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Strategies & Market Trends : Asia Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Ounce who wrote (4223)	6/5/1998 10:27:00 PM
From: B Tate	Respond to of 9980

Bill Thanks for the post. I've often said this pace of building could only lead to a severe depression of property values. This is the best estimate of 'open' space I've seen. You will never, never see these figures posted in the local press. Two mall developments that were not mentioned but are STILL underway are Star City and the Mid Valley Mall. The developer for Star City even got financing to build a monorail to support the development (Officially the monorail project is supposed to be a feeder line to the new train system and is designed to support the Commonwealth Games in Sept. Yup new rail systems for an event that lasts 11 days. Ohhh and by the way neither will be completed this year) It was just announced this week that "soft loan" provisions would be made available to complete the Monorail project. They never learn....... bt

To: Bill Ounce who wrote (4223)	6/8/1998 3:56:00 PM
From: Bill Ounce	Respond to of 9980

TIME COVER STORY ON MAHATHIR From: fargoes@aol.com (FARGOES) Newsgroups: soc.culture.malaysia Subject: TIME COVER STORY-MAHATHIR'S BROKEN DREAMS Date: 08 Jun 1998 17:28:01 GMT As Malaysia slips into recession, Prime Minister Mahathir is blaming everyone--except himself. Can "Dr. M" survive the region's turmoil? [...] How did things go so wrong? Mahathir's tirades were the first blow. When Thailand's financial problems touched off last year's currency crisis, forcing devaluation in such disparate economies as the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and South Korea, Mahathir loudly proclaimed that the global financial system was not only too powerful but irrational and unfair. It was easy to agree as panic swept across the region, but Mahathir ranted on and on, and his government started showing a highly visible hand in trying to protect its markets. Last August, Malaysia prohibited short selling--a process that involves borrowing shares an investor thinks will fall, selling them and then buying them back at a lower price. (Mahathir's edict effectively propped up the stock exchange by making it harder to trade.) In September, he announced that the government would form a $20 billion fund to buy Malaysian shares at above-market prices--another controversial intervention. He threatened to use the country's draconian Internal Security Act to punish number-crunching analysts who dared to issue negative reports on the economy. At a World Bank-IMF meeting in Hong Kong, the Prime Minister said currency trading should be "made illegal." In reaction to that, the Malaysian ringgit immediately lost 2% of its value against the U.S. dollar (all in all, the currency has fallen more than 50% since last June), and the stock exchange tanked. "What upsets me," says K.S. Jomo, an economist at the University of Malaya, "is that while there was some truth in what he was saying, he kept on saying it even after it was clear his outbursts were causing the ringgit's fall." [...] Behind the scenes, the key split between Mahathir and Anwar is over the controversial corporate bailouts. To build up the economy in the late 1980s and '90s, Mahathir hand-picked entrepreneurs and showered them with government contracts and easy funding. The crisis has hit many of them hard--and for rescue they have come running back to the Prime Minister. In November, cash-rich United Engineers (Malaysia), or UEM, announced that it had received government approval to take over its heavily indebted parent company, Renong Group. That firm is the flagship of an empire controlled by Halim Saad, who has close ties with Malaysia's ruling party, the United Malays National Organization. Halim was bailed out with an estimated $800 million, and UEM's shareholders, including 24 major international investors and funds, suddenly found themselves owners of a much poorer company. Outraged by the move, investors pushed the stock market down 20% in three days. Anwar publicly opposed the deal; both he and former Finance Minister Daim Zainuddin, director of a newly formed National Economic Action Council, pledged no more big bailouts. But they have continued. [...]