{"id":620,"date":"2005-09-29T02:28:00","date_gmt":"2005-09-29T02:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maddruid.com\/wp\/?p=620"},"modified":"2006-10-08T13:05:18","modified_gmt":"2006-10-08T13:05:18","slug":"638-of-budget-day-competitiveness-ranking-and-cats-in-washing-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/?p=620","title":{"rendered":"[618] Of budget day, competitiveness ranking and cats in washing machine!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Malaysian 2006 national bajet<\/s> budget<\/em> is fast approaching. One of few things that I wish is that the government won’t run populist policies, like preventing fuel prices hike for instance. In fact, I do hope, however unlikely it might be, an introduction of floating fuel prices regime in the end future. Gradually, of course.<\/p>\n

Worry about inflation? Let the government worry about fiscal-side and let the central bank worry about monetary policies. It’s time we differentiate the two institutions clearly. By differentiate, I do mean an independent central bank. There are proofs that countries with independent central bank have significantly lower inflation.<\/p>\n

Worry about unemployment due to lower inflation? Ah, that’s another problem. Rest assured however that in the long run, both inflation and unemployment don’t matter!<\/p>\n

While some of us are nervously wondering what awaits us in that Pandora’s box, we must realize that there is more than one way to skin a cat or cats. One way is to wash them rigorously in a washing machine.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Another wish is total elimination of income tax and introduction of consumption tax. (wait, we’ll have both income tax and<\/em> consumption tax in 2007! Somebody is cheating us!) In short, full cost accounting. Heh, a green’s wet dream.<\/p>\n

A not-so-bad news in the eve of budget day is the recently released World Economic Forum’s competitiveness ranking<\/a>. Malaysia’s ranked 24th out of 117, up seven rungs from last year.<\/p>\n

And, erm, no cat was harmed in any whatsoever way.<\/p>\n

Inconvenienced? Well, the mother cat was pretty mad. Very.<\/p>\n

p\/s – cool stuff! KoRn with World of Warcraft<\/a>!<\/p>\n

pp\/s – added Primate Noise<\/a> to my blogroll.<\/p>\n

ppp\/s – Santa is real<\/a>! Be afraid. Be very afraid because the Danish Air Force learned about Santa the hard way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Malaysian 2006 national bajet budget is fast approaching. One of few things that I wish is that the government won’t run populist policies, like preventing fuel prices hike for instance. In fact, I do hope, however unlikely it might be, an introduction of floating fuel prices regime in the end future. Gradually, of course. Worry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620","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=620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}