AS NAJIB & ROSMAH SPEND & SHOW OFF IN NEW YORK, RINGGIT COULD HIT 5.00 & MALAYSIA'S ECONOMY DESTROYED

The breaking news from Reuters (Foreign investors may pull US$1b out of M’sia this week), further threatens an already struggling nation of people. But Najib is sweetly singing ‘high-income nation’ status in Manhattan. Wonder how his flagging Umno camp will wade through this US$1billion potential tsunami?

Talk to the man on the street. Chat with your neighbors. Or network with business communities – small and medium. They all tell you the same truth, that is, the times are really tough. The sinking, uncertain ringgit is wreaking havoc in home finances.

Businesses are fast shrinking and cutbacks are a daily experience.

But Najib is beaming in New York with a promise to the world that Malaysia is right on track to becoming a ‘high-income’ nation.

While Najib and Rosmah with their entourage landed in style in the country’s newly purchased and custom-modified jet airline, commensurate with their attire of tailored suits and prized accessories, Malaysians back home have yet to get used to the GST strangulation.

While Najib may be beaming with his spouse beside him and holding up the Gold medal award in Manhattan, Malaysians are now facing the frighcolltening prospect of ‘foreign investors pulling out another billion dollars out of embattled Malaysia's bond markets this week’.

Economy faces collapse

And if that happens, as Reuters points out, it is bound to push the country ‘a step closer to a currency reserves crisis that would send shudders across the region.’

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak addresses a plenary meeting of the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit 2015 at the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan, New York September 27, 2015.

According to Vidya Ranganathan & John Chalmers of Reuters some ‘ RM11 billion (US$2.5 billion) worth of government bonds are due to mature tomorrow (Wednesday, 30 September 2015) and foreigners, who own on average 45 percent of outstanding bonds, are seen likely to pull their cash out rather than re-invest it in Malaysian debt.’

What is just as worse is with Malaysia’s ringgit having fallen ‘26 percent this year against the dollar, plumbing levels not seen since the depths of the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, its bonds have fallen and the stock market has declined 8.5 percent.’

As reported, ‘Malaysia’s markets have been ground down since July, primarily by the escalating political fallout from allegations of graft and mismanagement swirling around indebted state fund 1MDB.’

And the scandals that do not seem to bother Najib and team are further pushing a nation of struggling people on the edge of precarious futures.

But Najib is not talking to his nation’s citizens for sure. He asked for six months and now some three have flowed under the pass. More important is that he makes an impressionable stage appearance in New York and boasts to Malaysian students in the US that he is Obama’s ‘golfing buddy’ and how it does Malaysia proud.

Harsh reality catches up

Let us face facts squarely. Umno is in tatters even with having Anwar Ibrahim safely out of the way behind prison bars. The unceasing arrests and law suits meanwhile are on overdrive mode and is akin to trying to burn the rope on both ends.

Bargain hunting PM buys chicken at RM1

How long more will Bank Negara’s chief continue to sing that our fundamentals are in good shapr is yet to be also seen given the media news. But Najib is telling Malaysians not to believe all that is reported. So is Reuters also another bluff? And if is, that only leaves Umno’s paid media the only truthful reporting in the world!

Should the ringgit crash further; should investors pull out next week; should businesses go under then all those people who sold us the ‘endless promises’ and sang the credo of RM1 chicken be forewarned.

The rakyat, unable to shoulder the impending yoke will not go to bed silently weeping. They will want immediate accountability to the many scandals and the worsening situation.

Hence, all professionals who live their practice by the tenets of ethics; all the business community leaders who profess honesty; all religious heads who proclaim to care for their followers with virtue; all politicians who place citizens’ wellbeing above political expediency – all of you better converge, collaborate and agree now that the end is near and saving Malaysia supersedes political party agendas.

If the economy collapses further and the ringgit slumps another point down, Najib by any measure has failed and all his compatriots must account before this very nation that once weathered the global financial crisis without any crutches.

Hence there is no more space and time to blame some ‘foreign threat’ or worse ‘some locals plotting to overthrow Najib’. - MAILBAG