What The Heck UUM Is Doing?

The most stupid action of Universiti Utara Malaysia in charging students Choo Kok Wei, Medecci Linell Repong and Tengku Mohd Hasrul Tengku Malek for merely practicing their basic human rights and responsible students in voicing their dissatisfaction pertaining to students’ rights. UUM must understand students problem and should be solve in professional way. As Robert Kiyosaki said , intelligent not about what is right or what is wrong, but what is appropriate. This unintelligent move by UUM will make this self claimed management university a laughing stock in near future.

The action of the university to charge the students under the Universities and University Colleges Act (Uuca) is clear attempt to silence dissenting voices and to suppress the freedom of speech of the students.
The reason for charging Choo Kok Wei and Medecci Linell Repong is because they initiated an online protest petition to protest the increase in campus bus fares.
Rather than being punished, the trio should be reward as they have proved their ability and courage to fight for the students right.

Is this action a crime in Malaysia? Is it a crime to express your dissatisfaction on an issue affecting yourself? Why the students being denied to express their thought?
What is this country coming to? Is there no freedom to voice out about on issues affecting us? Is the university a jail where students cannot voice out anything but have to just follow, follow follow? If the answer if Yes, well I'm very sure that this university will produce more cow than intellectual graduates.

When someone tries to open his or her mouth, the Uuca is dangled in front of them to silence them. If this continues, the country’s graduates will be just mere followers and not thinkers. For sure, this stupid Act will make malaysian university looked like high school school thinking style.
We will be producing just passive citizens who would not be able to think for themselves or the nation. Is this what we want?

It is time the Uuca is abolished so that it cannot be used to restrict students independence and human rights. Uuca have damaged our students brain power.
Uuca is a political tool for the university authorities and the government to control students on campus and to not allow them to move freely.

Every lecturer or academic staff in UUM know that the freedom of expression is stated in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and Article 10 of the federal constitution. So, why they just silence or make no comment? I guess that they have no gut, preserving their job security, poor mindset, fear of failure and etc.. This kind of lecturer will make our university going bankgrupt of intelligent one day ahead.

The investment scam-artist's playbook

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- If successful businesses share certain "best practices," do scam artists have their own favored techniques? The banker R. Allen Stanford, while accused of a smaller scheme than Bernie Madoff's, conducted his business in ways that make it appear they were using a similar playbook.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has accused Houston-based Stanford Financial Group of falsely promising steady returns to thousands of investors in $8 billion worth of investments sold as certificates of deposits (CDs). On Feb. 19, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents served Stanford with civil papers in Fredericksburg, Va. So far, criminal charges haven't been filed.

Details in the Stanford case are still emerging and many differences have already become clear. Stanford Financial isn't accused of running a Ponzi scheme, only of advertising unrealistic returns and investing in riskier, less-liquid instruments than advertised. Ironically, the SEC says that Stanford lost at least $400,000 with Madoff through feeder funds, all while assuring investors that the firm wasn't involved with Madoff.

But there are also some startling similarities. And what emerges looks like a formula on how to get mixed up in a massive government fraud case. The key elements:

Offer steady, good returns.

The returns reported by Madoff's firm of 10% to 12% year after year were so good that people practically begged him to take their money. Stanford Financial's numbers weren't too shabby, either. According to the SEC complaint, Stanford Investment Group hasn't failed to hit its targeted investment return of 10% since 1994. The returns on the so-called CDs ranged from 16.5% in 1993 to 11.5% in 2005.

Get yourself an obscure auditor.

Madoff used a three-person firm, Friehling & Horowitz, based out of a 13-by-18 foot storefront office in New City, New York, to check his books. The firm, which really only had one active accountant, told a key industry accounting group that it didn't audit. Neighbors of the office said only one person periodically visited the office, usually for a 10- to 15-minute stretch.

Similarly, Stanford used CAS Hewlett, which the SEC described as "a small local accounting firm" based in Antigua where "no one ever answered the phone" when the SEC called. Hewlett's CEO, according to the Financial Times, died in January and since then one of Hewlett's children who lives in Britain has been taking over the business.

Praise the regulators.

In December 2000, Madoff urged the SEC to remain robust. In an advisory committee meeting, he said it would make him feel "very uncomfortable" if the SEC were to relax its oversight. "The S.E.C. must," he said during a meeting of the agency's Advisory Committee on Market Information, "as they have always been, sort of been the overseer of everything that we do to keep us from injuring ourselves, as well as injuring the public."

Stanford followed suit in November 2007 at the Caribbean International Leadership Summit, saying the Caribbean needed to increase its enforcement to discourage rogue investors. "Individuals and corporations ... come to our debt-ridden, small-island nations desperate for foreign investment and in simple terms, rob them." He added: "The reality is that hardly any investor is properly vetted."

Spread the wealth.

Thousands of charities were invested in, or had donations from, Madoff and his firm, including Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Madoff also gave to politicians including New York Sen. Charles Schumer and New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg.

Stanford was no slouch with the giving, either. The financial group sponsors a golf tournament for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and donated to museums in Houston and Miami. Stanford himself also donated to Barack Obama, John McCain and Florida Sen. Bill Nelson and Texas Rep. Pete Sessions. The politicians have said they'll donate the money to charity.

Hope your skeptics are ignored.

Watch out for any nosy investigators who might try to tip off regulators. Hedge-fund researcher Harry Markopolos, to name just one example, had been warning the SEC since 2000 that Madoff was up to something.

And while the Stanford scandal is still unraveling, an early tipster has emerged: Independent analyst Alex Dalmady questioned Stanford's returns in a piece he penned for a Venezuelan economic publication and first floated the idea of fraud. In his article, he wrote: "The bank's deposits have grown from $624 million in 1999 to over $8.4 billion at year-end 2008. That's an average compound growth rate of 34%! Now, that [emphasis his] is unusual. Very aggressive deposit growth is usually a 'red flag' for banks. It's difficult to invest such a deluge of money efficiently. It also indicates that something may be 'too attractive.'"

What we don’t know will hurt us – Frank Rich

FEB 23 – And so on the 29th day of his presidency, Barack Obama signed the stimulus bill.

But the earth did not move. The Dow Jones fell almost 300 points. GM and Chrysler together asked taxpayers for another $21.6 billion and announced another 50,000 layoffs. The latest alleged mini-Madoff, R. Allen Stanford, was accused of an $8 billion fraud with 50,000 victims.

“I don’t want to pretend that today marks the end of our economic problems,” the president said on Tuesday at the signing ceremony in Denver. He added, hopefully: “But today does mark the beginning of the end.”

Does it?

No one knows, of course, but a bigger question may be whether we really want to know. One of the most persistent cultural tics of the early 21st century is Americans’ reluctance to absorb, let alone prepare for, bad news.

We are plugged into more information sources than anyone could have imagined even 15 years ago. The cruel ambush of 9/11 supposedly “changed everything,” slapping us back to reality.

Yet we are constantly shocked, shocked by the foreseeable.

Obama’s toughest political problem may not be coping with the increasingly marginalized GOP but with an America-in-denial that must hear warning signs repeatedly, for months and sometimes years, before believing the wolf is actually at the door.

This phenomenon could be seen in two TV exposés of the mortgage crisis broadcast on the eve of the stimulus signing. On Sunday, “60 Minutes” focused on the tawdry lending practices of Golden West Financial, built by Herb and Marion Sandler.

On Monday, the CNBC documentary “House of Cards” served up another tranche of the subprime culture, typified by the now defunct company Quick Loan Funding and its huckster-in-chief, Daniel Sadek. Both reports were superbly done, but both could have been reruns.

The Sandlers and Sadek have been recurrently whipped at length in print and on television, as far back as 2007 in Sadek’s case (by Bloomberg); the Sandlers were even vilified in a “Saturday Night Live” sketch last October.

But still the larger message may not be entirely sinking in. “House of Cards” was littered with come-on commercials, including one hawking “risk-free” foreign-currency trading — yet another variation on Quick Loan Funding, promising credulous Americans something for nothing.

It wasn’t until the Joseph Wilson-Valerie Plame saga caught fire in summer 2003, months after “Mission Accomplished,” that we began to confront the reality that we had gone to war in Iraq over imaginary WMD. Weapons inspectors and even some journalists (especially at Knight-Ridder newspapers) had been telling us exactly that for almost a year.

The writer Mark Danner, who early on chronicled the Bush administration’s practice of torture for The New York Review of Books, reminded me last week that that story first began to emerge in December 2002.

That’s when The Washington Post reported on the “stress and duress” tactics used to interrogate terrorism suspects. But while similar reports followed, the notion that torture was official American policy didn’t start to sink in until after the Abu Ghraib photos emerged in April 2004.

Torture wasn’t routinely called “torture” in Beltway debate until late 2005, when John McCain began to press for legislation banning it.

Steroids, torture, lies from the White House, civil war in Iraq, even recession: that’s just a partial glossary of the bad-news vocabulary that some of the country, sometimes in tandem with a passive news media, resisted for months on end before bowing to the obvious or the inevitable.

“The needle,” as Danner put it, gets “stuck in the groove.”

For all the gloomy headlines we’ve absorbed since the fall, we still can’t quite accept the full depth of our economic abyss either. Nicole Gelinas, a financial analyst at the conservative Manhattan Institute, sees denial at play over a wide swath of America, reaching from the loftiest economic strata of Wall Street to the foreclosure-decimated boom developments in the Sun Belt.

When we spoke last week, she talked of would-be bankers who, upon graduating, plan “to travel in Asia and teach English for a year” and then pick up where they left off. Such graduates are dreaming, Gelinas says, because the over-the-top Wall Street money culture of the credit bubble isn’t coming back for a very long time, if ever.

As she observes, it took decades after the Great Depression – until the 1980s – for Wall

Street to fully reclaim its old swagger. Not until then was there “a new group of people without massive psychological scarring” from the 1929 crash.

In states like Nevada, Florida and Arizona, Gelinas sees “huge neighbourhoods that will become ghettos” as half their populations lose or abandon their homes, with an attendant collapse of public services and social order.

“It will be like after Katrina,” she says, “but it’s no longer just the Lower Ninth Ward’s problem.”

Writing in the current issue of The Atlantic, the urban theorist Richard Florida suggests we could be seeing “the end of a whole way of life.”

The link between the American dream and home ownership, fostered by years of bipartisan public policy, may be irreparably broken.

Pity our new president. As he rolls out one recovery package after another, he can’t know for sure what will work. If he tells the whole story of what might be around the corner, he risks instilling fear itself among Americans who are already panicked. (Half the country, according to a new Associated Press poll, now fears unemployment.)

But if the president airbrushes the picture too much, the country could be as angry about ensuing calamities as it was when the Bush administration’s repeated assertion of “success” in Iraq proved a sham. Managing America’s future shock is a task that will call for every last ounce of Obama’s brains, temperament and oratorical gifts.

The difficulty of walking this fine line can be seen in the drama surrounding the latest forbidden word to creep around the shadows for months before finally leaping into the open: nationalization.

Until he started hedging a little last weekend, the president has pointedly said that nationalising banks, while fine for Sweden, wouldn’t do in America, with its “different” (i.e., non-socialistic) culture and traditions.

But the word nationalisation, once mostly whispered by liberal economists, is now even being tossed around by Lindsey Graham and Alan Greenspan. It’s a clear indication that no one has a better idea.

The Obama White House may come up with euphemisms for nationalisation (temporary receivership, anyone?).

But whatever it’s called, what will it mean? The reason why the White House has been punting on the new installment of the bank rescue is not that the much-maligned Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, is incapable of getting his act together.

What’s slowing the works are the huge political questions at stake, many of them with consequences potentially as toxic as the banks’ assets.

Will Obama concede aloud that some of our “too big to fail” banks have, in essence, already failed? If so, what will he do about it? What will it cost? And, most important, who will pay?

No one knows the sum of the American banks’ losses, but the economist Nouriel Roubini, who has gotten much right about this crash, puts it at $1.8 trillion. That doesn’t count any defaults still to come on what had been considered “good” mortgages and myriad other debt, whether from auto loans or credit cards.

Americans are right to wonder why there has been scant punishment for the management and boards of bailed-out banks that recklessly sliced and diced all this debt into worthless gambling chips.

They are also right to wonder why there is still little transparency in how TARP funds have been spent by these teetering institutions.

If a CNBC commentator can stir up a populist dust storm by ranting that Obama’s new mortgage programme (priced at $75 billion to $275 billion) is “promoting bad behaviour,” imagine the tornado that would greet an even bigger bank bailout on top of the $700 billion already down the TARP drain.

Nationalisation would likely mean wiping out the big banks’ managements and shareholders. It’s because that reckoning has mostly been avoided so far that those bankers may be the Americans in the greatest denial of all.

Wall Street’s last barons still seem to believe that they can hang on to their old culture by scuttling corporate jets, rejecting bonuses or sounding contrite in public. Ask the former Citigroup wise man Robert Rubin how that strategy worked out.

We are now waiting to learn if Obama’s economic team, much of it drawn from the Wonderful World of Citi and Goldman Sachs, will have the will to make its own former cohort face the truth.

But at a certain point, as in every other turn of our culture of denial, outside events will force the recognition of harsh realities. Nationalisation, unmentionable only yesterday, has entered common usage not least because an even scarier word – depression – is next on America’s list to avoid. – NYT

This financial crisis is now truly global

LONDON, Feb 21 — The financial crisis has moved from Wall Street to all streets, as the economic shock causes strains and suffering in every part of the world economy.

In Florida, a state devastated by tumbling house prices and repossessions, the inhabitants are arming themselves against recession, with requests for concealed weapon permits up 42 per cent in the past 45 days. In Moscow, the murder rate has climbed by 16 per cent. At Tetsuya's — the most exclusive and expensive restaurant in Sydney — the waiting list has shrunk from three months to 24 hours.

Over the past few months, we were told that we were caught in the worst economic crisis for 20 years, then 30, then 80, then 100. It can't be long before someone points out that really, all things considered, the Black Death was comparatively pleasant. But beyond the hyperbole, one thing is clear: what began as a financial problem in certain debt-soaked nations is battering the economies of dozens of others, as well as millions of people working in almost every trade.

It will change behaviour and alter the pecking order of the world's economies. There will be social unrest and changes of regime. Received wisdom, whether about the benefits of free trade, globalisation or European integration, may be cast on to a bonfire of recrimination. Estimates of how long the pain will last range from a year to a decade. Bring out your dead.

Among the most significant developments has been the realisation that the most prudent countries — such as Germany, Japan and China — will suffer as badly as the spendthrifts, or even worse. Despite the whiff of hubris that wafted from Berlin when the banks of Britain and America went into meltdown, Germany's economy contracted by two per cent in the last quarter of 2008, compared with 1.5 per cent for Britain's. The problem was that the Chinese and Germans were too thrifty: their countries' growth was reliant on sales of goods to countries that were borrowing. Now that Americans can't afford its products, China's exports have collapsed, down 17.5 per cent in January from a year earlier.

Americans can't spend because their house prices have crumpled, their shares have plummeted and their banks will not — or cannot — lend them any money. Insecurity is also forcing cutbacks: January saw the highest monthly jump in unemployment in 34 years. The equally worried Chinese seem to want to save still more: imports into China fell 43 per cent in January compared with the year before. Yet if no one at home or abroad wants to buy their goods, the result will be massive unemployment: some 20 million people are already said to have lost their jobs. As they head home from the coastal manufacturing belt, their government is trying to force-feed them consumer goods; 80 per cent of all white goods sold in December were subsidised.

As demand dries up, the arteries of global trade are hardening. Lufthansa's air freight division is putting 2,600 staff on short-time working, while cargo ships have so many empty containers that shipping rates are a tenth of what they were at last year's peak. The knock-on effects are complex, but painful. "For Rent" signs dot empty storefronts on the once sought-after stretch of New York's Madison Avenue, where the vacancy rate rose by 50 per cent in 2008. Rents have dropped by a third as the ladies who lunch think twice about coffee at Barneys, or frocks from Versace. This falling appetite for luxury goods helps explain why half of India's 400,000 diamond workers have lost their jobs. More than 40 have committed suicide.

Or take car sales, which Carlos Ghosn, the chief executive of Renault-Nissan, estimates could fall by 21 per cent across the world this year. Car companies are begging governments for handouts — but that won't shift their products from showrooms. Among other things, lower car sales mean fewer catalytic converters, which means that platinum does not need to be mined so intensively. The price of platinum has fallen by half, and the world's largest producer, Anglo Platinum, which operates mostly in South Africa, is axing 10,000 jobs.

And so the rural Chinese are not the only ones heading home. Thanks largely to a construction boom, Spain was responsible for a third of the new jobs created in the eurozone in 2006 and 2007, but is now losing 40,000 a week, and is offering subsidies for migrants to leave (some immigrants are instead digging in, selling home-cooked food at illegal markets around Madrid). Thai factories and farms used to rely on Myanmar expats; aid workers report that thousands of them are now being rounded up and sent home. Malaysia has banned the hiring of foreigners in certain sectors, while the Philippines, which has 10 per cent of its population working abroad, is braced for family incomes to tumble. Remittances from overseas are a lifeline for the world's poorest: Africans working in the developed world have been sending back US$40 billion a year to support their impoverished relatives, but the World Bank predicts that this could drop substantially this year.

Even when the crisis is not causing outright misery, it is transforming behaviour. In Britain, employers seem to be choosing to fire women rather than men — but in America, more than 80 per cent of those losing their jobs have been male; as a result, women are making up an increasing percentage of the workforce. Of course, not every extraordinary trend or statistic can be blamed on the economic crisis — but it is certainly true that cheap, home-based pursuits are making a comeback, and frippery is out. Australians spent 13 per cent less on eating out in the last quarter of 2008, while a Manhattan dentist is pitching his teeth-whitening services with the phrase "Make me an offer".

The challenge is to come up with a political response that does not make things worse. Western countries used to preach openness, free movement of people, the breaking down of barriers. Now the instinct is to raise the shutters and protect voters' livelihoods. Social unrest is spreading; particularly at risk are the nations of central and eastern Europe, which fervently embraced the free market after the Berlin Wall came down. As their workers headed west, their businesses loaded up on debt to fuel breakneck expansion; now, they can't meet their obligations, especially as the region's biggest banks were sold to Italians and Austrians, who might repatriate cash to focus on domestic demands. "The mess in central and eastern Europe is a clear result of globalisation," says Hans Redeker, a strategist at European bank BNP Paribas. "It should be no surprise to see [Western] banks acting increasingly locally while trying to please domestic governments."

The world's leaders promise to stop protectionism, but their actions speak differently. A joint statement this week from Gordon Brown and Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister, said: "Protectionist measures reduce worldwide growth, deny us the benefits of global trade and confine millions to poverty." Yet both countries are propping up their car industries. Congress wants to protect the American steel industry; the French government is spending more on newspaper advertising.

However restless they are, electorates need to remember that a lack of protectionism lay behind a huge increase in prosperity for millions of people. That is not easy when jobs are being lost. A cleaned-up banking system is a top priority — but the debate has only just started about how our banks are to look, who will run them and how they will be regulated. "The history of financial crises," warns Michael Pettis, professor of finance at Peking University, "shows a mismanagement of the regulatory framework that comes out of them."

Above all, consumers are somehow going to have to change their behaviour. Americans are certain to be more prudent during the immediate crisis, but they need to maintain that more hostile attitude to debt when it is over. It will be just as hard to persuade the Chinese, Japanese and Germans to start spending, in order to supplement export-led growth with domestic demand. "The world doesn't need more stuff to sell," explains Pettis. "It needs more buyers."

As they mature, Asian economies will in time have better pension and health systems, which will help persuade people that there is a safety net for hard times, and tease money out from under the mattress. "Surplus countries have to spend their income and enjoy themselves," says Charles Dumas, an analyst at Lombard Street Research. "The purpose of an economy is to consume." Right now, though, the main objective is survival. — Daily Telegraph

Mid-level managers worry about job security

KUALA LUMPUR: More than half of the mid-level managers in Malaysia are feeling the impact of the economic downturn in their work environment, especially on concerns over job security, according to a recent global Accenture study.

The survey of 157 mid-level managers in Malaysia found that about 40% of the respondents felt the economic downturn was affecting morale as people were worried about losing their jobs.

“In an uncertain economic environment, employers will need to take extra care in keeping employees engaged and ensuring that they maintain their job performance,” said Low Choy Huat, a director with Accenture Malaysia.

As a result of dissatisfaction, more than two-thirds of mid-level managers in Malaysia will consider another job but only about 10% are actively looking for a new job, according to the survey.

Half of the mid-level managers surveyed felt that their job dissatisfaction stemmed primarily from insufficient pay or benefits and a lack of training or development.

Two thirds of the respondents cited better pay or benefits as the reason for their desire to find a new job.

However, Low said the real reason for the job dissatisfaction was due to the morale factor with more than half of respondents saying they were most frustrated for not getting credit for the work done as well as having no clear career development.

The survey, which was undertaken in November last year, surveyed mid-level managers with an average age of 35 years old, with an average income of RM10,000 a month and seven years of working experience

Trump Resorts files for bankruptcy a third time

NEW YORK, Feb 17 — Donald Trump’s former casino company has filed for bankruptcy — for a third time.

Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc., based in Atlantic City, filed for Chapter 11 protection today in the US Bankruptcy Court in New Jersey. Today was the company’s deadline to reach a new deal with bondholders to restructure US$1.25 billion (RM4.5 billion) in debt.

Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka resigned from the company’s board Friday night, after growing frustrated with bondholders. He said the bondholders had rejected his offer to buy the company and that he would consider legal action to remove his name from its three casinos in Atlantic City.

Talks already had been extended four times to try to reach a deal to give the company some financial breathing room.

The company has US$1.74 billion in total debt and US$2.06 billion in assets, according to the court filing.

The casino company owns three Atlantic City casinos but is in the process of selling the Trump Marina Hotel Casino. Its two other properties are the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort, and the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino.

Its predecessor company, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc., went through a 2005 restructuring. That followed an earlier bankruptcy in the 1990s. — AP

A generation shy of risk?

FEB 15 – You did what you were supposed to do. College. Graduate school, maybe. Bought a home. Invested in mutual funds. Bought a house.

And now? You have student loan debt. Your degree has not shielded you from unemployment (or the fear of it). The house is worth 20 per cent less than two years ago, and your retirement portfolio is down 40 per cent from its peak.

So at this moment, can you blame people in their 20s and 30s for giving up altogether on risk of any sort? It’s one of the bigger questions preoccupying those who think about money management all day.

Are we in the process of minting a new generation of adults who are averse to taking chances, whether it’s buying real estate or investing in stocks?

“We trained people that if you took risk and diversified and played by the rules that you’d have a great life for yourself,” said Howard L. Simons of the bond specialist Bianco Research. “But all of that can disappear in a hurry. And most of us can look in the mirror and say, ‘What did I do to cause this?’ And nothing springs to mind.”

I’m not sure we can say for sure whether there has been some permanent change in attitudes toward risk. It’s easy to overestimate the extent to which the world – and our perception of it – has changed in the middle of a crisis. But this one has not lasted long. And its duration does not come close to matching the period in the 1930s that left a permanent imprint on so many people’s financial habits.

Even before the downturn, younger adults were not necessarily enthusiastic about riskier forms of investing, even though they are far from retirement.

A joint study by the Investment Company Institute and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association noted that just 45 per cent of households headed by people under 40 held 51 per cent or more of their portfolios in stocks, mutual funds and other, similar investments last spring. That is less than what households headed by those 40 to 64 owned. Fifty per cent of them invested more than half their money in equities.

Data from Vanguard, however, suggests that its investors under 45 who use target-date mutual funds, which allocate assets among stocks and bonds for the investor, tend to have significantly more money in stocks than those who do not use these mutual funds.

As more employers automatically sign up younger workers for 401(k) plans and use fairly aggressive target-date funds as a default investment, those employees’ exposure to stocks will grow.

So perhaps a better question to ask is not whether people in the first half of their working lives are becoming more risk-averse, but whether they should be.

On Thursday night, Kevin Brosious, a financial planner in Allentown, Pa., polled the students in his financial management class at DeSales University on the percentage of their portfolios they would allocate to stocks right now. The majority would put less than half in stocks; among their reasons were fear of job loss, lack of accountability on Wall

Street and economic fears amplified by the news media.

The problem with their approach, according to Brosious, is that by investing conservatively they are probably guaranteeing themselves a smaller return and a more meagre standard of living in retirement.

Or, as Robert N. Siegmann, chief operating officer and senior adviser of the Financial Management Group in Cincinnati, wrote to me in an e-mail message, “Why would you consider taking less risk NOW after most of the risk has already been paid for in the market over the past 12 months?”

If investing still seems too risky to you right now, you’re not alone. At Charles Schwab, according to a spokesman, younger 401(k) participants are not making many big investment moves. But there is a sense that at least some younger investors may divert 401(k) contributions to other uses, especially as more companies reduce or suspend their 401(k) matches.

In that case, one sensible way to reduce overall risk is to pay down high-interest debt, like credit cards or private student loans. That, at least, offers a guaranteed return, since every extra dollar you pay now keeps you from having to pay more interest later. Also, the sooner you rid yourself of debt payments, the less you would need in your monthly budget if you lost your job.

“I think the only thing younger people should be more risk-averse about is the leverage they take on,” said Jeffrey G. Cribbs, president of Chicago Wealth Management in Oak Park, Ill.

In particular, he suggested they buy real estate and cars at levels below what they can actually afford.

So what kind of risk should you take on with the savings you have left over? To Moshe A. Milevsky, the author of “Are You a Stock or a Bond?,” risk should have less to do with the era in which you live and more to do with what you do for a living.

If you are a tenured professor, a teacher, a firefighter or other government employee, you have better job security than most other people. Your income stream is stable, like a bond. Certain service providers, like plumbers and doctors, have similar security.

Investment bankers and many technology and media workers, however, have more volatility in their career paths. A chart of their income might bounce around like one showing a stock’s price.

“The idea is that we should focus on our human capital and invest in places where our human capital is not,” Milevsky said. “It’s not about risk tolerance or time horizon but about what you do for a living.”

As a tenured professor, he invests entirely in equities. Other people with bond-like characteristics who are far from retirement could take similar risks, and withstand 2008-level losses, because their incomes are fairly stable. Those who have more stock-like careers, however, probably ought to invest a bit more conservatively, in both their retirement accounts and in their primary residences.

For most young people, however, their biggest asset is not a 401(k) account or a home but the trajectory of their career and the value of 20 or 30 or 40 years of future earnings. It makes nearly everyone a millionaire on paper.

So whether you are taking on too much risk right now or not, all of that money will provide many more chances to fix any mistakes you have already made.

Has your risk tolerance changed forever? – NYT

UK veteran killed himself after Madoff loss

LONDON: A retired British army major killed himself after losing his life savings in the alleged fraud perpetrated by U.S. financier Bernard Madoff, his son said Friday.

Willard Foxton told The Associated Press that, at first, he felt so angry after his father William Foxton's death he wanted to attend Madoff's possible trial in the United States to fling the veteran's medals in his face.

Now he just wants Madoff to know what happened to his father.

"I'm sure Mr. Madoff thinks it was just a con got out of hand. He thinks it's all about money - I'm sure that's what he feels," Foxton said in a telephone interview.

"I want him to see that people have died as a result of what he's done."

Police in the English town of Southampton say William Foxton, 65, died from a single gunshot to head on Tuesday and that a pistol was recovered at the scene.

An inquest still needs to determine the cause of death, but police in the town, 80 miles (130 kilometers) southwest of London, say the shooting was not suspicious.

Willard Foxton said it was suicide.

Foxton, 28, said his father told him that he had lost all his money in a Madoff-linked fund about a week before the shooting.

"He was a bit distracted," Willard Foxton said.

"He said: 'I can't really concentrate, I've lost everything in these bloody Bernie Madoff hedge funds."'

William Foxton, who served in the French Foreign Legion and rose to the rank of major in the British army, lost an arm during service in the military.

He retired in the 1970s.

His son said he did not know the exact circumstances of the injury, explaining that his father told him little about his time in the army.

William later threw himself into humanitarian work, spending the 1990s and early 2000s in the Balkans, where he was a member of the European Commission Monitoring Mission and spent time as a spokesman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

He also did work for the German charity Arbeiter Samariter Bund, his son said.

Foxton was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1999 for his work in the former Yugoslavia.

His son said he had been investing his life savings in the Herald USA Fund and Herald Luxemburg Fund, both of which suffered hundreds of millions of dollars in losses as a result of Madoff's alleged scam.

Foxton said he doesn't yet know how much his father lost, but thought it could be in the high six figures.

Foxton's isn't the first suicide linked to the alleged fraud.

In December, 65-year-old French financier Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet slit his wrists after losing $1.4 billion he had invested with Madoff.

He was among the thousands of clients allegedly swindled out of billions of dollars by Madoff in a mammoth pyramid scheme - a word used to describe a scam in which early investors are paid with money raised from new investors.

Madoff was arrested in December as the scheme unraveled and he remains confined to his Manhattan penthouse under house arrest.

"God knows how many people have been affected by this," Foxton said

Britain in ‘deep recession’

LONDON, Feb 12 — The Bank of England is prepared to cut interest rates below 1 per cent and use "unconventional measures" to dig the economy out of the "deep recession" that it failed to spot six months ago, the governor of the Bank of England said yesterday.

Mervyn King said Threadneedle Street would use the "full range of instruments at its disposal" to counter the impact of the credit crunch and a collapse in confidence.

After predicting in August that the economy would be broadly flat over the coming year, the Bank said yesterday output would be slumping at an annual rate of 4 per cent this year. King said the Bank's nine-strong monetary policy committee had not erred by leaving interest rates at 5 per cent last spring and summer before slashing them repeatedly since October; the shock to the global economy last autumn had been unexpected and could not have been predicted, the governor said.

Unveiling the Bank's quarterly inflation report, King said: "The UK is in a deep recession. Monetary fiscal and financial policy have all responded vigorously to that prospect."

The governor added that the UK was caught up in a synchronised global downturn. "Restoring both lending and confidence will not be easy and will take time," he warned.

Despite the aggressive downgrading of the MPC's growth forecasts in recent months, King said there was a risk that the recession could be even worse than currently envisaged. "The MPC judges that the balance of risks to the path for GDP is very much to the downside, reflecting in large part uncertainty about when lending and confidence will recover."

Inflation is forecast to be 0.5 per cent in two years' time, assuming interest rates are kept at their current 1 per cent. The Bank believes that the deflationary forces hitting the economy will require "further easing in monetary policy" to bring inflation back up to the government's 2 per cent target. "That is likely to include actions aimed at increasing the supply of money in order to stimulate nominal demand."

King explained that the Bank stood ready to pursue "quantitative easing" — a policy that involves an expansion of the money supply through the purchase of gilts. The Treasury has already given outline approval for the emergency measures, which are designed to boost growth once the interest-rate avenue has been exhausted.

King said that Threadneedle Street could introduce quantitative easing at any time. "Bank rate doesn't have to go to zero, because we're getting to the point where it doesn't make a great deal of difference where it is."

The governor added: "We now will be moving to is a world in which we would be buying a range of assets, certainly including gilts, to ensure that the supply of money will grow at an adequate rate to keep inflation at the target so that normal economic growth can resume."

Asked about the Bank's approach to the crisis, the governor admitted: "I'm not pretending that everything worked well. It clearly didn't". He added, however, that the Bank needed new policy instruments if it was to target both inflation and the boom in asset prices that led to the financial crisis of the past 18 months.

As for savers, King said that he had "immense sympathy" for them because they are "clearly the one group who did not cause any of the problems we are facing". However, he said that, in the short run, "if we did not take measures to stimulate the economy then the savers would find they would be actually worse off — there would be even higher unemployment and even more of a downturn in the economy".

Colin Ellis, European economist at Daiwa Securities, said the Bank was expecting growth to bounce back in 2010 and be at 3 per cent a year by the end of the year. "The marked rebound in growth that the MPC is expecting raises fears that it is still too relaxed about the recession," he warned.

"Perhaps that is not surprising, given King's aversion to admitting past policy mistakes — indeed, when pressed on these at the press conference, King lost his cool, responding more aggressively than usual to questions about past policy errors. Unfortunately… big errors were made." — The Guardian

Get Rich Using Google Earth

HOUSTON, Feb 11 – A treasure hunter who claims to have found a buried ship filled with treasure using Google Earth, the popular satellite imaging service, is fighting a legal battle to excavate the site.

Nathan Smith claims the lost gold and silver cargo of a Spanish barquentine that reportedly ran ashore south of Refugio, Texas, in 1822, could be worth $3 billion (£2 billion).

Smith, a musician from Los Angeles, said he used Google Earth, an internet site normally used by people wanting to find their own rooftop, to zoom in to a spot north of the Aransas Pass.

There, he saw an outline shaped like a shoeprint near an area known as Barkentine Creek, where the vessel was said to have run aground, he said.

After consulting experts and visiting the area with a metal detector, he is convinced he has found the ship, now buried under mud.

However, the ranch’s owners have refused to allow him on to the land and the dispute has gone to federal court in Houston.

Documents and photographs of the area have been sealed by order of the court to hide the exact site.

However, Smith told an earlier hearing that it is even possible to make out an X marking the spot, which he believes is part of the ship’s capstan.

His lawyers say the case, known as Smith vs Abandoned Ship in order further to preserve the secrecy, hinges on whether the spot – a wetlands area – counts as land or as a navigable waterway.

If it is the latter, US law allows the first person to find abandoned treasure to ask the federal courts and the US Army Corps of Engineers for permission to retrieve it. If it is deemed to be land, then it belongs to the family of the ranch’s late owner, Morgan Dunn O’Connor.

However, other legal experts claim the creek is clearly outside any commercial waterway and so, if it is deemed to be in the water, any wreck belongs to the state of Texas. A judge is due to rule on the case next month.

Ron Walker, a lawyer for the ranch’s owners, told ABC News: “It was offensive that somebody could go on Google Earth, look down and see what they think under the ground ... and come in and say I want to dig up your property. They have no proof anything is there and no experience.”

Smith, who was inspired to become a treasure hunter by the Hollywood thriller National Treasure, said he has been looking for three years without any luck. He estimates the treasure near Barkentine Creek to be worth $3 billion.

The Texas coast is believed to be littered with wrecked ships, but the notoriously muddy waters of the Gulf of Mexico has made treasure hunting particularly difficult there.

Smith’s site is not far from Matagorda Bay, where an archaeological team discovered a ship belonging to the 17th century French explorer La Salle in 1995, following an on-off search that had lasted 17 years. – The Daily Telegraph

Intel Invests In US

While other companies are cutting back, the chip giant plans aggressive capital investment spending .

Moving against a tide of gloomy sentiment in corporate boardrooms, chip giant Intel (INTC) on Feb. 10 announced plans to invest $7 billion over the next two years to expand and transform three U.S. manufacturing plants. The new "super-fabs" could slash the costs to make everything from PCs and cell phones to set-top boxes and retail-sale systems.

As early as this fall, the company plans to begin shipping in volume the world's first microprocessors created at the subatomic 32-nanometer level—transistors so small that 4 million of them could fit on the period at the end of this sentence. To deliver the chips quickly, Intel plans to begin retooling chipmaking plants in Arizona, New Mexico, and Oregon, where a total of 7,000 people will be employed.

By shifting to a more efficient manufacturing process, Intel aims to outpace rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) in its core PC business. And it hopes to make inroads selling chips for consumer electronics, cell phones, and other Internet-connected devices. Such chips could substantially lower development costs for Nokia (NOK), Samsung, Sony (SNE), and other manufacturers struggling to outdo each other with cutting-edge TVs, phones, and other devices. "The chips [that the new fabs] produce will become the basic building blocks of the digital world, generating economic returns far beyond our industry," Intel CEO Paul S. Otellini said in a speech at the Economic Club in Washington, D.C.

An Emphasis on Commitment
The move represents a manufacturing coup for Intel. Otellini used his speech before lawmakers, reporters, and businesspeople to highlight Intel's commitment to investing in the U.S. at a time when many other manufacturers are seeking government bailouts. "We're investing in America to keep Intel and our nation at the forefront of innovation," he said.

In San Francisco shortly after the speech, Intel executives are expected to reveal computers running on the 32-nanometer chips, months ahead of schedule, and announce that consumers and businesses will be able to buy the superfast, energy-efficient systems as early as September.

The massive investment comes as companies across the U.S., Europe, and Asia have announced plans to slash capital expenditures in a bid to conserve cash. A study of announcements from major companies in Europe and the Middle East found they planned on average to cut capital spending by a third, moves that could knock as much as three percentage points of economic activity off the world's gross domestic product, according to a report released on Feb. 9 by Fitch Ratings.

Intel executives had been signaling for weeks that the chipmaker remained on track to spend $5.2 billion, or roughly the same as it spent on capital improvements in 2008, to move to the 32-nanometer manufacturing process. Most analysts, however, expected the company to delay volume manufacturing until early 2010. Accelerating job losses in the U.S. and abroad over the last few weeks point to continued weak corporate and consumer demand for pricey new PCs and servers, researcher IDC said in a report released on Feb. 9.

Stealing a March
Even so, the move is classic Intel. The company's competitive advantage for decades has been driven largely by its heavy investments in manufacturing. The chipmaker has dominated the PC market, taking an outsize share of the profits, by investing heavily to make semiconductors more cheaply and efficiently during downturns. Conservative and cash-strapped competitors fall months behind Intel in terms of cutting-edge technology and cannot compete effectively on cost.

AMD, for instance, is only now beginning to ramp up its 45-nanometer production, the generation of chipmaking before the 32-nanometer Intel is scaling up. And a joint effort between IBM (IBM), Chartered Semiconductor (CHRT), and Samsung to develop a common 32-nanometer process technology across all three companies' semiconductor manufacturing facilities is only now in the testing phase.

"We recognize risk-taking is not a move that is common at the moment," says Intel Executive Vice-President Sean Maloney. "But when you can build faster, cheaper, simpler, more attractive, and more compelling devices, it's a safer bet than you'd imagine."

The chipmaker is doing some belt-tightening in the wake of a 90% drop in fourth-quarter profits. On Feb. 5, Intel announced it was shuttering a chipmaking plant in Shanghai, China. Weeks earlier, the company said it planned to cut as many as 6,000 manufacturing jobs and shut down four facilities in California, Oregon, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

Madoff list adds humiliation to victims’ losses

FEB 9 – It’s increasingly apparent that Bernard Madoff’s investment services weren’t as exclusive as once thought.

An eclectic list purporting to name thousands of people who lost money in Madoff’s alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme – complete with their street addresses – includes housewives and retirees, a plumbers union and a high school.

The list, released as part of his firm’s bankruptcy-court proceedings, is providing fodder for gawkers who are already poring through it to look for friends, business associates and prominent people who had so far avoided the spotlight, but who now have been outed.

The list includes baseball legend Sandy Koufax. In addition it lists some other famous-sounding names: John Malkovich (the actor’s agent declined to comment); the late musical philanthropist Avery Fisher (a family member declined to comment); Steven Spielberg, director; and Jeffrey Katzenberg, producer.

Also on it is the family trust of Susan Leavitt, a stay-at-home mother of two in Tampa, Fla. She was dropping off her son at grade school Thursday morning when another parent mentioned that a list naming Madoff’s investors was circulating. She was horrified: Her family’s name is on it.

It felt like she’d been “socked in the stomach,” she says, having lost what she described as her children’s nest egg in the alleged fraud. “I felt sad for everyone who has been anonymous up to this point and now has to deal with the outright humiliation of yet another betrayal.”

The document, released late Wednesday, consists of people who either were identified as customers in Madoff’s records or who identified themselves as customers by contacting Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee in charge of liquidating Madoff’s assets, or the Securities Investor Protection Corp.

“It’s as public as Paris Hilton porn movies,” says Steven Salbe, a 42-year-old consultant who sets up corporate computer systems in Boca Raton, Fla., whose family lost much of its savings in the scandal. “It’s the one list I prefer not to be on, but I’m on it.”

The fact that it includes so much personal information, including home addresses, is sparking interest from the capitalist-minded. “This is the best prospecting list ever,” says Ken Phillips, who runs RCG Capital Advisors, a Boulder, Colo., fund that invests in hedge funds. “You’ve got the names and addresses of a whole bunch of rich people who don’t demand much accountability.”

New York trial lawyer Gary Pillersdorf adds that some lawyers (not including him) inevitably will use it to troll for clients. “Lawyers all went to law school; they’re not dumb,” he says. “That list connotes people who have a lot of money.”

The list also includes the incarcerated. Melvyn Weiss and David Bershad – two high-profile one-time plaintiffs’ lawyers now serving time in federal prison for illegally paying kickbacks to clients – appear to be victims of the fraud.

This type of information is routinely released during bankruptcy proceedings. But the massive size of the alleged fraud, the tremendous interest it has spawned, and the technology available to post it digitally has fueled an online frenzy.

The document itself is a simple alphabetical list, originally posted on the US federal court electronic records Web site. It’s not very easy to use in that format: Oddly, it’s alphabetised by people’s first names.

But within hours, Josh Linsk, a 26-year-old who runs a publishing company based in Las Vegas, transformed it into a searchable database, www.madoffsearch.com, which he dubbed “The first and only Bernard Madoff Search Engine.”

“Access to this type of information is important,” said Linsk, who isn’t a Madoff investor himself. He said that if any individuals wished to be removed from his version of the database, “we would honour that.”

The list isn’t entirely accurate. New York law firm Wolf Popper LLP was included. But Wolf Popper partner Jim Harrod said he had no idea why. “I have to assume that that’s a mistake,” said Harrod.

One possible explanation is that it was inadvertently included because the law firm, on behalf of some clients, has sued Fairfield Greenwich Group, a firm that invested client funds with Madoff.

Particularly surprising was the appearance of Ira Lee Sorkin – Madoff’s lawyer – on the customer list. Whether Sorkin or his family members lost money through Madoff is unclear. A person familiar with the matter says Sorkin’s father, Nathan, opened an IRA account with Madoff at some point in the 1990s.

“I have never been an investor or customer of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities,” said Sorkin, adding: “I’m not going to talk about my family members.”

Sherry Morse, an interior designer in San Francisco who lost much of her retirement money, says she was shocked to receive an email Wednesday afternoon from an online group of Madoff investors, telling her the customer list was making the rounds.

“People might think I’m rich and want to rob my house,” she says. “To have our privacy invaded, it’s disparaging and disgusting.”

Many of Madoff’s investors spent hours poring through the list in hopes they weren’t included. Diane Peskin thought she was off the hook when her name didn’t appear under the P’s. “I thought, ‘Oh, they don’t have everybody’.”

But there it was, right beside a family member’s name, along with her home address in Bethlehem, Pa. She’s spent the day warding off calls from media. “I am completely appalled,” she said.

Some of the victims didn’t mind the attention. The Plumbers & Steamfitters Local 267 in Syracuse, N.Y., lost about $48 million in pension and other funds it had invested with Madoff.

“We don’t have any issues to hide,” said Gregory Lancette, business manager for the union. – The Wall Street Journal Asia

IMF warns of new 'great depression'

(The Bangkok Post) - The roll-out of stimulus packages and the clean-up of banks must be accelerated, the head of the International Monetary Fund said Saturday, urging action to avert "a repeat of the Great Depression".

IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said stimulus measures announced so far were nearing the IMF's goal of about 2.0 percent of global GDP.

"But the reason I'm worried is that implementation takes time," he said, citing delays in the United States caused by the political transition, and in Europe because of the EU's political processes.

"On top of that I'm worried that all this will work if, and only if, the different countries are likely to do what they have to do in terms of restructuring the banking sector," he told a press conference.

Strauss-Kahn said there were still losses in the banking sector that remained undisclosed, and that until the balance sheets are cleaned up confidence in the financial markets will not return.

"Loss of confidence is now the central problem. Governments and central banks should credibly commit to measures sufficient to eliminate the risk of a repeat of the Great Depression," he said.

The IMF boss endorsed Washington's stimulus package -- which aims to pump at least 780 billion dollars into the ailing US economy -- saying it was the "correct size" and mix.

But he added that it needed to be implemented at the same time as the restructuring of the banking sector.

Strauss-Kahn said the European Central Bank, which left interest rates unchanged this week, was more concerned about inflation than other parts of the world and there could be room for cutting interest rates.

However, measures such as cleaning-up banks could be a more effective tool for Europe than lower interest rates.

Strauss-Kahn said Asia could recover rapidly next year once the rest of the world had emerged from recession.

But he said that while central banks in the region have cut interest rates aggressively and many countries have introduced fiscal stimulus measures, "there is still room for more".

He said the IMF currently has enough resources to face the crisis, but that as problems deepen its needs "may double" and it might need more funds within six to eight months.

Strauss-Kahn played down the risk of ballooning deficits as governments spend big to avert or alleviate recession, saying it was inevitable that most nations would incur an increase in public debt.

Of the risk of excess liquidity as interest rates tumble, he said today's problems had to be addressed before tomorrow's.

"When you have a fire in the house, you first need to put out the fire and then you see how you evacuate the excess water. So that's exactly the situation we're in," he said.

Bill Gates starts new company

Former Microsoft chief executive Bill Gates has started a new company, just three months after he stepped down from his day-to-day role at the computer giant to concentrate on charity work.

According to TechFlash, Gates's new company, bgC3, is headquartered in a high-tech office in Kirkland, Seattle, complete with a Microsoft Surface touchscreen computer that is used as a virtual guestbook.

Public documents describe bgC3 as a "think tank". The new company was originally called Carillon Holdings, and was established in March before changing its name to bgC3 in July.

Sources close to the business told TechFlash that the company was not a new commercial venture, but rather a way of coordinating Gates's business and philanthropic work.

He stepped down from his role at Microsoft in order to devote more time to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a charity he established with his wife to find ways of tackling global issues such as health, education and social inequality.

However, the insider also told TechFlash that bgC3 will oversee Gates's personal pursuit of new developments in the worlds of science and technology.

Federal trademark papers lodged with the authorities state that bgC3 will work on a broad range of topics, including "scientific and technological services", "industrial analysis and research", and "design and development of computer hardware and software".

The company name is thought to stand for either "Bill Gates Catalyst 3", underscoring Gates's ambition to continue innovating even after his semi-retirement, or "Bill Gates Company 3", denoting that this is the third major venture Gates has embarked on, after Microsoft and his philanthropic organisation.

The company's website is live, at www.bgc3.com,

Raja dan demokrasi — Dato’ Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat

Feb 5 — Menteri Besar dalam sesebuah negeri adalah mewakili rakyat dalam sesebuah negeri untuk disembah kepada Raja. Orang lain, walau PM sekalipun adalah orang luar. Kalau tidak begitu maka akan timbul bermacam-macam krisis dan huru hara.

Ini termasuklah siri-siri jenayah dan pencolekan seperti yang berlaku ke atas Menteri Besar Terengganu, Daud Samad dan beberapa Wakil Rakyat di Negeri Kelantan di tahun 1960an.

Status Institusi Raja akan terjejas di mata rakyat kalau Raja mendengar dan akur menerima nasihat (advice) dari orang lain. Di zaman Tun Dr. Mahathir, Institusi Raja terjejas teruk dan jangan-jangan ia terjejas lagi di kali ini.

Ucapan saya ketika di Parlimen di masa itu antara lain berbunyi: “Orang politik akan menjadi Raja/Presiden di masa hadapan. Puncanya kerana peribadi sebahagian Raja-Raja itu sendiri.”

Sistem Beraja tidak menjadi semakin bertambah. Hendaklah diingati benar-benar bahawa sistem Beraja semakin hari semakin berkurangan. Bertambah tidak. Dunia boleh saksikan sendiri bagaimana Raja Nepal di Katmandu, Sultan Hussein di Singapura, Hamingkubuwono di Indonesia, Sultan Kudrat di Filipina, Al-Malik Farouk di Mesir, Shah Iran di Iran, Maharaja China di Negeri China, Maharaja Yaman di Yaman, Iraq, India dan seluruh Benua Eropah. Kini, mereka hanya tinggal sejarah.

Jadi, Institusi Raja di Malaysia perlu berhati-hati benar.

Saya sayangkan Institusi Raja kerana saya tahu bahawa rakyat hormatkan Rajanya. Saya sendiri dapat merasakannya kerana saya sendiri juga daripada keturunan Raja Jembal. Selain daripada menghormati saya dari aspek-aspek yang lain khususnya dari hal agama, mereka hormat saya kerana saya juga datang dari keturunan ini.

Tegasnya semua pihak perlu berhati-hati dalam menangani krisis yang cuba dicetuskan oleh pihak-pihak yang berkepentingan di luar dari Negeri Perak.Ingatlah, Allah Maha Berkuasa diatas segala sesuatu dan Allah tidak akan berpihak kepada pihak yang berbuat kezaliman.

Sebaliknya, Allah akan menurunkan bantuan kepada mereka yang dikhianati dan mereka yang ditindas. Firman Allah S.W.T. bermaksud :

“Maka orang-orang yang zalim itu dimusnahkan sampai ke akar-akarnya. Segala Puji Bagi Allah Tuhan semesta Alam.” (Surah Al An’aam: Ayat 45). — Harakah Daily

Shameful scene unfolding in Perak

THE constitution is the highest law of the land. It is the foundation and source of legal authority, and the Rulers are sworn to protect and uphold it.

According to the constitution, Datuk Seri Nizar Jamaluddin is menteri besar until he resigns of his own accord, or is removed by a vote of no-confidence in a formal sitting of the assembly. The constitution makes no provision for his removal by any other means, including by petitions or instructions from any other authority.

Two principles need clarifying in the light of today's events.

First, the government of the day is established according to rules and principles codified in the constitution. This is the difference between a legitimately-formed government and tyranny, which is rule by the law of the jungle.

Second, a legitimate constitutional government draws all its authority from the consent of the people and only from that consent. The people consent because it is their government formed according to their constitution, whose leaders they have chosen through free and fair elections.

We need to test that consent periodically. At key points such as when governments are to be formed or to be dissolved, the constitution provides for formal, definitive tests to find out how much of the people's "consent", or support, a government really has.

So we conduct elections to test how much support a candidate for leadership has among the people. The question is posed in elections governed by rules and oversight agreed ahead of time. If those elections are not held, or if there is some doubt that they are free and fair, then the question of legitimate leadership is not
determined. It doesn't matter how many people with flaming torches march chanting your name in the middle of the night. You need to prove you have the support of voters in a free and fair election.

Similarly, the constitution provides for a definitive way to test if the chief minister or the prime minister commands a majority in the Dewan or in Parliament, as the case may be. We put the question to a vote of confidence on the floor of the Dewan. Only the answer of the assembly counts. It doesn't matter how many sworn statements, defections, press conferences, and declarations you have, or what forms of advertisement, display, inducement or force you bring to bear on the question.

To formally test the mandate of the current government, whether in Perak, Sabah or the Federal government, the question must either be put to the people through state elections, or to the assemblypersons through a formal vote in the Dewan. These are the only tests that count in our constitutional democracy.

This is what it means to be a parliamentary democracy. To remove and install governments in any other way is to violate the constitution, erode the rule of law, and to run the risk of forming an illegal government.

Legitimate authority can only be established through the democratic means spelt out in our constitution. Rightful authority is an entirely different thing from the brute power that can be bought, sold or seized by force.

The invisible laws make our government, nation and society possible. I won't begin to describe the harm we would do these things if we began to ratify power achieved without regard for the rule of law in this country.

Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah

The Perak tic-tac-toe

Its all but over for the Pakatan Rakyat government in Perak.

In a series of moves akin to the game of Tic-Tac-Toe, Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak has reclaimed the Bota state seat and won support from legislators representing Behrang, Changkat Jering and Jelapang for Barisan Nasional to brazenly offer to form the state government.

The score is tied 28-28 between Pakatan Rakyat and Barisan Nasional with three indepdendents supporting the ruling federal coalition, strengthening the deputy prime minister’s hand as he prepares to succeed Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi this March.

Getting Perak back into the fold will make up for the ruling coalition’s dismal performance in the March 2008 general elections although it will not change anything in the federal Parliament where Barisan Nasional holds a simple majority.

As all eyes turn to Sultan Azlah Shah as he mulls whether to accede to Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Nizar Jamaluddin’s request to dissolve the 59-seat assembly for snap polls and deny Barisan Nasional an easy ride to Ipoh, the implications of today’s events will reverberate wider.

First, it can put to stop any idea of Barisan Nasional assemblymen in Negri Sembilan crossing over like Bota’s Datuk Nasharudin Hashim as Seremban has been awash with rumours of defections resulting from in-fighting in Umno.

Second, it will show Najib’s resolve in keeping Barisan Nasional together as seeks to inspire them against a resurgent opposition led by Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim while fending off a souring global economy that is already affecting Malaysia.

Third, it reflect’s Najib’s desire to ensure he will not be the Prime Minister that will lose Putrajaya to the opposition and will take all means necessary to keep the government firmly in Umno’s grip.

Anwar, who 10 days ago crowed about his success in luring Nasharudin, put it bluntly today when he said, “BN is trying to form the state government by hook or by crook - more by crook.”

His allies in the Pakatan Rakyat, DAP and Pas, are still the government pending the sultan’s decision but he has been clearly outfoxed by Najib and Barisan Nasional’s latest moves to unseat the pact by defections.

“We are pushing for dissolution of the state assembly and fresh elections in the state. We must go back to the people and get a fresh mandate,” said Anwar, echoing the wide belief that Pakatan Rakyat can easily win the snap polls with a bigger mandate.

Elections are clearly not on Najib’s mind as he put it succinctly, “Barisan Nasional now has the majority to form the next government. We will seek an audience with the Perak sultan”.

The next few days will see more Tic-Tac-Toe moves as both sides try to shore up their positions to govern the Silver State and by extension, offer a glimpse of their potential to rule Malaysia in a two-party system

As recession ravages their assets, the rich retrench

NEW YORK, Feb 3 — The rich may not be quite so different than you and me these days: They, too, have less money. Their fortunes have fallen along with the prices of stocks, oil and real estate.

Luxury condos on Florida beaches languish; champagne sales are down; private jets sit idle.

Times may be tough for the wealthy, but they're tougher for those who serve and sell to them.

"Business may be a bit off this year," allows Doug Turner, president of Millionaire's Concierge in Fort Lauderdale, which offers everything from VIP concert tickets to US$13,000 (RM46,800) rides in fighter jets for the wealthy. The rich are cutting non-essential items, and that hurts his business. "Everything I sell, you don't need," he says.

Just what defines "wealthy" is subject to debate. The Securities and Exchange Commission defines a high-net-worth person as someone with US$750,000 or more in investible assets. Under US President Obama's tax plan, people earning US$250,000 or more annually are wealthy enough to get a tax increase — and those people are in the top 2 per cent to 5 per cent of all income levels.

By most accounts, the wealthy have done well. Those in the top 10 per cent of income have seen their income rise 34 per cent after inflation since 1979, according to the Federal Reserve, vs 4 per cent for those in the bottom 10 per cent. Their gains have spawned thousands of businesses whose employees pamper, prop up and please the very rich. Those workers are the builders of the vacation condos, the delivery drivers of champagne, the pilots of private jets.

And while the luxury industry isn't anywhere near as big as the market for everyone else, it's still a significant part of the economy (1.2 million luxury cars sold last year alone) — and one that won't recover until the recession is well over.

High-end pain

Make no mistake: The recession is easier to bear if you have a few million in your wallet.

And people with a great deal of money are still going to spend it. For example, the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Washington offered a four-night package that included two tickets to the Inaugural Parade, two tickets to an Inaugural Ball and Gucci luggage. A well-heeled Obama supporter paid US$12,000 a night for it.

Nevertheless, the wealthy are cutting back. Bentley, the British automaker, says sales are down 32 per cent in North America. And a 1947 Matisse cutout at auction at Christie's in December went without a single bid.

"It's conspicuous non-consumption," says David Wyss, chief economist for Standard & Poor's.

And retailers who cater to the wealthy are slashing prices. In tony department stores such as Bergdorf Goodman during Christmas, shoppers could find handbags marked down 40 per cent or more. Big chains such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale's were chopping prices 50 per cent or more.

"It was unbelievable," says Faith Hope Consolo, chairman of the Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate's retail sales and leasing division. "Luxury never had sales before Christmas before."

They had little choice. For retailers, inventory is a wasting asset: No one wants winter clothes on the rack in the spring. But many luxury retailers are finding that shoppers are still cutting back.

One strategy retailers are trying, Consolo says: Rolling out lower-price luxury lines that will appeal to the slightly less affluent, thereby increasing their potential market. High-end designer Roberto Cavalli, for example, has launched a line called Roberto Cavalli at H&M, the hip yet far less luxe outlet than, say, Cavalli's line for Saks, where dresses range from US$2,195 for a silk halter gown to US$575 for a diamond-chain-print tee.

Yet, some luxury items hold up well no matter the economic climate, Consolo says: "Anything that makes them feel good or look good." A client who will no longer buy a US$3,000 bag, for example, might splurge instead on a US$30 lipstick.

Luxury-home builders have been hit even harder than luxe retailers. A survey by the National Association of Home Builders found that sales of homes in the US$250,000 to US$1 million price range declined 80 per cent last year from 2007. Sales of homes priced more than US$1 million fell 70 per cent, says Gopal Ahluwalia, vice-president of research for NAHB.

Low-end suffering

High discounts and low sales have meant financial woes for companies — and that means layoffs.

Neiman Marcus, citing a tough sales climate, said this month that it would cut 375 jobs, or 3 per cent of its workforce. Macy's said it would close 11 stores. Gadget purveyor Sharper Image filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2008. And in Florida, two affiliates of Ginn Cos filed for bankruptcy as two of its high-end housing developments ran into trouble.

Unemployment in luxury retail and the construction industries is soaring. The unemployment rate in the construction industry is 15.3 per cent vs 9.4 per cent in December 2007. For those in the restaurant business, unemployment has shot to 9.8 per cent from 7.8 per cent a year earlier.

Even casinos are feeling the pain. At the Silver Club Hotel & Casino in Sparks, Nevada, 200 workers were laid off in December when banks refused to fund a buyer. The Stations Casinos in Las Vegas said in December that, as a cost-cutting measure, it would stop matching worker 401(k) contributions.

"Layoffs have been significant, and they will be even more significant in the weeks and months ahead," says Bruce Raynor, general president of Unite Here, the union that represents hotel and restaurant workers. "Las Vegas has been hit particularly hard."

Hotel workers in Hawaii and Puerto Rico have been hurt because those areas cater mainly to tourists rather than business travellers, Raynor says.

Then there's the yachting industry. The market for 450-foot ships called gigayachts is relatively unchanged, says Kristen Cavallini-Soothill, director of the American Yacht Institute, a Fort Lauderdale school for stewards and stewardesses. But sales of yachts in the 60- to 110-foot range are suffering, she says. "Even the Russians are slowing down."

Those who are hiring interior crews for yachts are being more discriminating, and those who get jobs are trimming their salary demands, Cavallini-Soothill says. Crewmembers don't demand US$4,000 a month anymore.

"They're going to get paid US$2,500 a month," she says, adding that crewmembers do get free board and meals prepared by a chef.

In Vail, Colorado, the luxury ski resort, lodging occupancy is down over previous years, says Chris Romer, vice-president of sales and marketing for the Vail Valley Partnership. But many of the bookings were made at the last minute, in large part because of special offers: lower prices, extra days, free meals. And, he says, family restaurants are packed at Vail, while average tabs at luxury restaurants have fallen. For the first time, the town of Vail has started its own marketing campaign to lure skiers.

When will the luxury market come back?

It depends, to some extent, on public attitudes towards wealth. At Symbolic Motor Car Co, which sells Bentley, Rolls-Royce, Lamborghini, Lotus and Spyker, business is slow, says general manager Graham Cox. To some extent, that's to be expected in a slow economy. "We're not on the list of everyone's priorities."

But the slowdown may be due, in part, to a recognition that this economic slowdown seems worse than most. After all, the wealthy can still afford fancy cars. But going luxe may be seen as déclassé in an ailing economy, Graham says.

"The wealthy still have the wealth," he says. "It's the image you project in a bad economy of driving a nice car when your friends or colleagues may be losing their businesses." — USA Today

Stocks: Stuck in the Twilight Zone

In a market where hopes for a government-led recovery are countered by fears of worsening earnings and economic data, what could finally free stocks to soar—or tumble further?
It's not as if the market is acting calm or boring. Stocks, and especially particular stocks and sectors, can bounce wildly from day to day. But the bouncing hasn't really gotten equities anywhere. Standard & Poor's equity strategist Alec Young noted Jan. 29 that stocks are "boxed into a near-term trading range." Despite several attempts, the broad S&P 500 index can't seem to dip below 740 to 800, while it can't rise above 940 to 1,045.

A deteriorating economy and terrible corporate earnings have stopped any major rallies in their tracks. But hopes for a new Presidential Administration and for an economic recovery in the second half of 2009 have kept stocks from sinking lower.

Rates at Near Zero
So far, the federal government has provided investors with some downside protection. "Anytime there is a move from Washington, the market moves up," says Quincy Krosby, chief investment strategist at the Hartford (HIG). "Then, the gains quickly evaporate."

The Federal Reserve has slashed interest rates to near zero and the Fed's monetary committee said Jan. 28 it may buy long-term U.S. Treasuries to help heal credit markets. The U.S. Congress continues to weigh a large economic stimulus package, with the House of Representatives approving its $825 billion version of the plan Jan. 28. The Obama Administration, meanwhile, is reportedly studying the idea of a new Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.-managed "bad bank" that would buy up toxic assets from financial institutions.

Demonstrating the hopes many market participants put in the government, PIMCO bond fund manager Bill Gross offered his own prescription in his monthly note on the firm's Web site, published Jan. 29. He said the government needs to find ways to support the prices of assets like municipal bonds or commercial mortgage-backed securities.

The Wisdom of Bill Gross
At a time like this, "the benevolent hand of government is required and Keynes is reincarnated in an attempt to plug the dike via fiscal spending and imaginative monetary policies that support asset prices," Gross writes in his February outlook.

But while government help can spark optimism in the market, those gains can fade quickly. The problem is that many of the government's most important plans are still being developed. The measures that have already been implemented—such as low interest rates or last year's financial bailout—haven't yet stabilized the economy or financial system. "We need to see it happen," says Uri Landesman, head of global growth at ING Investment Management (ING). "It's one thing to debate a bill in Washington and another to see it put in action."

Moreover, many of the measures being debated are unprecedented. No one knows if they will work. "There's no proof in the pudding," says Richard Sparks of Schaeffer's Investment Research. Without knowing if these measures will be successful, investors are stuck merely hoping for a recovery.

Global Google Breakdown

Google users around the world have been hit by a malfunction that incorrectly reports every other website as potentially harmful.

An apparent system error left millions of visitors to the site puzzled when links to all search results were flagged with the warning 'This site may harm your computer'.

It is thought the site had erroneously identified all other websites - and some of its own pages - as containing malicious software or 'malware'.

The glitch, which prevented internet users from directly clicking through to search results, was fixed within 30 minutes although users of Google's email service Gmail have since reported finding genuine messages sent mistakenly to spam folders.

The errors prompted panic among web surfers who at first feared the popular search engine had suffered some kind of major failure that could have had serious implications for internet commerce.

The Google search page is by far the most popular on the internet, with the overall site receiving several hundred million queries each day. It is the most common homepage and accounts for almost four out of every five internet searches, making it a crucial part of the global economy.

Google automatically identifies sites that may carry viruses and harmful software as part of its searches, but on Saturday all sites that were searched for carried the warning.

It suggests that either every server on the internet had become infected with a virus, an unlikely scenario, or the Google security system had suffered a breakdown.

Users trying to access search results during the outage were forced to cut and past the links into the toolbar and visit the sites manually.

Surfers who tried to find out about the error were unable to access Google's own blog as it has also been incorrectly identified as a harmful link.

A Google spokesman said: "There was a fault. We don't know the nature of it yet. Everything has been solved. We are still making initial enquiries."

Users of the social network tool Twitter who discussed the error reported their internet searches had returned to normal but that problems with Gmail remain. One Twitterer, BradBrownDotCom, joked: "The Google outage frightened me like a schoolgirl, until I remembered an old technology called 'Yahoo'."

Google is so popular worldwide, earning £3bn in income during 2008, that it has been claimed 750 megawatt-hours of electricity could be saved every year if the home page was changed from white to black.

Its headquarters in Mountain View, California, is referred to as the 'Googleplex'