The Bulls and Crap of 1 MALAYSIA.

BR1M

1. Let me begin by admitting that I am not a trained economist or financier. Still I don’t think it is fair for anyone to say I do not understand BR1M and the good things about it. I have in the past made some decisions on economic and financial matters which seem to have given good results for the country.

2. I have been opposed to giving monetary handouts as a way to increase the income of people right from the beginning. If at all financial aid should be given to the very poor who are unable to work to earn an income. My primary objection is because handouts on such a scale look too much like bribery. And when this is given near elections or the manifesto promises this, the impression that it is about buying votes just cannot be dismissed. If incomes are to be increase it should be by way of creating opportunities for work or business.

3. But BR1M has more negative implications than that. It increases the tendency towards personal dependence on the Government even for one’s income, without any effort by oneself. It weakens the character of people and reduce their competitiveness in the market place.

4. We want high incomes. But high income should come from increases in productivity. High productivity results from better education and training. A manual labourer cannot be more productive than a mechanic or a craftsman. And they in turn cannot be as productive as an engineer. The ability to increase productivity comes from greater added value to the products.

5. It follows that when we promote industries with greater added value, than the incomes of employees would increase due to greater contribution of the employees. We should note that in countries with big Government revenues from the foreign exploitation of resources, and people are given a part of the revenue to sustain a good lifestyle, there is a lack of desire to work.

6. Giving money does not increase productivity. Without increasing productivity, competitiveness will not improve. And the economy will not really grow. These countries invariably depend on foreign workers, executives and entrepreneurs.

7. When Malaysia adopted a policy of encouraging labour intensive industries, it was because at that time the people were jobless and had no income. After that to increase their incomes we switched to hi-tech, knowledge-based industries and our people are educated and trained for these more sophisticated higher income industries.

8. We can increase their wages further by adopting new technologies and management systems. Our workers should now be involved in designing new products, producing prototypes, testing and mass-producing. Marketing and sales of these more sophisticated products will also increase incomes.

9. We want to be a developed nation by 2020. We think that this can be done by increasing average incomes to a certain level. This is misleading. A few people with very high incomes will distort the average income. Per capita income should not be a measure of our achievement of developed country status. The emphasis on high income alone is not enough. In fact by itself it will not make the country a developed country. It would be even more misleading when the income is due to handouts by the Government.

10. To be developed we have to be at par with these developed countries in terms of education, technological and industrial knowhow, research and development, industrialised to a high level, commensurate infrastructure and high earned incomes for all.

11. It is imperative therefore to spend money on education and training to a higher level, to build up engineering and industrial capacities, to be productive and competitive, to expend money on building first-class infrastructure and to be researchers, inventors and developers.

12. Since we want to be developed in our own mould, we can reject the moral values of some developed countries. We see them obviously decaying because of the emphasis on unlimited materialism and personal freedom. We must sustain the good values that we have and acquire good ethnics which will contribute to our productivity and our income. In other words we must earn our income through higher productivity and not through handouts by the Government. The Socialist and Communists have tried to improve their people’s incomes through giving them money and making free availability of support facilities to ensure they have a good life. But Socialism and Communism have failed. They have to resort to free enterprise and hard work.

13. Finally we must not forget that Government money is derived through taxes on the people. Taxes raise the cost of living. Still the people are willing to endure raised cost of living because they expect the Government to give them security, to govern the country well, to have policies which benefit the people generally.

14. But the people would not like to see the taxes they pay to be expended in ways that are beyond this. Certainly they would not want their hard-earned money to be expended on winning popularity for anyone or political parties or administrations.

*******************************************************

The above extracted from Dr Mahathir Mohammad's blog.

If Im not mistaken this is not the first time he wrote on this BR1M.

Or perhaps that might be another Najib-bashing write-ups on perhaps another of his (Najib) acronym- whatnots, supposedly would benefits the rakyat.

It's bullshits.

No one need to be financier or economist to sum up all the money this Najib had been and is spending, that it is all total waste. As I mentioned in my another post, he has a bunch of monkeys as advisors -- perhaps those youngsters were his son's friends...who might just got to that positions because of his son. And who have been advising him craps all his tenure as Prime Minister.

And if he ever thought that buying the people with all his bulls and crap acronyms 1 this and 1 that, Kedai1Malaysia or Toilet1 Malaysia -- he must have been an idiot having to believe so. 

He must be elected because his late daddy was once a prime minister too.

Don't blame people for generalising.

Look at some of the menteris. Either their daddy or daddy in law of grandfather you'd find one who were once in the cabinet.

The bulls and crap of 1 Malaysia.

       

The real crash of Malaysian Airlines.

History is slowly showing.
The truth will prevail.
Im a true believer of the second line. Especially when we're made mum in situations of better to retreat then to die.

The national carrier, Malaysia Airlines’ (MAS) is facing their at the brink (it has been almost all the years there anyway) and the only option to ensure survival is by making radical changes to its business structure -- that was what indicated by the sorrow-ridden chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, suggesting that the changes could be 'anything from spinning off certain divisions,filing for bankruptcy to privatisation'.

That must be the most crystal clear admission made by MAS top gun ever since. With more than 10 years in red,  Ahmad Jauhari indicated the cruciality of the situation saying 'it is not good enough to take the airline to the future'.
And I reckoned that must have been assisted by all the gloom surrounding the to-date still missing MH370.

There are also news that the airline's selling its maintenance, repair and overhaul division, MAS Engineering, as part of its plan to return to profitability -- which I think would not help much after years and years of net-profit loss.
Honestly, receiving continuous monetary help from the government has prove to be futile and will not help much either.
Why should the government want to carry the burden when the money helping a limp company can be channeled somewhere else?

People might be in the dark of what actually going on in the company, but simple conclusions can be summed up when it comes to this carrier's history. To say that they offered very cheap seats, nope.
To say they provide the best meals onboard?...Nope -- but maybe they've been overcharged by the contracts caterers, which probably too are related to those people with interest.
Are they losing to Air Asia -- maybe in certain sectors.

But all must be tailing back to 15 years ago.
As they say, history will show....

Lucky people.

If my memory serves me well, I remember reading that Qatar is one of three countries in the Gulf, in fact in the world that pays high wages to skilled expats.

The intentions of sharing this is just to indicate the differences in income between the locals and expats. Unlike my home country Malaysia, where the expats gets higher pay than their local counterpart -- although the locals are doing similar job with better qualifications.

Probably Malaysia will never cease to adopt the "Kera di hutan disusukan, anak dirumah mati kelaparan"...direct translation will bring the meaning of a human child will die of starvation while the monkey in the jungle being fed milk by the human -- or the mother...or whoever.

See, with an average Qatari household earns QR72,700 ($19,918) a month, nearly three times the average expat household income of QR24,400 ($6,685) and when taking into account housing, free electricity and water, the Qatari income figure increases to QR88,200 ($24,164).

What happen is, when these locals gets their special increment, the last one happened just when the Arabs Spring started in Syria couple of years back, the items food and related provisions will automatically increases too.

The average Qatari household surveyed was made up of 8.7 people, more than twice the size of the average expat household of 4.3 people – a difference that may help explain the expenditure and earnings gaps between the two groups.

The studies also  shows that a Qatari household will spend on average QR49,600 ($13,589) a month, while the average expat household will spend QR18,000 ($4,932).

But among all the survey findings, I found one interesting fact -- the biggest single expense for the average Qatari household is transport and communications, which account for one-fifth of its monthly budget i.e.  QR9,560.
And, you would think that too because you won't fail to see any one of them, men or women, not talking or texting at any point of time.

Malaysia Airlines has no funds absorbing increasing costs.

An article which I reckoned local media would not want to touch much after what happened recently.

A good overview and as someone who wants to know not just what happened to the still missing jetliner MH370, I want to know how far more Malaysia Airlines will go with the red;... and when with changing CEOs will not help much, this GLC will find the light at the end of the tunnel bleak....

Continuing to receive bailouts also will not help forever....




The mystery of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has cast an additional cloud over the country's already struggling national airline. The carrier may have to turn to the government for relief once more, but indulging the company with public money will not likely solve the problems it has been facing for more than 10 years.

Flight 370, which went missing over the South China Sea on March 8, is believed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean. Even more damaging to the carrier's reputation than potential safety issues is its slow and often mishandled investigation into the matter, including unsympathetic treatment of grieving family members. The incident may deal a near-fatal blow to a management that has been heavily reliant on public money.

Unexpected costs.
Hostility toward the company and the Malaysian government is especially strong in China. Out of 239 passengers and crew on the missing flight, 153 were Chinese. On March 26, China Youth Travel Service, a leading travel agent in China, announced that it would suspend bookings with the airline and refund the full fares of those who have already made reservations.

If the problem persists, it may hurt not only the carrier's ticket sales for international flights but Malaysia's tourism industry as a whole. In 2013, nearly 10% of tourists to the country were Chinese.


The airline also carries the long-term risk of having to pay damages to the families of the missing passengers. Local papers estimate that compensation could total $110 million. However, the amount is subject to change, because the cause of the incident has yet to be determined. Damages may increase if any major negligence on the part of the airline is found.

The biggest problem is that the company has no funds to absorb the increased costs.

In the fiscal year through December 2013, it posted a net loss of 1.17 billion ringgit ($356 million), although passenger numbers increased by almost 30% and sales grew by around 10% from the previous year. According to a source close to the airline, the loss is largely attributable to discount marketing that did not take costs into account.

 With its operating cash flow in the red for three straight years, the company has little chance of earning a profit from its mainline airline operation.

Despite efforts to improve its financial standing through injection or reduction of equity, its capital ratio at the end of 2013 stood at 28%, far below the safe threshold of 40%.
The airline has recorded losses since the Asian currency crisis in 1997, and the company has been trying to restructure its operations for the last 15 years through a continuous pumping in of government money in the form of capital injection and low-interest loans.

 CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya previously said that the company aimed to generate a profit by fiscal 2014, but the market is largely of the opinion that the disappearance of Flight 370 has erased this hope.


Fundamental hurdles
There are two underlying factors squeezing the company: increasingly tough competition with budget carriers and the difficulty of streamlining a state-owned company.

Malaysia-based AirAsia was founded in 2001 and has almost doubled its sales in the last five years. Its success is down to its ability to offer ultracheap fares, about half what Malaysia Airlines charges. AirAsia has also lured domestic passengers from its state-run rival by increasing the number of flights between local cities.

 As for cost-consciousness, the national airline has not streamlined its payroll in recent years, retaining around 20,000 employees. Its largest shareholder is Khazanah Nasional, a government investment fund. Employees of state-owned enterprises are valuable voters for the ruling party, which is increasingly losing support. The government must also listen to the voice of labor unions.

Malaysia Airlines received a capital injection from AirAsia in the summer of 2011 and tried to apply its rival's low-cost know-how to its own operations. However, it had to scrap the capital alliance due to protests from labor unions in May 2012.

In 2013, Mahathir bin Mohamad, former Malaysian prime minister, suggested that the company reduce costs through privatization, but labor unions opposed the suggestion, forcing current Prime Minister Najib Razak to reject the proposal. There are now calls for the company to streamline its low-profit domestic routes.

A Malaysian government official said the country will ultimately have to rescue the airline, because the company has few assets that it can sell off and there is no prospect of a bailout through merging with another airline. In 2022, it is scheduled to redeem corporate bonds of $460 million, but is unlikely to be able to do so. Another capital injection from the government seems to be the only viable option for the airline operator.

Source...

Malaysian company will manage Doha new airport.

With the summer heat setting in this little country, the rush to book tickets going home to celebrate the Ramadhan and Eid is up on the chart for most of us expats here.

Celebrating the holy month and the Eid Fitr would not be the same without parents and families members. The feel just not there, happy celebrating it with their new found 'family members' and friends.
The other reason must be because they might superficially felt having perform their fourth pillar of Islam in the heat Arabian countries would bring them closer to god. Oh well....

Anyway, travelling inbound and outbound of Doha airport is something that I look forward to, and basically despised it.
Ever since the news of the launching of it's new international airport made known in 2012, I have been eager to not have a 'no pop in and out of bus' and that draggy climbing the steps up to the cabin.
I have on several occasions travelled while carrying seventh months tums, or with an infant and a small  child avec huge carry-ons with milk and those baby essentials, in the same time trying to make sure my child climb the steps properly -- this is not an easy task.
I hated it every time.

This however not including the pushing and squeezing of those less civilised people from some African continent and Indian for the bus although being asked by the usherer to line up -- men and women alike.
They're like a hoard of goat squeezing themselves thru the door pushing kids and others less 'adventurous' aside. It is a joke and I wonder whether they know the seats are all already calculated and none will sit on the floor or ride on the wings!..
Gosh.. I can carry on about their behaviour forever.

I have had travelled thru Doha airport in 2000, and believe me, the crowds then were ten folds compare to now. The country wan't known, and the airport was very small although the bus to bring us to the plane is still there.

With the expected launching being postponed many time, which is not surprising in this country, it was made known that other airlines shall 'officiates' the runaways and gradually Qatar Airways will start using it. Im not sure why though. Might be their way of letting the rat run it first..duuhhh..

Anyway, there is a piece of good news as the airport will be run by Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) thru their subsidiary which won a $25.89m contract mid last year.
Although the contract is for three years, they might be able to run it another three more years with an extension worth $27.98m.

Although second targeted opening in December 2013 didn't materialised yet agin after the failed one in December 2012 -- all in all this would be good for MAHB after its recent abrupt termination at the Maldives’ Ibrahim Nasir International Airport.

Hoping to once again not hopping in and out of bus this year....

Not everyone can fly now...

BBC News - Air Asia X ends European and Indian flights

Malaysia's budget airline Air Asia has said it will end flights to Europe
and India because of high fuel prices and weak demand.
The carrier's cheap
long-haul associate airline, Air Asia X, will instead focus on new routes and

expanding in its core markets of Australia and East Asia.

Air Asia will end

its flights to India in February and stop flying to London and Paris after the

end of March.

Looks like Not Everyone Can Fly now, especially to Malaysian favourite city London and Paris.

The somehow not so shocking news (because in my opinion the price they offered are way too low for a long haul flights) the largest budget carrier in the region decided to end flights to the European sector after the first quarter of the year.

Hopefully 2012 will not see more sectors being eliminated by the carrier.

Having less than 24 months serving Paris after Air Asia launched it's maiden flight and putting hope of  flying to the love city of the world, hoards of Malaysians who had been jubilant must feel heartbroken but on the other hand making it's 'competitor' Malaysian Airlines System (MAS) the national carrier a happier lot.

I remember having read many friends post in facebook on their holidays to Paris and that include my cousin and the family.

The decision to end those route was mainly due to it's costs and the sluggish economy.

Besides Paris and London other route that will be halted is Mumbai.

Cruise ship for World Cup accommodation-- that's interesting.

DUBAI - Qatar plans to use a cruise ship for accommodation when it hosts the soccer World Cup in 2022 but will need more short-term alternatives to avoid adding to an already oversupplied hotel market, analysts said on Monday.

Some 400,000 fans plus the 32 competing teams and a huge media following will descend on the tiny Gulf state in 12 years time, when it becomes the first Arab country to host the world's largest soccer competition.

"There are plans to double the supply of rooms in hotels and guest apartments by 2022 to cover the everyday requirements of an economy that is expected to continue growing strongly," the world's governing soccer body said in its official report on the evaluation of the Qatari bid.


Qatar proposes "more than 240 different properties" mostly in the four-star category but also several in the three and five-star category and a few two-star properties, it said.

Of this number, 100 are existing hotels, villages and compounds with more than 44,000 rooms, while a further 140 properties are expected to be built, including a cruise ship project in Al-Wakrah with 6,000 rooms, FIFA said.

Hotel occupancy rates in Qatar are currently fairly low, which is indicative of oversupply, analysts say.


"Qatar will have to grow its hotel supply but I would be cautious on how they will do this," said Jalil Mekouar, managing director, hotels, Middle East & Africa at Jones Lang LaSalle.

"There are already fears of oversupply of hotel rooms in Qatar and with the World Cup effect lasting two or three months only, it is important to consider what to do with this hotel supply when the event is over," he said.

Alternative solutions would be using hotel supply from neighbouring Gulf Arab countries such as Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates which are only one hour's flight away.

Temporary budget hotels that could be dismantled after the event could also be explored, he said.


Jones Lang LaSalle estimates Qatar's current room supply at 9,200 rooms and expects an aditional 2,000 rooms in 2011 and another 3,000 in 2012.

JP Grobbelaar, Colliers International director of research, estimates Qatar has around 10,000 rooms, a total which is set to rise to 17,000 by the end of 2011.

"In the World Cup in South Africa, a lot of people committed their homes to guest accommodation of they leased their homes out for the duration of the World Cup," Grobbelaar said. "But this is unlikely to happen in Qatar and if it does, it won't be on the same scale."

My say to this?  Smart move...

The Malays & Jewish

Coke to invest $302M in Malaysia, open new plant

'Coca-Cola said Tuesday it will build a new bottling plant in Malaysia and invest $302 million over the next five years to boost growth in the Southeast Asian market.....'


*******************************************

Despite being open mindedly accepting the news on one of the world's largest beverage company setting investment in the country, there are, as usual, some shallow minded people who would state their protest on such development.

Since according to the spokesperson, the investment will be the largest in the region, and economically, it will generate work opportunity to the local people, I sympathised those fanatics on saying that this is one way of letting the Jews into the country.

What they meant by that, only they and their likes understand.

No doubt that the shareholder of that giant company are Jews or of some Jewish descendant but don't they ever give it a thought about the country's economics?
Can't they just look on the inside to what happen to Kelantan, a state on the east coast of the Peninsular. See what happen to the state when there are no investment due to their rigid regulations.
Where can they earned their income if not from companies investing in the state?
Take a trip there and you'll see how they've been deprived with good development right down to be unable to pay proper maintenance companies to clean their towns and kampungs.
See Selangor, another state on the west coast, and especially Shah Alam, the main industrial area, and the capital of the state.

Watch how it developed?
Know how much the state and councillor make yearly?...

I am not championing the Jews, but I feel those skeptics should take a while putting aside their 'dramatic' Islamic opinion, putting things on the shelf and start evaluating the whole idea before shutting their doors to all non-Islamic whatnots, especially investment, which eventually will help their countrymen or their kampung folks near Nilai and Negri Sembilan including those folks who suffer the retrenchment during the 2008 slump get some job at least.

And, what is not Jews or owned by the Jews?
The Levi's jeans that you wear?
The shampoo that you used?
The Top 10 Western movies that you watch?...you know, like Spielberg and his like?
Don't tell me you never watch Star Wars at all?
Don't tell me you never 'help' contribute even RM1 to any Jewish based companies in term of the usage or consumption of their products?

One similarity I found among these 'pious' people is, they think they are smart and very religious.
They think they are closer to God than most people, especially people with liberated perception in life.
They think they are the one that is religiously fighting in the name of Islam and Allah.
There are loads of them...and it is getting more and more each day, thus why (my answers to my fellow non-Muslims) there are more religious-based unrest in Malaysia than it was 20 years ago.

Which brought me to one of my mother's friend predicament.
She came to my mother expressing her disappointment towards her eldest son's decision.
After spending years in Japan studying (obviously with the government grant) came back to Malaysia, and later did another advance studies to furnished his portfolio, at the end, he decided not wanting to work at all.
The sad thing about this guy is, because he has been mixing around with some Islamic fanatics while studying (i can attest to this because yours truly encountered same experience too), he refused and rejected offered by multinationals with comfortable yearly package because ' the company is not ISLAMic enough for him'.

Hmmmmm....what can you say to that?
Because honestly, in Malaysia there are near to zero if you're die-hard Islamic-based gooer in term of big employment entity...
The worried mother suggested an endeavour with Islamic-based bank, and his answer was ''it's hard also because the money that he'll be earning is based on 'riba' or usury that is forbidden in Islam"...

That certainly made me laughed.
I bet all those Muslims working in the bank in Malaysia and the world are feeding their families with non-halal money!!
My God!
That is one example of what sort of things silly fanatics and those people who thought they're holy, got in their head.
To know more, I would suggest the FBI retained the bodies of dead fanatics (of course those in suicide bombings cant help much as their brains would be spurted out on the ground), cut their head and do some research on their brains and gather info as to what contributed to this all this enigma.

It's sad.
It's silly.
It's foolish.

And oh, for those of you who hate me for my opinion, and think that you're more Islamic then me, and feel that you should continue hatred towards other religion and races,...read me :
Google and Yahoo and your current craze of facebook-ing -- they are all founded by young smart Jewish!!

Why not stop all communications then?

WHAT IS INFLATION

Question: What is Inflation?

Answer: To understand inflation, we first must understand what the word means. The Economics Glossary defines Inflation as:

Inflation is an increase in the price of a basket of goods and services that is representative of the economy as a whole.

A similar definition of inflation can be found in Economics by Parkin and Bade:
Inflation is an upward movement in the average level of prices. Its opposite is deflation, a downward movement in the average level of prices. The boundary between inflation and deflation is price stability.

Because inflation is a rise in the general level of prices, it is intrinsically linked to money, as captured by the often heard refrain "Inflation is too many dollars chasing too few goods". To understand how this works, imagine a world that only has two commodities: Oranges picked from orange trees, and paper money printed by the government.

In a year where there is a drought and oranges are scarce, we'd expect to see the price of oranges rise, as there will be quite a few dollars chasing very few oranges. Conversely, if there's a record crop or oranges, we'd expect to see the price of oranges fall, as orange sellers will need to reduce their prices in order to clear their inventory. These scenarios are inflation and deflation, respectively, though in the real world inflation and deflation are changes in the average price of all goods and services, not just one.

We can also have inflation and deflation by changing the amount of money in the system. If the government decides to print a lot of money, then dollars will become plentiful relative to oranges, just as in our drought situation. Thus inflation is caused by the amount of dollars rising relative to the amount of oranges (goods and services), and deflation is caused by the amount of dollars falling relative to the amount of oranges. Thus, as shown by the article "Why Does Money Have Value?", inflation is caused by a combination of four factors:

The supply of money goes up.
The supply of other goods goes down.
Demand for money goes down.
Demand for other goods goes up.
Now that you know what inflation is, you may want to visit some of the other inflation resources offered at About.com:
Inflation and Deflation Resources

What is deflation and how can it be prevented? (Looks at the converse of inflation, which is deflation).

Cost-Push Inflation vs. Demand-Pull Inflation (Examines two different types of inflation)

Why Does Money Have Value? (Explains the relationship between money and goods that leads to inflation and deflation)

Why Not Just Print More Money? (Explains why high levels of inflation do not make us wealthy)

What is the Demand for Money? (In depth look at factor 3 on our list).

Why Don't Prices Decline During A Recession? (Explains why we generally do not have deflation during recessions)

Calculating and Understanding Real Interest Rates (Article explains the link between interest rates and inflation)