Categories
Economics

[876] Of the independence of Bank Negara

After running through the 2007 Malaysian budget earlier, I’d like to touch on an issue and it concerns Bank Negara. Bank Negara is of course the Malaysian central bank. In the budget tabled last Friday, the Prime Minister announced that Bank Negara will establish a fund worth MYR 200 million to invest in “integrated agriculture and livestock projects”. I’m shocked to find out that Bank Negara is getting itself involved in agriculture!

Before I go on, I want to clarify that I’m neutral on the current administration’s stress on agriculture. Despite all the political gimmicks, I do see the rationale behind the stress on agriculture. Malaysian economy after all is undergoing structural shift and there’s a need to reassess its bases. Malaysia at the very least need to find the sectors that it has comparative advantage in as our regional competititors are outdoing us. I myself — perhaps due to the limits of my knowledge — am not confident enough to say which sectors Malaysia look into.

Nevertheless, having Bank Negara involved in agriculture is another story altogether. I’m not sure if this is the first time ever the central bank has seriously ventured outside the area of central banking but in my short term memory, this is certainly the first.

Bank Negara is first and foremost a central bank. Therefore, it should act as a central bank. Its business is central banking. It should only focus on monetary policies.

I don’t know if this is an outside-the-box thinking by the government but why couldn’t the existing Bank Pertanian — the main function of Bank Pertanian after all is promoting development of the agriculture in the country — take the job instead?

It does seem to me that Bank Negara is being used by the Prime Minister to advance his political agenda, for better or for worse. Even if that isn’t true, this venture into agriculture is not part of monetary policies and thus, not the responsibility of the central bank. This agricultural venture could distract the central bank from its real responsibilities.

More importantly, through my eyes, Bank Negara doesn’t have the independence that it needs to operate as a central bank. With the lack of independence, imagine if the executive branch of the government suddenly found out that it ran out of cash and decided to resort to seignorage?

Categories
Sports

[875] Of celebrating the return of college football

Michigan is up against Vanderbilt later today at the Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor . My verdict is that Vanderbilt won’t last long under the Wolverine assault.

To celebrate the return of college football, let’s revisit the 2004 Wolverine-Spartan match; the match that I will forever remember.

More of this season from MGoBlog:

Vanderbilt is the opener. Without Jay Cutler the Commodores pose little threat.

CMU isn’t playing Michigan State and will therefore lose. Pass-rushing demon Dan Bazuin will provide a stiff test for Michigan tackles and an indication of how prepared they are for…

@ Notre Dame, a small Catholic school of no importance in northern Indiana.

The Big Ten schedule opens up at home versus Wisconsin, who has no returning anything on offense aside from John Stocco. Their defense appears to be stiff against the run but still dodgy in the passing game. If Henne is on it should be a non-terrifying Michigan victory.

Michigan ends up @ Minnesota next, where Michigan’s run defense will be thoroughly tested no matter how many running backs the Gophers lose in the meantime. The offense should not be nearly as tested, thought it would be nice if Rueben Riley blocked Steve Davis this year.

A pissed-off Drew Stanton, who is rumoured to have teammates, rolls into town next. Stanton is a major trap game for Michigan, as he should be able to score on anyone. Tense moments.

Michigan then must venture @ Penn State to face approximately 110,000 people who would drink Lloyd Carr’s blood from a chalice made out of the skull of a Big Ten referee if given half a chance. If Penn State’s offensive line comes together by this point in the year, this will be a knock-down, drag-out affair. Otherwise it will be Anthony Morelli eating grass.

Iowa frightens me.

Northwestern’s Fun ‘n’ Run offense is next; unfortunately for the Wildcats their defense must accompany them.

Ball State and @ Indiana are also schools of no importance in Indiana, though Ball State did produce David Letterman.

@ Ohio State is The Game.

Let the game begins!

p/s – Michigan 27 – 7 Vanderbilt:

The way the Wolverines started, it looked like it might be an easy day.

Michigan drove 81 yards on the opening kickoff — with a nice mix of the run and pass — and scored on a 19-yard run when Kevin Grady went right and sliced across the defense with a cutback.

After forcing Nickson to fumble, the Wolverines had to settle for a 10-0 lead on their third drive after a pass for a first down at the 1 was overturned by review.

Next is Central Michigan. Oh, I see a slaughtering.

Categories
Environment Science & technology

[874] Of green electronics guide

The next time you plan to buy electronics, you can refer to Guide to Greener Electronics to satisfy your consumption while saving the environment (via):

Nokia and Dell share the top spot in the ranking. They believe that as producers they should bear individual responsibility for taking back and reusing or recycling their own-brand discarded products. Nokia leads the way on eliminating toxic chemicals, since the end of 2005 all new models of mobiles are free of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and all new components to be free of brominated flame retardants (BFRs) from the start of 2007. Dell has also set ambitious targets for eliminating these harmful substances from their products.

Third place goes to HP, followed by Sony Ericsson (4th), Samsung (5th), Sony (6th), LG Electronics (7th), Panasonic (8th), Toshiba (9th), Fujitsu Siemens Computers (10th), Apple (11th), Acer (12th) and Motorola (13th).

Lenovo is in bottom position. It earns points for chemicals management and providing some voluntary product take back programmes, but it needs to do better on all criteria.

Note that Apple performs badly. Now, I have more reason to not to become an Apple fanatic.

Alrighty, it’s time to recalibrate my consumption .

Categories
Liberty

[873] Of 16 days to Malaysia Day

A little over two hours till August 31 and subsequently, the 49th year of a free Malaya. Don’t forget however that it’s roughly more 16 days to the 43rd anniversary of the Malaysian Federation .

Wikipedia. Public domain.

Don’t forget your history, lest somebody will rewrite it.

Also, it’s about two more days to Budget Day. According to Senyum Kambing at Utusan Malaysia today, 6.3 million people watched Siti Nurhaliza’s wedding while 4.8 million people were attracted to something that Mawi did. Now let’s see how the Budget Day – one thing that actually affects the common people – fares.

Selamat Hari Merdeka.

Categories
Economics Politics & government

[872] Of bye bye Chad, hello Venezuela

It’s likely that many Malaysians and others have already read that Petronas – the giant Malaysian state-owned oil and gas company – has been kicked out of Chad. In a rather suspicious way too. The Chadian president alleges that Petronas fails to pay taxes to the Chadian government. After doing some reading, I feel the expulsion of Petronas is an exercise by Chad to forcefully nationalize part of Chadian oil and gas industry. That taxes stuff is simply a red-herring:

The surprise move followed Chad’s decision to create a new national oil company, which it said should become a partner in the country’s existing oil-producing consortium, led by U.S. major Exxon Mobil and including Chevron and Petronas.

If you’re a Malaysian and you haven’t heard of the expulsion, then you’re probably too busy talking about a wedding between a Malaysian pop star and er, somebody.

Interestingly, the People’s Republic of China seems to have a hand on the Malaysian explusion given that the PRC stands to directly benefit from Malaysian loss. So, it’s kind of hard to shrug off the idea that the PRC might have a hand on this.

Whatever PRC role in this expulsion is, if Petronas is kicked out, Chad is stealing from Malaysian citizens. But then, given the fact that Chad was the world’s most corrupt nation according to Transparency International last year, we should have seen this coming.

While that happens, here comes Hugo Chavez to the rescue:

KUALA LUMPUR: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez received a red-carpet welcome in Malaysia on Monday ahead of talks expected to focus on politics in the Middle East and cooperation in the oil and gas sector.

Socialist or not, black gold is still black gold. I’m sure even commies understand what that means.

Who needs Chad, eh?

Welcome Hugo Chavez.