Sunday, November 23, 2008

3.5% Growth my butt.

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/malaysia/12812-nor-mohamed-confident-of-35pc-gdp-growth-next-year

"However, he said, Malaysia managed to gain an edge during the current global financial crisis by promoting Islamic finance as an alternative system."
The Anglo-Saxon financial system is crumbling because its architecture is unsuitable, incomplete and unfair. We warned the world about this in the financial crisis 10 years ago but we were ignored,” Nor Mohamed said.

Er. Has he even taken a look at what shape the Islamic Bank stocks are in right now? The Islamic model of economy seems to be: depend on oil. If oil sinks, you are all doomed.
... I could be wrong though. Still, watch the utter havoc in Middle East economies if oil stays at this level.

As for Malaysia, here is my forecast of the damage to our GDP:

First off, our GDP roughly consists of: agriculture: 8.6%, industry: 47.8%, services: 43.6% (2007 est.)

Palm Oil exports likely to remain stable, maybe even increase. But the fact that price per ton has dropped over 60% means that we will lose at least 3% GDP.
Oil... we don't really export that much, relative to our local consumption. Still, we can expect to take a hit of around 2% GDP from oil related exports.
As for local consumption, I would say it's a hit of another 3% GDP. (though in real terms, a fall in fuel prices locally means that real cost of living drops and thus GDP in purchasing power parities will go up to balance this)
Electronics: I have no idea what the drop in international sales here would be next year. I admit that I am only throwing a wild guess when I say 10% fall. Which would come to another 2% drop in GDP I guess? Really not sure here.

So far, I have not even talked about local consumption, effects of employment falls, and so forth, and we're already looking at a drop of 10% in 2009... I expect, in sum total, for the 2009 recession to be worse than 1998, and my own personal guess is a 12% contraction in GDP for 2009, and a further 6% contraction in 2010.

Well... we shall see what the results turn out to be... I could turn out to be wrong of course. But remember: during 1998, industrial demand was still high. This time around, industrial demand is falling really badly. Furthermore, it looks likely that China will undercut Malaysia in industrial supply. BADLY undercut Malaysia, in fact. So I expect this crash to be much much worse than 1998. Incomparably worse, in fact.

Still... the housing prices have not really moved yet. So, looks like I might be jumping to conclusions. My opinion is definitely to watch those property prices and employment figures.
BTW... the profit figures for companies are now beginning to turn sour. And remember that our country does not have unions which grant huge severance packages to laid-off employees, like America does. So it's not that difficult for a company to dump a huge number of workers in a short amount of time... they can always rehire them easily if the economy picks up again, after all.


Summary: Regardless of what our government claims, everyone knows that Malaysia is headed into a recession. The only question is the depth of it's severity. BTW, I seem to recall them projecting a 5% growth in 1998, which turned out to be a 7.5% contraction. Lunatics.

Labels: ,

Some stuff I saw today.

"We demand that your governments give us 100 BILLION DOLLARS, or terrors will be unleashed upon your country, devastate it's economies, the people will suffer!"


Sound familiar?


Well, no wonder, you must have just watched IGOR today, like me! Watch as the Evil Scientists blackmail the world into giving into their demands for cash, in order to enrich themselves!







Oh, what, you thought I was talking about America's Banks and Auto Industry?





...





Nah. Those guys are Truly Evil, Igor is PG rated... I mean corporate America is blackmailing/ demanding hundreds and hundreds of billions, otherwise the damage will push the whole world into years of recession and blah blah blah.








Also, I watched Quarantine today. Scary. But there's a very important lesson that people can learn from it:





Sometimes, you can't save EVERYONE. When you have someone who is guaranteed going to die, you can't go risking all these healthy people's lives.





If someone had stood up and culled out the infected while they were still catatonic, everyone else would have been fine.





Instead, they tried to save everyone. And in the end, everyone dies. It's that OVEROPTIMISM thing I keep talking about. In an ideal world, everyone would be wealthy, and no one would be unemployed or homeless... but in fact, this is not such an ideal world as you might hope.



You know what? It's become painfully obvious that in this economic crisis, YOU CAN'T SAVE EVERYONE. There's just too much damage, and not enough resources. At the end of the day, you gotta make some tough decisions. Who will live, and who will die, so to speak.


At the end of the day, everyone knows this. But, sometimes the heart rules the head, and some decisions are just too painful to make all at once.

Labels: , , , , ,

Recession Advice