The Nation's Best Birthday Gift.

Hantu Laut

Doing the unexpected.

Najib's best gift to the people and the end of a sordid legacy.The oppositions were stunned, numb and lost for words.They got what they have been asking for, yet there were deafening silence on the opposition's front.

Completely caught by surprise they have yet to find their voices of uncomfortable gratitude.

Malaysians can now rest comfortably knowing they would not be deprived of the justice system.

Read what the Malaysian Insider's CEO/Editor deduces here.
"It's the economy, YOU IDIOT !" he says, drowning in his own muddled intelligence. Some people are just too smart for their own good.

Najib's detractors are now busy digging into their lexicons to find the right words to ridicule him.

Happy hunting, you badasses !

Who Has The Noodle Brain? Ibrahim Ali Or Chua Jui Meng?

Hantu Laut

I am not a great fan of Ibrahim Ali, nor am I impressed with people like Chua Jui Meng.

PKR vice president Chua Jui Meng ticked off Perkasa chief Ibrahim Ali for his criticism of the threat by Lion Group chairman William Cheng to move his manufacturing base to Indonesia if the government do not give his company tariff protection against cheaper imports from foreign and other Asean countries.Read it here from the gutter press.

Asean country like Thailand imposed anti-dumping (AD) duty on certain hot rolled coil (HRC), hot rolled pickled and oiled coils and hot rolled plate (HRP) from China and Malaysia.The anti-dumping duty for China is 30.91%, while that from Malaysia is as high as 42.5 %. Products from Malaysian flat steel producer Megasteel Sdn Bhd (Megasteel) is subject to a lower AD duty of 23.57 percent.This pissed-off Mr.William Cheng.Obviously, the Thai government have considered him dumping his products in Thailand. AFTA agreement preclude imposition of tariff for imports from other ASEAN countries.

Many countries including the U.S. have, from time to time, took action to protect local industries by imposing anti-dumping duty on imports considered selling vastly below the normal market price.Indonesia has also done the same for imports of HRC from China,India,Taiwan and Russia declared as HRP to avoid paying import duties.

Uncompetitiveness, is no justification for government to agree to give tariff protection to a single manufacturer if it is going to have ripple effect on downstream activities and other end-users. The building industry survival much depend on the optimal prices of it building materials.It is the government duty to protect the whole industry not just one man just because he knows how to throws threats to get what he wants at the expense of the country losing its integrity and reputation with its other Asean members and be accused of reneging on the AFTA agreement.

Giving tariff protection and slapping on anti-dumping duty on unfair competition are too different things. The anti-dumping duty imposed by Thailand and Indonesia cover few countries, not just Malaysia.The Indonesian government is also contemplating imposing anti-dumping duty against aluminium plates imported from Malaysia and China.

The Malaysian government must have looked at the matter and deemed it as no threat to local manufactures.The benefits outweighs the negative threat from one man who wants the easy way out.

Obviously, Chua Jui Meng came to the defence of William Cheng out of politics, ethnic and personal reasons rather than the nation's interest.

Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide

Pessimism on the World Financial Situation

Written by Philip Bowring

Tuesday, 13 September 2011

Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide?

The present global financial situation is a reminder of the story of the German who in 1939 wanted to get as far away as possible from likely war in the west -- and went to Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, which would later become the scene of some of World War II’s bitterest fighting.

Supposedly much of Asia is now relatively safe with few real estate bubbles (China and Hong Kong excepted), fairly low public debt and more foreign exchange reserves than they know what to do with. The likes of Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia are not full of excitement but they look healthy enough. And China continues to forge ahead despite inflation at 6 percent or so and rising doubts about the health of its financial institutions.

All in all it looks healthy compared with Europe with its wobbly euro and nearly-collapsing peripheral states with their outsize debts, or the US where the external deficit remains chronic, politics a dangerous standoff and unemployment at unacceptable levels.

However, take a closer look and Asia may not be so great after all. China’s latest export data shows year-on-year growth of 25 percent. But how much of this is due to currency factors? China expresses its trade accounts in dollars, not a slowly appreciating yuan. Yet most of its exports to Europe are in euros and some to other destinations in recently strong currencies such as the yen and Australian dollar. Allow for that and the numbers are less healthy – and that is before both the latest economic slowdowns in Europe and the US, and before the impact of rapidly rising wage costs on some industries where lower cost suppliers are now available.

Not that China is in much danger of seeing its trade surplus vanish, even if exports to the west stagnate or even fall. If current global gloom prevails, the next result must surely be a further decline in commodity prices, which have been so long boosted by a mix of Chinese demand, slow growth in supply and speculation financed by cheap money. All those have started to come to an end – though the process could be drawn out.

That should benefit Chinese consumption and bring down inflation but is just the news that the commodity exporters of Southeast Asia, Australia and the Gulf do not want. They are not going to be rushing to boost local demand if export prices turn sour. They have found it hard enough to grow fast even when external conditions have been very positive because domestic issues – politics in Malaysia and Thailand, skills shortages almost everywhere, stand in the way.

Meanwhile China’s problems are internal, not external, wedded as the government is reducing inflation while trying to achieve a growth rate which is unsustainable given zero manpower growth and past overinvestment in unproductive assets. The existence of a growing number of first-class Chinese companies, mostly from the private or semi-private sectors, cannot hide a macro picture in some ways reminiscent of Thailand in 1996. The big difference of course is that China is a creditor, not debtor. That precludes crisis but not a combination of inflation and sharp slowdown. It will shy away from strong efforts against inflation because the higher interest rates need would expose the over-borrowed situation of so many state enterprises, and put upward pressure on the Yuan to the distress of influential exporters. Read more

London's Streets Of Rage

The Daily Beast

Britain’s estates are full of frustrated youth. A look inside their broken world.

On a recent night in Stockwell, an up-and-coming swath of South London, a police van prowled the streets. The neighborhood, five kilometers from Parliament and a short walk from Battersea Park, sees its Tube stop fill with young bankers at rush hour and its pubs bustle at night. But two weeks earlier its darker side had taken hold. Hooded youths took over the streets, smashing and looting at will, as the area became a picture of the chaos that swept through London during last month’s riots.

The van slowed to a stop near a scraggly patch of lawn, where a cluster of young men huddled beneath the blocks of the sprawling housing projects, or “estates,” that sit smack in the center of Stockwell. The spotlight on the van’s roof tracked toward the group, bathing them in blinding white. In unison, they turned away, and waited. The spotlight went out, and the van disappeared into the night.

“Rage,” said one of the young men, an 18-year-old with cornrows and a cold gaze. He pulled papers from his pocket to roll a spliff. “It’s everywhere. Just everything in general for the youth. How man lives. Rage is peak.”

Tensions had been running high in the Stockwell estates, and in poor areas throughout the city, since the four nights of rioting ended on Aug. 10. Some buildings in places like Peckham, another hard-hit area in South London, were still boarded up. The police reinforcements sent from across the United Kingdom remained, and the streets were full of cops, whom the kids call “feds,” though England has no FBI. Police were kicking down doors in search of pilfered riot loot, and the hated stop-and-searches were in full effect. The annual Afro-Caribbean street carnival, meanwhile, which the previous year had ended in a shower of bottles and Molotov cocktails, was set to kick off in a few days. There were whispers about more trouble to come, and authorities made plans to pump the festival with record numbers of police.Read more.