{"id":357,"date":"2004-05-26T23:22:23","date_gmt":"2004-05-26T23:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maddruid.com\/wp\/?p=357"},"modified":"2006-10-08T07:02:41","modified_gmt":"2006-10-08T07:02:41","slug":"355-of-another-70","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/?p=357","title":{"rendered":"[355] Of another 7.0%"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For the first quarter according to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bnm.gov.my\/index.php?ch=8&#038;pg=14&#038;ac=847\">Bank Negara <\/a>(Malaysian central bank for you non-Malaysians), Malaysian gross domestic product has grown for 7.6%. That is quite high and it definitely reminds me of the days during the Asian boom when Malaysia and a few others Southeast Asian countries earned the Asian tigers nick. Back in those days, Malaysia had consistently grown for more than 7.0% annually.<\/p>\n<p>But of course, this is nothing compared to China, which is growing at almost 10%. Then again, China has only recently started to develop its economy. In contrast, I have read a report somewhere that states a country in Africa has a growth rate of about 70% &#8211; my guess, there is not even a toilet bowl there.<\/p>\n<p>Forget about the toilet and let us concentrate on a few things that caught my eyes. Actually there are only two things. First:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>The underlying fundamentals will continue to accord flexibility for monetary policy to support stronger economic activities, without creating inflationary pressures.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What flexibility? The Ringgit is pegged to the Dollar! Bank Negara is obliged to buy or sell the US Dollar in order to keep the exchange rate fixed at a certain rate. There is little room for maneuvering when it comes to monetary policy.<\/p>\n<p>Secondly:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Interest rates can remain low for some time to come to support the growth momentum.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That sounds totally like Alan Greenspan. I am starting to wonder if all central bankers speak the same language.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the first quarter according to Bank Negara (Malaysian central bank for you non-Malaysians), Malaysian gross domestic product has grown for 7.6%. That is quite high and it definitely reminds me of the days during the Asian boom when Malaysia and a few others Southeast Asian countries earned the Asian tigers nick. Back in those [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}