Friday, January 16, 2009

Bull Mauled by The Bear??

2 weeks into the new year and we have heard so many bad things happening in the market. Banks and companies are not hiring people at the moment and the latest one is the Satyam debacle, the largest corporate fraud ever perpetrated in India. I am just perplexed how 2 brothers managed to falsely inflate their profits and cook their books which amounted to more than $1 billion!! And this had gone on for a number of years!! How the regulators had failed to detect this is beyond me. And we’re talking about a company which is listed in the New York Stock Exchange, for heaven sakes!!!

And what about the Madoff scandal? I mean this guy was the former Chairman of the NASDAQ Stock Exchange but now it was reported that he had swindled up to $50 billion from investors. I read somewhere that when he was questioned by the FBI he allegedly told them that his business was "a giant
Ponzi scheme!!!” I mean if a former Chairman of NASDAQ, a person who supposedly has a sound financial knowledge is involved in this kind of illegal activity then who can you trust????!!!


Reading about these 2 cases got me really upset. Upset because the victims would be the innocent shareholders and investors who had put their trust in the company and had put their money in the hands of the man they think they could trust. Now I understand why our forefathers used to keep their money under the pillow.

Anyway talking about money, I heard that bonus for government officers are good this year. It seems that the government has to give good bonuses so people would spend and inject money into the economy. That’s why you don’t see any empty shopping complexes or why Malaysians can still go for holidays overseas even though EVERYONE kept telling us the economy is bad, we’re going into recession and inflation rate is going to be high. Oh well…

In other news, Jason Mraz is coming to Malaysia on March 4th. I’m definitely going for his concert. A lof of my friends are going for Rihanna’s on the 19th Feb. PGL 3rd season is starting in February. Believe it or not I’ve never seen PGL at Istana Budaya because tickets are always sold out so hopefully I get to go this year. Sigh…more money down the drain…