Yong Teck Lee Sinking In His Own Spin : The Art Of Bullshit!

I picked up this letter written to Malaysia Today by a  chap calling himself  “SAS ( Saham  Amanah Sabah) Victim.” This is interesting subject, perhaps to me, because I have many  friends in KK who had invested a fair bit and lost their pants in this investment, after a steep fall of the SAS unit price during Yong Teck Lee’s time as Chief Minister. Till today many curse and swear Yong Teck Lee and Ambrose Lee whom they say is the “mastermind” behind the lost in their life-savings.

What happen was in 1998 there was a share swap deal between Warisan Harta Sabah Sdn Bhd of which Yong Teck Lee was Chairman and Suniwang Holdings Sdn Bhd of which Ambrose Lee was the Boss. The rational of entering into this transaction was that the Government through Warisan Harta could utilise a RM50 million fund. Yes Ringgit 50 juta. The RM50 million was to support counters in which Warisan Harta and Sabahans had investments.

As a result of the share swap deal Warisan Harta lost RM114 million. The RM114 million was lost after Warisan Harta under the chairmanship of Yong Teck Lee disposed its blue chip MISC shares in return for the acquisition of NBT shares and Sugar Bun shares. Both counters are delisted ever since. Both of these share counters  NBT and Sugarbun were connected to Suniwang which was controlled by Ambrose Lee.

A whopping RM 114 million losses in this deal for the State.

So don’t you have to have somewhat of a criminal mind to be a politician? Most politicians are devious. They’ll sell “hope” to the public and they’ll make it seem very rosy and people don’t even know that their investment will be paid for out of their hard-earned savings. These politicians act like it’s fine. Politicians have no problem telling people something’s fine when it’s not. Politicians are worse than criminals because really when you think about it all a criminal does is just steal your money… what politicians do is to lie to people. They’ll lie to you… they’ll tell you what you want to hear… it’s a good deal…plenty of money to make…State Government investment, so must be good. People don’t know people like Ambrose Lee the CEO of Public Companies has got no money and cannot give personal guarantees for 200 million dollars to get this deal fix. It will surely fail because the motive is to milk the cow dry on the expanse of the people.

So I mean aren’t politicians similar to criminals? I know there are exceptions to the rule – like Yong Teck Lee?  Don’t make me puke lah! Read below and make your opinion heard.

Birds of the feather flock together: Joseph Ambrose Lee comes to the rescue of Yong Teck Lee

 

By SAS Victim

For more than a decade Sabahans have forgotten about Joseph Ambrose Lee Yok Min, 52, who once boasted of himself as the new Syed Kechik of Sabah, after he failed in his scandalous schemes to take over the RM30-billion timber wealth of Yayasan Sabah.

The late Syed Kechik was the de facto Chief Minister of Sabah when he was legal adviser to the late Tun Datu Mustapha bin Datu Harun who ruled the state with an iron-fist from 1967 to 1976.

Ambrose was back in Kota Kinabalu, having made his home in Perth, on August 7 at the Sutera Harbour Resort defending his bosom buddy Yong Teck Lee, who was Sabah Chief Minister from 1996 to 1998, over the fiasco of Saham Amanah Sabah (SAS) arising from a scandalous share-swap between Warisan Harta, the Sabah government’s investment arm, and Ambrose’s Suniwang Holdings Sdn Bhd.

More than 55,000 Sabahans, most of them pensioners and low-income civil servants, lost all their life-savings when the price of the state unit trust plummeted to 17 sen from its RM1.00 unit price soon after he sealed the deal when he became Chief Minister.

At the press conference, Ambrose (that’s what his few friends and many foes call him) made a feeble attempt to defend Yong over the missing RM50 million from the share-swap which Yong has been unable to explain to Sabahans.

Ambrose stressed that he paid RM50 million in cash through Innosabah Securities, the stockbroker, to Warisan Sabah in a deal that saw him exchanging his over-priced shares of NBT and Sugar Bun for Warisan’s blue chip MISC shares.

No one has disputed this. But what has not been answered is that the money received by Warisan was never given to SSB as Yong has said. Yong was the Chief Minister and Warisan Chairman. Yet he has failed to tell Sabahans what happened to the RM50 million which he, as Warisan Chairman, received and which he never gave to SSB.

Dr Yee Moh Chai, Minister of Resource Development and Information Technology, told the assembly on August 3 that Saham Sabah Berhad (SSB) which manages the SAS has confirmed to him that it has never received the RM50 million out of the share dealings of Warisan Harta.

At the assembly, Dr Yee pointed out that it was Yong who linked the disastrous share-swap of blue chip MISC shares belonging to Warisan with shares of NBT and Sugar Bun, which were cornered speculative stocks. The swap resulted in a loss of RM114 million to Warisan.

Yong had defended the share-swap. As Warisan’s chairman, he was on record to say that “the wider policy in entering into this transaction was that the Government through Warisan Harta could utilise the RM50 million fund.”

Yong said the RM50 million was to support counters (stocks) on the then Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (KLSE,now Bursa) in which Warisan and the people of Sabah had investments. The true outcome, according to Dr Yee, is that as a result of the share-swap deals, Warisan Harta lost RM114 million.

Ambrose blamed Warisan for the loss because it refused to accept his offer to pay RM96 million for the difference between its purchase and market price of NBT and Sugar Bun shares which he said fell sharply because of the Asian financial crisis.

What he failed, in Ambrose’s own words, to tell the “entire populace of Sabah” was that he did not have the cash to pay RM96 million. He suggested another share-swap! Thus Warisan sued Suniwang for RM179,825,000. True enough, Suniwang folded. Warisan did not get a sen. If Ambrose had the money, would his flagship Suniwang Holdings Sdn Bhd collapse like a pack of cards?

Ambrose blamed Musa Aman, who was then Finance Minister, for rejecting again his proposal in 2007 to settle his debt of RM179,825,000 by transferring shares of Borneo Marble Corporation Sdn Bhd which he owned through proxies.

He said Warisan had entertained his proposal but the Sabah government rejected it. Warisan officials said it was true that they entertained his proposal but it did not accept it because the company was a liability.

Recently filings with the Companies Commission of Malaysia have proved this to be so. Borneo Marble was formerly known as Galmore Resources Sdn Bhd and was a fully-owned subsidiary of Suniwang Sdn Bhd which was owned by J Ambrose Sdn Bhd.

As at the end of December 2006, Borneo Marble suffered a pre-tax loss of RM108,793. There are no records of its financial filings from 2007 to 2009.

Ambrose boasted that his NBT owned 200,000 acres of timber land under Forest Management Unit which was bought by someone else.

Officials said what he failed to say was that NBT was in debt to the tune that the company was worthless and the timber land was pledged to a bank as collateral. The property was sold by the bank to recover its loan to NBT.

Ambrose had banked on the Sabah government to bail him out which it had rightly refused.

By his own admission, he has a Receiving Order of the court placed on his assets under the control of an official assignee. He has not been adjudicated a bankrupt yet.

Any chance of the Sabah government bailing him out now hinges on the remote chance of Yong Teck Lee becoming Sabah’s Chief Minister again. And why shouldn’t he? After all it was Yong’s late father, Yong Yun, who financed Ambrose’s law studies in London.

Tengku Razaleigh Says Barisan Nasional Government Squandered Malaysia’s Oil Wealth To The Tune Of Billions

Ku Li today painted a bleak future for Malaysia under the Barisan Nasional government, saying it had squandered the nation’s oil wealth to the tune of billions of ringgit.

The former Finance Minister said Petronas’s oil profits had been used “to bail out failing companies, buy arms, build grandiose cities amidst cleared palm oil estates.” “Instead of helping eradicate poverty in the poorest states, our oil wealth came to be channeled into our political and politically-linked class,” the first Petronas chief and former Umno vice president said in a speech at the Young Corporate Malaysians Summit.

He said Petronas money had been used as a slush fund to prop up authoritarian rule, to corrupt the entire political and business elite and to erode constitutional democracy.

The Gua Musang MP told the conference that Petronas had contributed 40 percent to the national budget over the years. But such a great reliance on oil income was getting untenable, he said. “The oil that was meant to spur our transition to a more humane, educated society has instead become a narcotic that provides economic quick fixes and hollow symbols such as the Petronas Towers.”

Ku Li said the future for Malaysians looks bleak with the government seeking to broaden the tax base by introducing a goods and services tax (GST), requiring Malaysians to pay an additional tax on top of income tax. Malaysia is now caught in a middle-income trap, stuck in the pattern of easy growth from low-value-added manufacturing and component assembly and unable to make the leap to a knowledge-intensive economy, Tengku Razaleigh added.

Following is the text of his speech: In a speech I made in April this year, I spoke of where we stand in our developmental path and what I felt we must do to move forward. I need to revisit that argument in order to develop it further.

We are stagnating. The signs of a low-growth economy are all around us. Wages are stagnant and the cost of living is rising. We have not made much progress in becoming a knowledge and services based economy.

According to the World Bank, Malaysia’s share of GDP contributed by services was 46.2 percent in 1987. Ten years later, that share had grown by a mere 0.2 percent. Between 1994 and 2007, real wages grew by 2.6 percent in the domestic sector and by 2.8 percent in the export sector, which is to say, they were flat over that 13-year period.

Meanwhile, our talent scenario is an example of perverse selection at its most ruinous. We are failing to retain our own young talent, people like yourselves, let alone attract international talent to relocate here, while we have had a massive influx of unskilled foreign labour. They now make up 30 to 40 percent of our workforce.

Alone in East Asia, the number of expatriate professionals here has decreased. Alone in East Asia, private sector wage increases follow government sector increases, instead of the other way around. We are losing doctors and scientists and have become Southeast Asia’s haven for low-cost labour. I said that we are in a middle-income trap, stuck in the pattern of easy growth from low-value-added manufacturing and component assembly and unable to make the leap to a knowledge-intensive economy. Regional competitors with larger, cheaper – and dare I say – hungrier labour forces have emerged. China and India have risen as both lower cost and higher technology producers, and with giant domestic markets.

The manufacturing sector which propelled the growth we enjoyed in the 90s is being hollowed out. There is no going back, there is no staying where we are, and we do not have a map for the way forward. I am glad that the characterisation of Malaysia as being in a ‘middle-income-trap’ has been taken up by the government, and that the need for an economic story, or strategy, for Malaysia is now recognised. We stand in particular need of such a model because we are a smallish economy.

We cannot be good at everything, and we don’t have to be. We need only make some reasonable bets in identifying and developing a focused set of growth drivers. It is not difficult to see what the elements of such a growth strategy might be.

Whatever we come up with should build on our natural strengths, and our strengths include the following:

+ We are located at the crossroads of Asia, geographically and culturally, sitting alongside the most important oil route in the world.

+ We have large Muslim, Chinese and Indian populations that connect us to the three fastest growing places in the world today.

+ We have some of the largest and oldest rainforests in the world, a treasure house of bio-diversity when the greatest threat facing mankind as a whole now is ecological destruction, and the greatest technological advances are likely to come from bioscience.

+ We have the English language, a common law system, parliamentary democracy, good schools, an independent civil service and good infrastructure.

These advantages, however, are declining. Our cultural diversity is in danger of coming apart in bigotry, our rainforests are being logged out and planted over, our social and political institutions are decaying.

I have spoken at length on different occasions about the causes and consequences of institutional decline. The decline in our society, and indeed in our natural environment, originates in a decline in our basic institutions. The link between these is corruption.

The destruction of our ecosystem, for example, is made possible by corrupt officials and business people.

The uncontrolled influx of unskilled labour is a direct result of corruption. These are problems we need to be aware of before we speak glibly about coming up with new strategies and new economic models. We need to understand where we are, and how we have gone wrong, before we can set things right.

You are young, well-educated Malaysians. Many among you have left for other shores. Record numbers of Malaysians, of all races, work abroad or have emigrated. Among these are some of our best people. They sense the stagnation I described. There is a certain lack of energy, ingenuity and “hunger” in the climate of this country that young people are most sensitive to. In the globalised job market, young people instinctively leave the less simulating and creative environments for those that have a spark to them.

How did we lose our spark as a nation? We have a political economy marked by dependence on easy options and easy wealth. Like personal dependencies, these bad habits provide temporary comfort but discourage the growth of creativity and resilience.

I mentioned our dependence on low-cost foreign labour. The other dependence is something I played a part in making possible.

This is a story I want to leave with you to ponder in your deliberations today.

Our nation is blessed with a modest quantity of oil reserves. As a young nation coming to terms with this natural bounty in the early 70s, our primary thought was to conserve that oil.

That is why, when Petronas was formed, we instituted the Petroleum Development Council. Its function was to advise the prime minister on how to conserve that oil and use it judiciously for national development.

We knew our reserves would not last long. We saw our oil reserves as an unearned bounty that would provide the money for modernisation and technology. We saw our oil within a developmental perspective.

Our struggle then was to make the leap from an economy based on commodities and low-cost assembly and manufacturing to a more diverse economy based on high income jobs. Aware that we had an insufficient tax base to make the capital investments needed to make the leap, we planned to apply oil royalties to what you would call today strategic investments in human capital.

Whatever money left after making cash payments, allocations for development funds, etc, was to be placed in a Heritage Fund for the future.

The Heritage Fund was for education and social enrichment. In working out the distribution of oil between the states, who had sovereign rights over it, and the federal government, we were guided by concerns for equity between all Malaysians, a concern to develop the poorer states (who also happened to be the oil rich states) and a concern for inter-generational equity. That oil was for special development purposes and it was not just meant for our generation.

Sabah and Sarawak joined Malaya to form Malaysia because of the promise of development funds.

Yet today, despite their massive resources, they are some of our poorest states.

Instead of being our ace up the sleeve, however, our oil wealth became in effect a swag of money used to fund the government’s operational expenditure, to bail out failing companies, buy arms, build grandiose cities amidst cleared palm oil estates.

Instead of helping eradicate poverty in the poorest states, our oil wealth came to be channeled into the overseas bank accounts of our political and politically-linked class.

Instead of being the patrimony of all Malaysians, and for our children, it is used as a giant slush fund that has propped up authoritarian rule, eroded constitutional democracy and corrupted our entire political and business elite.

Our oil receipts, instead of being applied in the manner we planned upon the formation of Petronas, that is, according to its original developmental purpose, became a fund for the whims and fancy of whoever ran the country, without any accountability. The oil that was meant to spur our transition to a more humane, educated society has instead become a narcotic that provides economic quick fixes and hollow symbols such as the Petronas towers.

Our oil wealth was meant to help us foster Malaysians capable of building the Twin Towers than hire foreigners to build them, a practice in which we preceded Dubai. I would rather have good government than grand government buildings filled with a demoralised civil service.

It is no wonder that we are no longer productive, no longer using our ingenuity to devise ways to improve ourselves and leap forward. Malaysia is now an “oil cursed” country. We managed to arrive at this despite not having a lot of oil.

When I started Petronas in 1974, I did not realise I would see the day when I would wish we had not uncovered this bounty.

The story I have told is a reminder of the scale of the challenge of development. My generation of young people faced this challenge in the 60s and 70s. You face it now. The story tells us that development is about far more than picking strategies out of a box. You have kindly invited me to address a seminar on strategies for reinventing and liberalising Malaysia’s economy. But the story of our squandered oil wealth reminds us that it was not for want of resources or strategies that we floundered.

Our failure has been political and moral.

We have allowed greed and resentment to drive our politics and looked the other way or even gone along while public assets have been stolen in broad daylight. I encourage you to take up the cause of national development with the ingenuity that earlier generations of Malaysians brought to this task, but the beginning of our journey must be a return to the basics of public life: the rule of law, honesty, truth-telling and the keeping of promises.

The Malaysia we need to recover is one that was founded on laws and led with integrity.

With the hindsight of history we know such things are fragile and can be overturned in one generation, forgotten the next. Without a living foundation in the basics, you might sense an air of unreality around our talk of reinventing ourselves, coming up with “a new economic model” and liberalising our economy. So before we can reinvent ourselves, we need to reclaim our nation.

That larger community, bound by laws, democratic and constitutional, is the context of economic progress, it is the context in which young people find hope, think generous thoughts and create tomorrow.

China Foreign Exchange Reserves at $1.954 TRILLION

Malaysia hear this….

China’s central bank says its foreign exchange reserves rose 16 percent year-on-year to $1.954 trillion by the end of March.

In a notice on its Web site Saturday the bank said reserves increased by $7.7 billion in the first quarter, $146.2 billion lower than the same period last year.

Analysts believe China holds up to 70 percent of its foreign reserves in U.S. dollar-denominated assets, including Treasury securities.

In March, the reserves increased by $41.7 billion, an increase $6.7 billion more than the same period last year.

Bits & Pieces of Stimulus package For Postgrad Students

The 60 billion stimulus package unveiled by Najib Tun Razak our Minister of Finance and Prime Minister in waiting has some goodies for our students pursuing Master’s programme locally and our students pursuing PhD locally.

According to Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, the government would finance tuition fees and research grants up to RM20,000 for every student pursuing a PhD locally and RM10,000 for students pursuing a Master’s programme.

It seems, a total of 500 places at PhD level and 10,000 at Masters level in public universities as well as at Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Multimedia University and Universiti Teknologi Petronas will be offered, according to Najib.

So guys, do take good advantage of this and don’t miss the boat.

Malaysia’s Foreign Reserves Down By US$34 Billion

According to Bank Negara, over the last eight months, Malaysia’s foreign reserves has plunged by US$34 billion. It has dropped from a high of RM125.8 billion on 30 June 2008 to US$91.6 billion as at 13 February 2009.

What is happening here? It is difficult to understand how claims are made that our country is marching towards progress and that everything is honky-dory.

There is stark contrast between what is reported in the newspapers by politicalmasters and what is happening in real life as though there is nothing wrong in our proverbial State of Denmark. The political masters keep spinning and they say if there are problems, it is all due to the unreasonableness of the Opposition. This approach is disturbing to say the least.

Malaysia today is on a downward spiral. Unfortunately, discipline, impartiality, fairness and honesty — all such elements, are becoming rare indeed.

 I feel genuinely worried for this country.We can move forward only if there is accountability. Do we?

Citigroup’s Indian CEO, Vikram Pandit To Take $ 1 Salary

Stung by criticism about use of billions of dollars in government aid, Citigroup’s Indian American CEO, Vikram Pandit has vowed to take a token salary of $1 and no bonus until the ailing banking giant returns to profitability.

 “I get the new reality and I will make sure Citi gets it as well,” Pandit said Wednesday as lawmakers grilled top executives from eight of America’s largest financial institutions about their apparent lack of willingness to lend despite collectively receiving $165 billion in capital.

“We will hold ourselves accountable for what we do, and that starts with me,” said Pandit, who collected a salary of $1 million last year.

 Citigroup has lost more than $20 billion in the last five quarters.

Appearing before the US House Financial Services Committee Pandit, 52, said taxpayers were right to expect a return for their investment, adding that the bank will pay $3.4 billion in annual dividends on the debt.

“There is a great deal of anger in the country, much of it justified, about past practices,” committee chairman Barney Frank noted in his opening remarks.

The banks have come under fire from lawmakers who criticised bonus payments and corporate expenses such as new executive jets at a time when people across the country are struggling to stay in their homes or losing their jobs.

President Barack Obama last month called the bonuses “shameful” and the “height of irresponsibility.”

Citigroup, which has accepted $45 billion in government bailout money, last month reversed a decision to buy a $50 million corporate jet under pressure from the government. 

The CEOs were asked to disclose their salaries and bonuses for 2008 and 2009 at the hearing. The highest paid CEO for the year was Bank of America’s Ken Lewis with a salary of $1.5 million, while the lowest was Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Lloyd Blankfein with a $600,000 salary. None of the executives took a bonus for 2008 or will have a salary increase in 2009.

Matthias Says Our Economy Is In Deep Shit And We Should Start Praying

Another interesting piece by Matthias Chang. I am posting what he has to say about our economic state of affair. I always took an interest on Matthias’s work from the days when he had served as the political secretary to former Malaysian Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir. To me Matthias is both a good writer and knowledgeable and has an excellent observation of the economic problem as this crisis is far deeper and he has been saying this all along that the shit will hit the fan.

Shipping rates hit rock bottom – I hope you understand what this means

By Matthias Chang
Thursday, 15 January

Global trade has collapsed totally

Shipping companies like MISC and major ports will be in deep shits

Revising my previous forecast on growth

It will be Negative in 2009 for Malaysia

In a recent Strategy Forum which I conducted, I shared a very simple method of gathering “intelligence on our export trade” with the delegates.

I told them that all I need to do is to observe the ships departing from the ports. I look at the load waterline (L.W.L. <!–[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 7.8 pt 0 2 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 <![endif]–><!–[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]–> – the waterline at which the ship will float when loaded to its designed draft). This will indicate whether a ship is fully laden with cargo. This is simple common sense.

In the past few weeks, many ships were not fully laden. This means that we are not shipping out that many exports <!–[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 7.8 pt 0 2 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 <![endif]–><!–[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]–> – Q.E.D! The authorities can fudge the figures, but the load water-line cannot lie.

Today, if you go to Singapore, ships are all over the port and idling for want of cargo.

It has now been reported that shipping rates for containers (have) hit zero. Holy smoke, the shit has really hit the ceiling fan! This has never happened before. This means that demand for industrial goods have slumped big time. World trade has collapsed. Exporting economies in Asia have been hit hard by the fall in demand in US and Europe.

Last year, I reported and drew your attention that the Baltic Dry Index which measures freight rates for bulk commodities such as iron ore, grains etc. crashed <!–[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 7.8 pt 0 2 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 <![endif]–><!–[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]–> – dropping a whopping 96 per cent.

Some idiots in Malaysia have been trumpeting for over a year that Asia’s economies have de-coupled from the Western economies. This is bullshit!

A big chunk of our exports goes to USA and Europe. Now that these markets have collapsed, it is only time that we will face a major downturn that will be deep and long which I estimate will commence by end of the first quarter 2009.

Had Malaysia took pre-emptive measures in 2006 and early 2007, we could have mitigated our exposure. But Badawi was “sleeping” and his stupid 4th Floor boys were too concerned in plundering the economy for themselves, and to quote one of them, “it is our turn.”

Now is too late.

Even RM73 Billion may not be enough to bailout those corporate entities considered too big to be allowed to fail.

It is time to start PRAYING!

Now US Porn Industry Wants $5Billion Govt Bailout

     

Porn baron Larry Flynt says that the US Government should help rejuvenate the industry, which has been bearing the brunt of the ongoing global economic crisis, with a financial assistance of five billion dollars.

The Hustler magazine founder has even joined forces with ‘Girls Gone Wild’ video series’ creator Joe Francis to approach Congress so as to sustain the same kind of financial aid as was recently approved for automakers.

“Congress seems willing to help shore up our nation’s most important businesses, (and) we feel we deserve the same consideration.

In difficult economic times, Americans turn to entertainment for relief. More and more, the kind of entertainment they turn to is adult entertainment,” the Telegraph quoted Francis as saying in a statement.

“The take here is that everyone and their mother want to be bailed out from the banks to the big three. The porn industry has been hurt by the downturn like everyone else and they are going to ask for the $5 billion.

Is it the most serious thing in the world? Is it going to make the lives of Americans better if it happens? It is not for them to determine,” the paper quoted Owen Moogan, a spokesman for Flynt, as telling CNN.

Francis is also said to have admitted during an interview with the website TMZ that the move is more of a “precautionary measure” than an emergency rescue.

He, however, insisted that “as long as the government is handing out money, we want to be there to take it.”

The pair admit that though DVD sales and rentals have dropped 22 per cent over the past year, online traffic has continued to grow.

“The 13-billion-dollar industry is in no fear of collapse. But why take chances?” they say.

Flynt insists that Americans can do without cars but not without sex, and the only way Congress could “rejuvenate” the country’s sexual appetite was “by supporting the adult industry and doing it quickly.”

There was no response from Congress to the request.

Over 4,700 Malaysians to Lose Jobs

   

The other day, Pak Lah said Malaysia can withstand the impact of the current global economic situation and will not go into a recession. He said Malaysia would be able to withstand the US credit crisis as Malaysia still had strong economic fundamentals as well as political stability as we also have very strong reserves, our surplus is still strong, our domestic savings are also very high and our currency is also stable and not subject to fluctuation.

Najib, our Prime Minister In Waiting, on the other hand, also says Malaysia’s economy is stable and Malaysia enjoys strong economic fundamentals and its financial markets and infrastructure can handle any external shock.

Our Second Finance Minister Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yakcop also says  Malaysia will not be in recession next year because the government’s  RM7 billion economic stimulus plan implemented will start to show good results by the first quarter of next year and based on this calculations there is no possibility that Malaysia will enter recession in 2009. He further brags that Malaysia will not only survive but emerge as a more prosperous nation after all this.

Is Malaysia in a state of denial or what? Is Malaysia the only country in this whole wide world which is insulated from recession? I am wondering. I am curious. Or are our economic wizards much smarter than the ones in US, Europe and Singapore? Are we actually that good kah? As far as I know, United Sates, Europe, Japan and even Singapore are saying they are in recession and I also know that this is a Global Financial Crisis and that the whole world will be affected.  How come our top notch politicians are denying?

Just now I heard that over 4700 Malaysians will lose their jobs in the next 3 months and this is according to our Human Resources Minister S. Subramaniam. Subramaniam told state news agency Bernama that 102 companies had informed the Labour Department that 4,749 workers would be put out of a job between January and March 2009, with most coming from the electronics sector. 

What is happening? Why the rhetoric about Malaysia’s sound economic fundamentals and in denial about the economic situation.

I am worried that Malaysia could experience something far worse than recession if we are not careful and continue to spew rhetoric and in denial. Malaysia could even go into Stagflation which is a combination of inflation and stagnation.

Lets not be in denial. Lets talk reality and stop treating Malaysians like fools. Don’t be in denial. We need a national economy rescue plan to be drawn up fast before its too late.

I know America is responsible for causing this dilemma which is a combination of bad leadership (Bush) and Americans spending too much and borrowing too much and got full of themselves (with wars) with US$10 Trillion in National Debt and with US$52T  in overall debt.

I also know that the whole of Asia would be hit by this recession as it depends on the US economy. Even though domestic demand and diversification of trade in the Asian region will partly counter any drop in the US demand, one simply can’t escape a downturn in the world’s largest economy. The US economy accounts for 30 per cent of the world’s GDP.

So lets not be in denial and politicians stop the spin.

How to prevent systematic poisoning in our homes

Mothers Beware!

Do you know that you are systematically poisoning your homes without even knowing you are doing so?

Hear this, 80 per cent of Malaysian households, particularly women and children, used at least one pesticide indoors, in 2005 according to one survey recently.

Also, the majority of the nearly 2000 pesticide products in the market, in fact all of them, may not be safe to be used at all. Yes, all of the pesticides sold in the market are not safe to be used in our homes.

We tend to believe, and in fact, its our present belief that pesticides will solve all our household problems whenever we have unwelcome guests like spiders, cockroaches, mosquitoes or any crawling creatures visiting our homes or entering our space. We use pesticides for purely aesthetic reasons.

We run to the supermarket or sundry shops and at the shelf just pickup an aerosol insecticide spray whenever mosquitoes or cockroaches invade our space and become irritants to us. Its so easy to kill them all, just like making graffiti on side walls using aerosol spray paints. But they keep coming back with a greater vengeance although we double, triple or multiple the dose thinking we had knock down all of them  by our miracle mist the aerosol insecticide spray.

This aerosol insecticide spray is dangerous stuff. Let me tell you readers why. Okay, take the aerosol insecticide spray canister and have a good look at its label. It will read for example,

Perawais Aftik ( active ingredient )  – prallethrin –     0.09% w/w

–d- phenothrin – 0.05% w/w

Total   – 0.14 %

Perawis Lengai ( inert ingredient )          –                 99.96% w/w

Now see this properly. Although the pesticide contains only 0.14 % of active ingredient it nevertheless contain significantly more inert ingredients i.e 99.96 % of the total contents. This inert ingredient is not at all identified.

All inert ingredients are not at all identified in Malaysia. We are NEVER told what the inerts are made of. This is the case with all pesticides. So, what are inerts and why are they not identified in the labels?  Why the secrecy?

According to the Pesticide Act, active ingredients is the main ingredient in a pesticide which kills, repels or mitigate pests, while inert ingredients are chemicals which simply helps a pesticide to work better.

A strategically inserted inert can enhance a pesticides toxicity by facilitating absorption of the poison through the mouth parts of an insect or the body of the insect. In other words, the inert helps in the process of the poison to be absorbed into the body of the pest or whatever comes in contact with it, including humans.

We can safely say, inerts are actually, biologically, chemically and toxicological active chemicals which are more toxic than the active ingredients itself.

In the US, some chemicals which are regulated as hazardous waste are even used as inerts in some pesticides. Hence, we can safely say that the truth is most “inerts” are not inert.

The combined effect mixing inert and active ingredient is frequently what makes pesticide products so lethal. A study done in a herbicide “ROUNDUP” manufactured by US chemical giant MONSANTO CORPORATION indicates that the addition of the inert ingredient “POLYOXYETHYLENE” to the active ingredient “GLYPHOSATE” substantially increases its toxicity.

Another study done on xylene, a petroleum derived inert used mainly as a solvent in as many as 2000 pesticides shows that xylene may cause memory and hearing loss, liver and kidney damage, inflamed lungs and even foetal deaths.

According to Dr Mohd Isa Abdul Majid, from the Toxicology Laboratory University Sains Malaysia, the effects of xylene includes memory impairments, personality changes, depression, confusion and thought disorders. Even women exposed to xylene may have longer and heavier menstrual period.

So we ask the question, why is the pesticide manufacturer allowed to omit the chemical names of inert ingredients from pesticides labels when the question of safety have not been properly answered?

The answer is because of PROFITS.

Presently, the Pesticide Board of Malaysia which overseas all pesticide sales, distribution and manufacturing only require identification of inert ingredients if it believes that a chemical ingredient might pose a ” toxicological concern.” Inerts which are ” potentially toxic” are therefore allowed to be omitted from labels.

Surely the label on a pesticide should be as informative as the label on a box of washing powder or even a packet of cream crackers or even a pack of cigarette. But the pesticide manufacturers claim otherwise.

They the manufacturers, say inerts are trade secrets and therefore they do not have to release the names of inert ingredients.

Malaysians should have the information necessary to make a reasoned decision about whether to pick a particular can of insect spray or mosquitoes coil. But they dont have it. Malaysians surely will want to see every ingredient listed on every product, especially when so many chemical poison in the market remain untested.

The law currently maintains ” use until proven deadly” policy. So in this respect, awareness particularly for women and children on the use and handling of aerosol insecticide spray is necessary and a must. The Government should not hide the facts and cover for the pesticide manufactures to make the profits in the name of trade secrets. Tell us the truth and dont compromise on safety.

Public awareness and action are they key to the drive to prevent systematic poisoning in our homes.

Selvaraja somiah

This article can also be read in Daily Express Sabah http://www.dailyexpress.com.my/weekly_news.cfm