People or Profit, a Hazy Outlook for Newly Launched Asean Economic Community

BY SHERIDAN MAHAVERA
The Malaysian Insider
Published: 23 November 2015 7:00 AM

The Asean Economic Community (AEC) launched with much fanfare yesterday seeks to offer prosperity to its 625 million people, but a civil society leader cites the region's annual smoke problem as a symbol and test of whether it can live up to the promise. 

Kuala Lumpur and much of Malaysia and Singapore were enveloped in thick
smoke last month due to forest fires started by big plantation companies in
Indonesia. The new Asean Economic Community must stop the recurrence
of the problem if it is serious in its objective, activists say. – The Malaysian
Insider file pic, November 23, 2015

Jerald Joseph, the head of local rights group Dignity International, part of the Asean People's Forum (APF) 2015 attended by the region's biggest civil society organisations last April, cited the smoke problem as an example when talking about AEC. It is a symbol because it is the by-product of what AEC plans to achieve on a grander scale: allow Asean businesses the freedom and ease to set up shop in any of the ten member countries to take advantage of cheaper labour and untapped resources

Reuters: Banks' Dollar Borrowing adds Layer of Risk to Malaysia's Creeping Crisis

Sectors Reuters 

By Vidya Ranganathan

Published: Sun Nov 8, 2015 9:00pm GMT

* Ringgit down around 20 percent against dollar this year
* Malaysia overseas borrowings $98 bln, currency reserves $94 bln
* Bankers say foreign borrowings mostly offset by dollar lending
* Current account surplus shrinking, forecast $2.6 bln in 2016
* Corruptions scandal seen creating policy uncertainty

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 9 (Reuters) - To get an idea of how fragile Malaysia's external account is, consider this: the amount of foreign money invested in ringgit bonds and the dollar borrowings of its banks will together more than wipe out the country's currency reserves.

Eighteen years after being battered by the Asian financial crisis, Malaysia is once again facing a perilous combination of heavy short-term overseas borrowings by banks and scarce foreign exchange reserves.

Add in a festering political scandal and looming interest rate rises in the United States and the country is showing many of the symptoms that could presage another currency crisis.

Apocalypse Now: has the Next Giant Financial Crash Already Begun?

Paul Mason

The Guardian

Published: Sunday 1 November 2015 20.00 GMT

The 1st of October came and went without financial armageddon. Veteran forecaster Martin Armstrong, who accurately predicted the 1987 crash, used the same model to suggest that 1 October would be a major turning point for global markets. Some investors even put bets on it. But the passing of the predicted global crash is only good news to a point. Many indicators in global finance are pointing downwards – and some even think the crash has begun.

 ‘The biggest risk is not deflation of a bubble. It is the risk of
that becoming intertwined with geopolitics.’
Photograph: Getty Images/Time & Life Pictures Creative

Let’s assemble the evidence. First, the unsustainable debt. Since 2007, the pile of debt in the world has grown by $57tn (£37tn). That’s a compound annual growth rate of 5.3%, significantly beating GDP. Debts have doubled in the so-called emerging markets, while rising by just over a third in the developed world.

John Maynard Keynes once wrote that money is a “link to the future” – meaning that what we do with money is a signal of what we think is going to happen in the future. What we’ve done with credit since the global crisis of 2008 is expand it faster than the economy – which can only be done rationally if we think the future is going to be much richer than the present.

Our Worst Fears Confirmed – Mohd Nizam Mahshar

Kamal Salih Comments: 

Nizam has consistently taken the position as point-man for those opposed to the TPPA recently negotiated by the 12 governments of the Pacific Region.  He is chairman of the lobby group Bantah TPPA (Against TPPA).  He is also the Executive Director of MTEM (translation: Malay Economic Action Council) a research body set up under the National Malay Chamber of Commerce and Industry.  The following article is a propo the position taken by the Council.  

READ THE FULL TPPA TEXT HERE

Mohd Nizam Mahshar

Malaysian Insider

Published: 5 November 2015 7:02 PM

The disclosure of the finalised texts of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement has confirmed our worst fears about the purported 21st-century agreement.

Despite what governments and cheerleaders claim, our concerns have not been overblown, and it only goes to show what happens when we allow a select few – their every move monitored and driven by multinational commercial interests – to craft a deal behind closed doors.

Given that we will be legally bound to follow the TPP – or face trade or other sanctions should we be found in violation – the prospects are dire.