republican continue to rule and carry on their belligerent policies.In it eight years of rule they have given America two things, wars and a wrecked economy.
After two years of campaigning Barrack Obama looks set to be the first black president.Will he be President ? It's a question on every one's mind.If he won, would he be able to survive full term of his presidency or be assassinated by some mad white supremacist ?
He has, against all odds, defeated Hillary Clinton in the Democratic party nomination and have been leading in opinion polls in the presidential run.The true test is now, whether he would get the support to win this race from the predominantly white population, or it was just lip service, and they would choose John McCain in spite of his constrains in age and intellectual capacity and with a running mate,a beauty queen and a moose hunter, picked out of the blue and one which looks more like an aging supermodel than someone whom you think can run the White House if McCain drops dead while being President.
This will be a test for American whites whether they have shed their racial prejudices against coloured people and a dream come true for Martin Luther King of his "I have a dream" if Obama should win the election.Although Obama is half white, in America he is considered black.
There are indications that McCain is closing in some of the states but Obama is holding his position and made some gains in some other states.At time of writing McCain is leading in predominantly white states of Kentucky and Indiana and are set to win these two states.
If war and the economy are the main concern of the voters than Obama would probably have a better chance of winning the race.
Will racial prejudices continue to prevail or will it be a new dawn for America ?
If white's racism prevails than McCain will win the election.
The world is watching you. America!
The US Presidential Election is coming to a close.The world would know who would be the next US President in less than 24 hours.Would the Republican continue to rule and carry on their belligerent policies.In it eight years of rule they have given America two things, wars and a wrecked economy.
After two years of campaigning Barrack Obama looks set to be the first black president.Will he be President ? It's a question on every one's mind.If he won, would he be able to survive full term of his presidency or be assassinated by some mad white supremacist ?
He has, against all odds, defeated Hillary Clinton in the Democratic party nomination and have been leading in opinion polls in the presidential run.The true test is now, whether he would get the support to win this race from the predominantly white population, or it was just lip service, and they would choose John McCain in spite of his constrains in age and intellectual capacity and with a running mate,a beauty queen and a moose hunter, picked out of the blue and one which looks more like an aging supermodel than someone whom you think can run the White House if McCain drops dead while being President.
This will be a test for American whites whether they have shed their racial prejudices against coloured people and a dream come true for Martin Luther King of his "I have a dream" if Obama should win the election.Although Obama is half white, in America he is considered black.
There are indications that McCain is closing in some of the states but Obama is holding his position and made some gains in some other states.At time of writing McCain is leading in predominantly white states of Kentucky and Indiana and are set to win these two states.
If war and the economy are the main concern of the voters than Obama would probably have a better chance of winning the race.
Will racial prejudices continue to prevail or will it be a new dawn for America ?
If white's racism prevails than McCain will win the election.
The world is watching you. America!
Monday, November 3, 2008
Reversal Of Fortune: 'Melayu Cepat Lupa'
Hantu Laut
Most people especially the Malays would probably still remember Mahathir's famous or infamous lamentation of 'Melayu cepat lupa' (Malays have short memory), depending on how one wish to interpret, it can be taken as an advice or an insult.
Judging by the going on in UMNO politics with the soon to exit Abdullah Badawi, his controversial remark may not be off the mark.They seem to have a knack for 'cepat lupa' and Mahathir knows best because he had been in that position after he stepped down from power.These are facts of life that politicians have to accept especially those that have held long unbridled power.As the popular Anne Lennox's song 'Sweet Dreams' reflects in some of the wordings of the lyrics of the song.
"Everybody's looking for something
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused"
For some going down can be very unpleasant and for those forced to go down is even worse, it is excruciatingly painful and shameful.
It looks like the Malays in UMNO have already started to abandon the Prime Minister even before he handed over the helm to Najib, blue-eyed boy of the former prime minister and one he said he favoured to be PM instead of Abdullah but he chose Abdullah as his successor because of age and seniority. Mahathir places loyalty above everthing else including merits.
The former premier also wrote in his blog that not only Abdullah had to be gotten rid of but all of his men too.
Sometimes, no matter how angry we are, things are better left unsaid. Abdullah might have not been the ideal prime minister but like all of us humans he has feeling too.His bitterness against Abdullah has clearly muddled his thinking and make him sound terribly unreasonable.
Abdullah's biggest mistake and one that brought his downfall is his complete lack of nastiness.His character is such that he is constrained by his conscience.Many leaders have gone down either for lack of conscience or over-conscientious.Those overtly nice can be construed as sign of weakness.
The former premier might have forgotten that when Abdullah took over from him he also took over all his men and none of them had been removed.All those with Abdullah were his men before and they would have to toe the line of the leadership similar to when he was the prime minister.Are these the men he wanted to be removed?
This 'cepat lupa' syndrome can be seen in the nominations for the Youth Chief.This unexpected reversal of fortune is a clear sign that in UMNO the power to give wealth is the only consideration.The moment you lose this power you are as good as dead.The prodigal son-in-law would have fared much better if Abdullah had not announced or delayed his time of departure.
As we all know in politics there are no permanent enemies and friends.Who knows,one day, Mahathir may have to use Kahiry Jamaluddin to remove Najib if he is not happy with him.
One thing I agree with Mahathir, Najib must not make the same mistake, he must dismantle the 4th Floor.Tutup kedai (close shop).
The 4th Floor had been another one of Abdullah's biggest mistake.
Most people especially the Malays would probably still remember Mahathir's famous or infamous lamentation of 'Melayu cepat lupa' (Malays have short memory), depending on how one wish to interpret, it can be taken as an advice or an insult.
Judging by the going on in UMNO politics with the soon to exit Abdullah Badawi, his controversial remark may not be off the mark.They seem to have a knack for 'cepat lupa' and Mahathir knows best because he had been in that position after he stepped down from power.These are facts of life that politicians have to accept especially those that have held long unbridled power.As the popular Anne Lennox's song 'Sweet Dreams' reflects in some of the wordings of the lyrics of the song.
"Everybody's looking for something
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused"
For some going down can be very unpleasant and for those forced to go down is even worse, it is excruciatingly painful and shameful.
It looks like the Malays in UMNO have already started to abandon the Prime Minister even before he handed over the helm to Najib, blue-eyed boy of the former prime minister and one he said he favoured to be PM instead of Abdullah but he chose Abdullah as his successor because of age and seniority. Mahathir places loyalty above everthing else including merits.
The former premier also wrote in his blog that not only Abdullah had to be gotten rid of but all of his men too.
Sometimes, no matter how angry we are, things are better left unsaid. Abdullah might have not been the ideal prime minister but like all of us humans he has feeling too.His bitterness against Abdullah has clearly muddled his thinking and make him sound terribly unreasonable.
Abdullah's biggest mistake and one that brought his downfall is his complete lack of nastiness.His character is such that he is constrained by his conscience.Many leaders have gone down either for lack of conscience or over-conscientious.Those overtly nice can be construed as sign of weakness.
The former premier might have forgotten that when Abdullah took over from him he also took over all his men and none of them had been removed.All those with Abdullah were his men before and they would have to toe the line of the leadership similar to when he was the prime minister.Are these the men he wanted to be removed?
This 'cepat lupa' syndrome can be seen in the nominations for the Youth Chief.This unexpected reversal of fortune is a clear sign that in UMNO the power to give wealth is the only consideration.The moment you lose this power you are as good as dead.The prodigal son-in-law would have fared much better if Abdullah had not announced or delayed his time of departure.
As we all know in politics there are no permanent enemies and friends.Who knows,one day, Mahathir may have to use Kahiry Jamaluddin to remove Najib if he is not happy with him.
One thing I agree with Mahathir, Najib must not make the same mistake, he must dismantle the 4th Floor.Tutup kedai (close shop).
The 4th Floor had been another one of Abdullah's biggest mistake.
Saving The Financial Monsters
October 29, 2008: 6:32 AM ET
(Fortune Magazine) -- At 11 o'clock in the evening on Saturday, Sept. 13, Larry Fink was about to board a flight from New York to Singapore. The following Monday he was scheduled to meet with the managers of several Asian sovereign-wealth funds. For the head of BlackRock, one of the world's largest asset managers, this trip was a huge opportunity that could mean billions of dollars in new business.
Still, he knew that the next 19 hours would be a bad time to be unreachable. Just a few miles west of the airport, bankers and government officials were huddled in the offices of the New York Federal Reserve Bank to hash out the fates of three of the biggest financial institutions on Wall Street - namely, Lehman Brothers, AIG, and Merrill Lynch. Two of the troubled firms - Lehman Brothers and AIG - were BlackRock (BLK, Fortune 500) clients; Merrill Lynch was BlackRock's biggest shareholder.
Fink made one final call before boarding. "Can I get on this plane?" he asked a colleague inside the meetings at the New York Fed.
"You can go," came the response.
At that moment Fink thought Barclays (BCS) had agreed to buy Lehman. So he boarded. As Fink took off, he could see through his window the lights of lower Manhattan. He did not know it then, but it would be the last time he would see Wall Street - at least the one he recognized - in one piece.
When Fink landed in Singapore at 5 a.m. on Monday morning, he checked his BlackBerry and scanned the headlines: Lehman bankrupt, Merrill Lynch bought by Bank of America, AIG collapsing. "I felt like Charlton Heston landing on the Planet of the Apes," says Fink. "My world had transformed."
In that moment, Fink knew as well as anyone how treacherous the capital markets had become. As chairman and CEO of BlackRock, he had seen the hidden liabilities of just about every financial institution that would be pulled into this whirling vortex of doom.
AIG, Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac had all hired BlackRock over the past few months. As Fortune went to press, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson had BlackRock on his short list to manage, well, your money - a chunk of the $700 billion bank bailout known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.
If Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke have been the public faces of the financial crisis, Fink has been its behind-the-scenes fixer and father confessor. The reason so many CEOs have kept him on speed dial in recent months is simple: No other firm is trusted to pick through the exotic securities infecting banks' balance sheets and place an accurate value on them.
At a time when the credit-rating agencies like Moody's and Standard & Poor's have lost face, BlackRock's valuations have become a kind of de facto Good Housekeeping seal of approval that buyers and sellers of distressed assets trust.
"I think of it like Ghostbusters: When you have a problem, who you gonna call? BlackRock!" says Terrence Keely, a managing director at UBS, who worked with BlackRock last spring to dispose of a troubled $20 billion portfolio of mortgage-backed securities (BlackRock unloaded it for $15 billion).
But before anyone organizes a ticker-tape parade for Fink, keep in mind that 25 years ago he was an early and vigorous promoter of the CMO (collateralized mortgage obligation). Today the CMO and other asset-backed securities have become the monsters responsible for the credit crisis.
BlackRock itself has not been unscathed: Its money market funds saw $50 billion withdrawn in the month of September. In the third quarter, assets in its fund-management business lost more than $100 billion, dropping from $1.4 trillion to $1.26 trillion. Its stock, trading at $113 on Oct. 23, is down 40% for the year.
"The market declines are so severe, BlackRock is not immune," says Fink, 55. "I've been in this business for 32 years, and in a 20-week period - from Bear Stearns's collapse until now - the landscape has changed so dramatically. It's very unsettling. Very disorienting."
So the question is, Can Fink stop this monster - and make a profit along the way?
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