I’ve just added a Facebook page for the blog – though I have only a vague idea of what I’m going to do with it or how I’m going to discriminate between that and the blog proper. My idea is to have most of the media coverage to shift there, as that usually doesn’t require much in the way of data support or graphs. The blog in the meantime would concentrate mainly on wonkish stuff.
Let me know in the comments if there’s anything different I ought to be doing here.
Twitter? One thing at a time!
Responsible corporate citizen or conniving oligopolist? I’ll plop for the former for now, despite the inherent conflict of interest in the CEO of the country’s largest bank pleading “over-competition” in the domestic banking sector. Why? Because I think he’s right as far as non-bank lending is concerned, and because if the remark came from outside the banking community it would have been accepted without reservation (excerpt):
‘Rein in super-easy personal loans’
KUALA LUMPUR: Maybank wants the authorities to tighten control on the ease with which personal loans are being given out to consumers.
CEO Datuk Seri Abdul Wahid Omar cited personal loans given out either by non-bank entities or “over-competitive” banks, as worrying.
“We need stronger enforcement from the authorities on the personal loans issue as it is becoming a cause for concern,” he said after the group's annual general meeting.
Wahid suggested that non-bank lenders were quite lax when giving out personal loans, saying that these institutions should look at adopting some of the same standards as banks, especially when underwriting the loans.
Now that the NWCC has started meeting, we’re on a countdown to implementing a minimum wage for Malaysia. The composition of the Council puzzles me though.
From todays The Star (excerpt):
Vote for a minimum wage across all sectors
Friday Reflections - By B.K. SidhuRAISING the retirement age and implementing a minimum wage are topics that hogged the limelight this week…
…The Government has finally agreed to set a minimum retirement age for the private sector, though, the age has not been specified, but 60 will be a good start…
…Despite initial setbacks, the National Wages Consultative Council Bill was gazetted on Sept 15 and comes into effect on Sept 23. With that, the National Wages Consultative Council (NWCC) had on Wednesday appointed 25 members to start working on recommendations on a minimum wage. They have 2 months to come up with a proposal since the Government's target to announce the minimum wage for workers is before year-end.
Former Chief Judge of Sabah and Sarawak Tan Sri Steve Shim Lip Kiong is the chairman of NWCC and former Human Resources Ministry secretary-general Datuk Dr Syed Mohamad Syed Abdul Kadir his deputy. The council has six members representing workers and employees, five from other sectors and five from the Government and a secretary.
Jeff Frankel of Harvard summarises the current thinking:
The 2008-09 Global Financial Crisis: Lessons for Country Vulnerability
After the currency crises of 1994-2001, and especially the East Asia crises of 1997-98, a lot of research investigated what countries could do to protect themselves against a future repeat. More importantly, policy makers in emerging markets took some serious measures. Some countries abandoned exchange rate targets and began to float. Many accumulated high levels of foreign exchange reserves. Many moved away from dollar-denominated debt, toward other kinds of capital inflow that would be less vulnerable to currency mismatch, such as domestic currency debt or Foreign Direct Investment. Some instituted Collective Action Clauses in their debt contracts to facilitate otherwise-messy restructuring of debt in the event of a severe negative shock. A few raised reserve requirements or otherwise tightened prudential banking regulations (clearly not enough, in retrospect). And so on.
"In Canada there is a small radical group that refuses to speak English and no one can understand them. They are called separatists…In this country (USA) we have the same kind of group. They are called economists."
Nation's Business (via JokEc)
I was reminded of the above when reading this rather plaintive post on the World Bank’s Development Impact Blog:
The perfectionists versus the reductionists
Women perform 66 percent of the world’s work, and produce 50 percent of the food, yet earn only 10 percent of the income….
--Former President Bill Clinton addressing the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative (September 2009)Impressive, heart-wrenching, charity-inducing, get off your sofa and go do something heartbreaking.
But Wrong...
From the Business Times (excerpt):
BNM seeking inputs on property gains tax
Property developers are concerned that imposing fresh regulation will be an unwelcome game-changer.Petaling Jaya: Bank Negara Malaysia had consulted property developers, seeking their inputs on increasing the real property gains tax (RPGT) to curb speculation, people familiar with the matter said yesterday.
Such a move, if announced in the upcoming Budget 2012, will be the second time the central bank will have moved to curb excessive speculation in the property market this year.
File this under, “Duh, why didn’t I think of that”. But pay close attention to the last couple of paragraphs (excerpt, emphasis added):
Money can’t buy citizens’ love, but integrity and performance can
…Technologies to enhance public sector performance are widely known and available nowadays, but we still can't predict when governments are likely to take risks in the implementation of complex public sector reforms. One prerequisite for any government attempting to implement reforms is that it has sufficient political capital…
Via Ryan Avent and Paul Krugman, Goldman Sachs has a chart showing the impact of the US fiscal stimulus of 2008-2009:
Basically from the last quarter of 2009 onwards, fiscal policy acted as a brake to the economy, not as a boost. And monetary policy was not much better.
If you want a more wonkish look at this, there’s an interesting paper on NBER I pointed to last year. And Malaysia’s fiscal “stimulus” of the same period was not much more effective.
Chris Sebrowski argues that whether or not we’re coming up against geological peak oil, we’re likely to come up against economic peak oil first (excerpts, emphasis from source):
A Brief Economic Explanation of Peak Oil
For a number of years there has been an arid debate between economists and geologists about Peak Oil. The geologists maintain that Peak Oil (maximal production) is a geological imperative imposed because reserves are finite even if their exact magnitude is not, and cannot be, known.
In contrast many economists maintain prices will resolve any sustained supply shortfalls by providing incentives to develop more expensive sources or substitutes. The more sanguine economists do concede that the adaptation may be slow, uncomfortable and economically disruptive.
The reality, I believe, is that both groups have part of the answer but that Peak Oil is, in fact, a complex but largely an economically driven phenomenon that is caused because the point is reached when: The cost of incremental supply exceeds the price economies can pay without destroying growth at a given point in time. While hard to definitively prove, there is considerable circumstantial evidence that there is an oil price economies cannot afford without severe negative impacts.
The corollary is that if oil prices fall back to and sustain levels that do not inhibit growth, then economic growth will resume, with both recoveries and downturns lagging oil price changes by 1-6 months.
The current failure of most western economies to achieve anything more than minimal growth this year (2011) is most likely because oil prices are already at levels that severely inhibit growth. Indeed, research by energy consultants Douglas-Westwood concludes that oil price spikes of the magnitude seen this year correlate one-for-one with recessions...
Three months and counting (exceprt):
25-member wage council to hold first meeting today
PETALING JAYA: The 25-member National Wage Consultative Council will have their first meeting today after their appointment ceremony, bringing the much anticipated discussion about minimum wage into reality.
The minimum wage policy is expected to come into effect at the end of this year despite its initial setbacks.
Human Resources Minister Datuk Dr S. Subramaniam said the 25 members would be appointed into the council today in a simple ceremony at the ministry’s Putrajaya office.
I wonder if there will be any avenue for public feedback, or if the NWCC will use close door sessions. In any case, the long awaited process to implementing a minimum wage(s) for Malaysia has begun.
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