(I) kinda hate to admit it, but the way I've run my business (for the last five years) really does inform my opinion on what Malaysia should be doing in terms of CV19 economic stimulus. First, let's establish that if Malaysia prints money, it is simply borrowing resources from Malaysia's time in the future, and spending those resources in the present. Second, let's establish also that NEARLY ALL countries are now borrowing resources due to the economic outlook for 2020-2021. What remains to be detailed is, FROM WHOM is each country borrowing , and HOW MUCH is each country borrowing?
In the recent past, Malaysia has been conservative about borrowing because of the political narrative that the country's debt had been mismanaged - once again, let me say that the time for that political narrative has passed, given that the reason for that narrative has already been deposed. When we talk about managing Malaysia's competitiveness as a nation, we're talking about it in terms of the universe of all countries on Earth. If we ever had to borrow to invest on Malaysia's growth, we should probably do it when our competitors (the other countries) are also in pain and distracted from fighting us. This is a view I would like to study over the coming months, but since I'm not a professional researcher, my reading on this is likely to be somewhat slow. This is the rough intuition that we need to borrow more to spend now.
The final question is simply a matter of whether we should be borrowing from other countries, or from our own future. For most of the last few years, my little cafe business has been in piles and piles of debt - to me. The reason for this is that I can choose to charge the business zero interest, but if the business borrows from anyone else, I cannot arbitrarily choose that other people will not charge the business interest. If the business finally caves in, I can choose to a limited degree what sort of debt forgiveness I am willing to grant the company - whereas if the business owes money to outside parties, there is a lot less freedom for negotiation (granted, in a liquidation, there generally isn't going to be much room for anything).
So in summary, as a Malaysian small business owner who spends far too much time on social media marketing despite being banned from using our commercial marque on social media, I still think that Putrajaya needs to crash the Ringgit. Just print more money, and use it to make everyone work harder. We're in the middle of our first national lockdown, and whenever it is over we want to be accelerating economic activity as quickly as possible. This almost certainly won't be the only lockdown Malaysia will face - it is likely that we will be seeing local lockdowns based on cluster outbreaks until the end of 2021. The economy needs to be energetic, to rest during bad weather instead of thrashing around, and to quickly snap up opportunities in between the multiple stops that will inevitably come. In order to do this, we need to boost money velocity, and consumer confidence in general.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk... :P
2020-04-04 at 3:59 pm
2020-04-02 at 3:30 am
Napkin: Malaysia's COVID-19 Case Count, 1st -3rd Derivatives WRT Time
2020-03-29 at 12:34 am
Reflection: Malaysia's Fiscal Stimulus March 2020
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Total case count seems to be decelerating, so it seems 14 April really will be the end of lockdown unless new clusters emerge.
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Comparison of stimulus packages: Americans get MYR 5,193/ month / worker... so nothing has changed in 15 years... PPP in the USA is still 8x Malaysia! :D
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Here is (another) contrarian view (I'm accidentally contrarian). I think Malaysia needs higher taxes AND it needs to double federal debt AND it needs to let the currency freefall. Objectives: high money velocity, and higher leverage on our manufacturing position in global trade.
Besides external debt, what are some of the other quantitative indicators which lend credulity to a nation's currency? Tax ratios? P&L stability?
For starters:
1. External Debt
USA: 22 trillion, 60 thousand per capita, 115% of GDP
MY: 0.25 trillion, 10 thousand per capita, 75% of GDP
2.
3.
4.
5.
#ihavenoideawhatiamsaying #iamverysmart
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I really think it's time to drop the narrative that we have too much debt. We needed to harp on it to depose one criminal... that is done, and the deposers have been deposed. We need to move on.
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The Friday stimulus announcement works in Muhyiddin's favour, really. It enables mega project funding to proceed to those already endowed (1) , minimises new federal debt (his political adversaries' favourite target of abuse, 2), props up his familiar voter base (low income Malaysians, 3), forces his political opponents' voter base to stretch their cashflow and incur greater debt (middle income Malaysians, 4), and pretty much ignores undocumented labour (also a sore point with his voter base, and perhaps something he has given thought to in his time as Home Minister, 5). I like his work. I think he's a good chap. That being said, I still think the policy is shit... because it could be distributed the same, but amped up to three times the cashflow, funded by more national debt. It's the perfect time for governments to borrow!
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