Winston, Good point you make. Actually it is a pending constitutional amendment which will forbid apostasy from Islam. So that does not necessarily forbid other religions, but bans Malaysian Muslims from becoming something else.
That makes sense as I understand a healthy number of young Malaysians have been leaving Islam and becoming Christians, especially amongst the young women (true also in Indonesia). So this may be an effort by the jittery old Islamic Leaders to shore up their power base which may be eroding as the Earth changes under them in the late 20th Century.
True story- my business partner went to Jakarta about four months ago- came in at night- directly to a hotel. Got up early went straight to an all day meeting. So he did not notice until he came back to the Hotel at night, that there was right across from the hotel what looked like a large Protestant type of Church. People were filing into the building so he said "Let's go check it out."
It was a Protestant Church, and it was packed to his surprise - by native Indonesians- right in the middle of Jakarta. (You probably know that Indonesia has about a 10% Christian Minority which is predominantly made up of Chinese and Melanesians, and maybe also some native Indonesians on the island of Celebes/Sulawesi).
He went into the service- the Indonesians mainly young people were singing hymns and going up front of the Church and witnessing one after another- all in Bahassa! Not somethingone would expect in downtown Jakarta-Truly an amazing experience.
Which brings me to my point. Indonesia's leaders felt sufficiently threatened that they started a campaign to "re-Islamize" Indonesian society. Malaysia may be feeling the same heat from the winds of freedom blowing in the region. The great conundrum for closed societies- how do you give people economic freedom without also allowing all of the accompanying personal freedoms such as freedom to choose your own faith, freedom to travel, vote, etc....
Living in KL you probably already know all of the above- and no more social commentary from the "peanut galllery"... Christmas was excellent on this side of the Pacific Ocean too!
As for techs and CREAF, I am sitting here scratching my head- shocked at how far some of the top flight techs have fallen. The average "haircut" in quality techs was about 40-45%. That would suggest that CREAF's bottom in this cycle (barring unforeseen bad news) should be around the $16 1/2-17 US Dollars/share range.
Indeed that is where CREAF "based" in early December. One technical issue on tap is whether we retest that low- which I assume that we will do sometime in the first quarter until the last bad fallout from Asia becomes apparent. Like you I do not think we need to solve Asia's economic issues before the market heads higher- we just need to get a clearer picture of them so that they can be assesssed and rolled into stock prices.
Falling interest rates should help prop up the market on the downside, and be a great stimulus on the upside when the time comes....
Sincerely,
Doug F. |
