Economic, human and political reprising in progress

Of late I have been invited by used-to-be close friends some of whom I have not met for more than 2 decades and at different times, groups and venues.

I was asking myself what made them called and spent a lot of time with me, at times went right after 2am and it is quite on regular basis.

Some are government servants while the rest are either businessmen or the corporate players both the successful ones and those who are still at the position where they started.

They are my peers and within the same age group and now they have time for me as they are either retired or on long leave prior to retirement.

To some who are businessmen told me that they are not getting on good with their businesses and they are cutting losses with the advent of full scale global economic depression.

A few are just like me; everyday is Sunday, every night is Saturday night and every morning is Sunday morning. This group has one common attribute; they are fat and rounded just like me.

I am too elated that we met each other in the end. Just months ago each and every one of us were still long lost friends to one another.

I am also blissful for those who are successful in their careers and having nice and comfortable lives in retirement and I wish I could be like them which I obviously couldn’t.

There are basically 2 topics of discussions when we meet; one is health topic as all of us are approaching the dying age and the second topic is the topic of the present time, that is the global economic downward spiral.

All with no exception believe that the economic crisis is not for anyone to guess when it will end. No one really knows when we will reach to the rock bottom of the crisis.

Along the way, tens of thousands of companies worldwide are going bankrupt and tens of millions are out of jobs.

What started as the financial crisis has now turned up to be a full blown world economic crisis which is the worst that world economic historians could reminisce.

History has proven that economic crisis of this nature resulted in political crisis and many governments were changed hands in consequence.

Some governments are acting in haste to succumb to short term political pressure by announcing stimulus packages but that may prove futile as it may worsen the underlying condition and would do more harm to the economy in long run.

We fail to remind ourselves that a short-cut process would dampen and root up the underlying economic condition that is attached to the system for a long while.

The present economic crisis, according some known economist will take a long time to recover, at least for another 5 years to happen and if we are more fortunate it will be over in slightly more than 3 years.

BUT even when the economic recovery comes back, it will never be at the time it was before, because while the economy was falling down companies and business concerned went bankrupt, workers were losing jobs, many institutions went wayward to the drain.

While in the process of recovering the government was bailing inefficient conglomerates like what happen in the US where the government administrations were bailing out automobile industries using huge sum of tax payers’ money.

In the process also,resources and wealth will be reallocated and the old gives way to the new entity and we shall find a new economic landscape and to some countries a total new political backdrop as the governments changed hands resulting from the deadly crisis.

Let us try to answer the involuntary questions everyone is asking everyone now; when is the recession is going to get over? Is it a factual truth that the recession is a very long one? Is the stimulus packages that have been announced by many governments including ours in Malaysia are really giving positive economic consequences?

These questions are all very important, as everyone is trying to find a perfect spot for them to reposition themselves in facing the crisis for good decision making.

Bankers, developers, manufacturers, property managers and the rest of industries have more reason to decide appropriately over proper economic premises with the gloomy situation in place.

We must consume the fact that the bubbles are bursting uncontrolled, starting with the sub-prime properties in the US. Consequentially the asset prices are plummeting in high velocity and trillions of dollars are swept off.

By statistical principle the situation can only curve positively upwards when the assets have sufficiently repriced downward and the time taken to settle at the final conciliatory point before it moves up depend on other animated and real factors.

The weak and panicky world leadership can be the hindering factor for quick recovery.

To some economists and development planners, many of the stimulus packages proposed to respond to political pressure make the adjustments and the reprising more difficult and intricate.

Obviously the bailing out of automobile and other inefficient industries only end up in prolonging the pain of restructuring at it involves heavy and tremendous public funds.

AND let us be reminded that the human and labor are also the main parallel that add up to the assets in reprising process.

With the globalization human and labor have only one market place and the price is determined by this singular market.

Their salaries and wages are pulled down in billions by the Asians and the African as they can take jobs with much lesser quantum.

The benefits of trade have never been equally distributed even though trade is positive sum game and that will put a strong pressure on protectionism in many countries.

To countries with over leveraged, spending beyond its means would not be able to avoid reprising process through its currency devaluation forcing lower living standard on all its citizens.

Malaysia has gone through the same experience during the Asian Currency crisis when our ringgit was smashed by the money market.

Malaysia then was heavily involved in expressed mega projects and in the process the country had to import in abundant expensive capital goods and consequentially we experienced imbalanced current account.

But our leaders then blamed the money traders and the people accepted it as not the fault of our careless leaders. We are the only country where leaders always blame others for their misadventures, and they remain in denial until to this moment.

This is another big proponent that world political and economic leaders ought to take account and no solutions to the problems in place can be found without this ingredient packed together with the whole exercise.

The economic and human reprising has a direct correlation to the political reprising especially in present time of globalization.

To continue writing on this topic with all the requiring needs of it would take a lot of space and time for me and for anybody who wants to read and digest it.

I reckon the continuation of this heavy and hard-to-digest topic has to be done some days later.

As for me this topic is heavy, as I am neither an economist nor a writer.


Thanks……………………………………………………Aspan Alias