Has the recession starts to ease

When I read the paper this morning and flipped through the classified section, it seems that the job market has recovered. There are more job advertised in the paper today than it was a month ago and we could simply hope that the worse could be over. There are however many people who still thinks that the situation is far from over but who can blame them after suffering from such a bad crisis.

Today is a beautful Saturday and it was fun watching people getting along with their lives and without realizing it people are getting back to their normal lives. There are people who are getting marry and in fact I was invited to one wedding sometimes this month and that ocassion alone can bring a little impact to the local economy. People will need to buy new clothes and new shoes for the the dinner and it is a good sign for people to gain confidence to spend again.

Now it is a good time to spend. If you have save enough cash during the last few months perhaps you can reward yourself with some gadgets you always dream of, like the new Iphone or simply change your old cell phone. You may want to get a new laptop or a new car as these items are on a good bargained price now.

Happy shopping

Is the economic situation bottoming up

We saw many things happening during the last couple of days, both good and bad things. Now many start to wonder why the AIG executives deserve the 300 million bonus when they are partly to be blamed for the company losses. After that there are some many stories going on at the AIG crisis and we could just wait when will it going to end.

Wall streets managed to performed a rally last week with the Dow recovered from it lowest level in 8 years. I believe that some of the investors confidence are restored to some point. We should be able to see some slight recovery in the financial market in the coming week particularly in Asia especially China.

However there are some worries left in Japan. Being the world largest economy, Japan is badly hit during this recession, the worst ever in the modern history of Japan. Although big auto makers like Toyota had announced of some big cut in output and sales, we should see the industries to return back by the middle of the year.

Economic cycle is very much predictable. Some say it will come every 10 years which is quite true during the last 3 resession we had. But it all depend on human behavior. Human nowaday may not be like we were 10 or 20 years ago. Now we need to move on forward with life. The behavior pattern tells us that human will return back to be an aggressive consumer again very soon.

How long can a person delay to buy a car or replace a car. We have computers or laptop that we need to change every 2 years in order to stay with the current technology. So as the cell phones, PDAs and latest range of LCD TVs. Human being cannot escape from the desire to own better things or the upgrade themselves, especially with what we have now in our surroundings.

Not long from now we will see consumer will start their activities to spend money and thus revive the economy back again.

RM60 Billion Stimulus Package – Will that help

Today the government announced a RM60 Billion stimulus package in order for the country to cushion the impact of the ever worsening global economy. Will the RM60 billion is sufficient or do we have that kind of money. As we all know that the US government is now broke and they need more bail out and stimulus package in order for the economy to survive and people to keep their job or worse some may not able to put food on the table tomorrow.

Else where too there are stimulus after stimulus package being introduce, the US, China, Australia and many other countries, we yet to see any positive impact. US giant insurance group may go to bankruptcy after efforts to save it seem to bring not positive result or it was merely to save the creditors. In China, cheap borrowing did not ended up in investment but to higher returning deposit thus economy still remain sluggish. Steel price remain rock bottom, an indicator that no economic movement has taken up recently.

There should be a more serious commitment by the governments and policy makers as well as investors and business owners that everyone should remain focus to revive back the economy. 

Already the Dow Jones is at 7,000 points and I am not surprise to see some more retreat on the Dow. Many companies including big giant like AIG could be delisted. Citigroup market capitalization also dropped that some banks in Asia overtook the US financial giant in term of market capitalization.

Caught in the Rat Race again?

Are we got caught in the rat race again. We just running around in circles and the faster we run the faster we get tired and finding ourselves getting nowhere. Everyone of us has a dream. It maybe freedom of time or unlimited resources to travel the world. But most of us are chasing our dreams using the same old method and now we are stuck in the rat race again.

We are in the month of March and situations are not getting any better in the US or any where in the world. The Dow Jones dropped to a 10 year low and we cannot dismiss the possibility that it may even break the 5000 level. Business are tough and jobs are very hard to secure. Everyday we hear people talking about retrenchments and salary cuts and this is happening around us, our friends and relatives.

What should we do during this time and what we need to prepare ourselves for the worse or when things are getting better. I say there are plenty that we can do. There are plenty that we can make use of during this crisis period. Crisis can be an opportunity for us. It can be like the world after a war and need to be built again. Let us think what we can do during the recovery which will happen not too long from now.

Staying Strong During This Tough Time

We all know that things are not looking good out there. Everyday we hear more and more bad news about the economy, retrenchment everywhere and people are losing job everyday. But we still need to carry on, we still need to work so that we can put food on the table for just another day. It is a matter of surviving now.

Almost very often people tend to take the negative approach during bad times. We start to feel really in bad mood and instead of moving forward we put on the brake and think too much of all the negative things. Thinking only will not solve anything and the more we think and not taking any positive action the more we are going to stuck to the condition we have now.

We have to find something we can do to improve the situation and try to get positive about things. Get along with people who are highly positive, the should have hundreds of ideas in their mind that they do not mind to share. We can use some of the ideas which we might think that is workable for us.

We must remind ourselves over and over again to live for the moment, the present. There is no point to think of the past failures which will stop you from starting something new. We must not be scare of the future results which we think could be bad for us but we forgot that we can actually mold or future, right now, right at this moment.

Like people say, we are the master of our own universe and its totally up to us to decide what is best for us. 

Another Bank to go down RBS

When we all thought that the recession is about to bottoms up, there is another news that the Royal Bank of Scotland RBS is going into very bad losses and need huge capital injection to stay in business. The big question now is when the downslide is going to end and as we talk the Dow Jones is at 8 year low and we need some 8 more years to get to the level we were last year. I just took a few months for the market to wipe off all the wealth we have accumulated all these years. Now isn’t capitalism a scary thing.

RM5,000 for 15 years car

The government proposal to give RM5,000 incentives to people who discard their cars aged more than 15 years is timely to boost back the economy of the country. Motor vehicle is an important industry as it contribute jobs and security to may workers worldwide directly and indirectly. In the US, GM and other big makers are seeking government’s bailout package to rescue the industry and many big Japanese giant makers are reducing output as demand dropped as people postpone their car purchase due to the worrying recession.

Once the incentive is introduced will people start replacing their cars for new one. In Malaysia their could be millions of car that aged more than 15 years and easily more than half of that figure will take the incentive. If everyone decides to get a new car, that mean the demand for car will increase. At the same time other industries that are related to automobile industries will be able to improve their business performance. 

People’s confidence will once again restored as job will be secured and that bring back consumer confidence in spending that will bring more life to other industries such as electronics and others. 

I don’t have a 15 years old car but I welcome such move by the government which I think should have been introduced long time ago and car lifespan should be shorten to only 10 years after which it must be discarded. Not that the car is no longer safe on the road but it will also improve the quality of our lives and environment.

Of course there are other things that need consideration too, like the affordability by the low income people especially when getting a new vehicle which is not cheap as to compare to our per capita income.

Let us see how the public going to react to this proposals.

Funniest Politicians

We in Malaysian has been entertained by a series of clowns we called them politicians with their stupid acts recently. The are those who perform frog jumping, photo black mailing, endless by elections (who knows how many more we going to see till year end) and many more. Simply for what, for power and personal gain thats all, for the people no. Money wasted on so many be elections is enough to trained retrenched workers and help the hardcore poor in the country. Just how much is the battle cry of helping the people is true. 

As a today there are about 200 millions people lost their job recently due to the recession and many more to come. We will not be spare either. Recession is something global and the effect is felt everywhere. Everyday when we wake up in the morning we are greeted with the feeling of fear that we can still keep our job for the day. I know this is not a good thing to think that way. But it is the reality that something is really beyond our control.

However there is something that we can take control of, that is boost up the economy. That is what the government and so called politician should be doing now. The 8 o’clock news talk about nothing but new of party hopping and scandals. Why aren’t there news on bank policies, the country plan if any for economic stimulus. Many people will not understand about recession and how they can contribute to it. Maybe there isn’t any move at all by the leaders and still living in dreams that we are safe from the crisis. Come on people wake up. There is work to be done

No holding back

Today we saw the oil price retreat again and another worry that the world economy is far from recovering. The Asian stock markets also dropped with concerns that Japan is going into a deeper recession. So far there is no sign of any early recovery at the manufacturing side as orders has dropped and many factories are forced to slow down and retrench some of the workers.

Jobless figures keep on rising even in developed nation like Japan and this will eventually spread throughout South East Asia as these region depend so much on Japanese presence for their economy.

In 18 months time we are going to see so many developments in this region. We are going to see something that we never thought they could happen but will happen. This time around the situation is going to be even worse than we could imagine. Jobless rate could easily reach 20% which is just too high. We never thought that the oil price could reach USD140 but it touched that level some few months ago.

Economic crisis will also lead to political crisis. This will not lead to any war but there will be many leadership change during this time. We saw what happened in Thailand, we can see the similar to happen else where.

Will this be enough for us to take, will there any more. Will there be a bigger shock like another big earthquake or tsunami. This maybe hard to predict, but some countries already prepared for the worst. 

 

The jobless figure in Malaysia

We are already in the first week after the Chinese New Year and it was forecasted that more workers will lose their job as companies downsizing their operation or closing their business. Many multi national companies in Penang and Kl already made announcement that they are going to to make some restructuring in operation and thus laying off some workers cannot be avoided. 

Looks like this laying off workers thing is just starting to take off and some people forecast the whole process could to go even worse. Even Japanese giants like Sony and Panasonic are also badly affected and also force to cut down on their labor in order to cut cost.

It is reported that some 100,000 Malaysian will become jobless this year and the number could become more if the current situation is not getting any better. What do we do now? Once one lost a job how soon can they get to employment again. How long will they be without job? What about their family and their other commitment.

Things are not any better in developed countries like the US or Japan than here back at home. Now is the time to look forward and to find other opportunities during this hard time. Indeed there are plenty of things that we can do and not just rely on employment only. During in any crisis there is opportunity for some and many people see more negative thoughts in it.