EURO 2008 Finale

A quote from Gary Lineker, "Football is an easy game. 22 men chasing 1 ball and in the end, Germany will always win". See how true this quote will end up tomorrow.

I've never been a Spain fan, because they look strong on paper but always fail to deliver. But looking at the way Fabregas penetrating the defend line with short passes through the middle, the trick often or traditionally deployed by the latins, exposed the secret of their winning streak.

But the Germans are strong tactically, they can revamp and execute their strategies efficiently, that's why they can pace-up their game whenever required.They can win against any team, as the manager will customize the prescriptions according to the problem. If they play double layer defend, with 5 in the middle, then they have a good chance of blocking the Spaniards from scoring. Else, Lineker might have to come up with a new quotations!

Cenggini baru best....

Thanks Azam for your time. I really hope more of us can spend some time contributing their materials to this blog, as we have members from various background, residing in different region, culture, climate etc. It believe it would be nice if each of us could write something here.

Anyway, talking about the economy, I think its going to take sometime for the economy and especially the KLSE to go back into high gear. This is because the situation right now is not about the region, like the previous one, but something of a global scale, the inflation.Imagine people around the world losing their monies and all are being sucked into the middle east.The richer the middle eastern governments are, the more monies they can hand out to the hedge funds, and the more monies handed out to the hedge funds, the higher the petrol price is going to be.The higher the petrol price is going to be, the richer the middle eastern government will be and the cycle will start all over again and leaving us with less money!

The only opportunity to reverse the cycle around here is to make the speculator start making money by "shorting" the market. Then only we can have some breathing space. I hope the media could start playing the negative song about the global economy soon, so as to hint to the speculators to start selling and create a negative cycle.

One thing I can say about the government is that they are not creative and entrepreneural enough to take care and solve our problems. Obviously they are not leveraging sufficiently on our resources to combat the rice price hike, gasolene price hike etc. In short, they are not thinking enough.

Anyway AY, thanks for the material. Pendekarg, Ron, Kodiang, Pak Salih and others, please dont hesitate to publish your materials here. Just send them to me.

Rgds.

Confusion and uncertainty

Apologies for the lack of postings. As usual, work is still a priority so I couldnt write much. But there were plenty of stories to tell, most notably the fuel and electricity price increase and more political twist this week with the SAPP's no confidence on the PM saga.

The KLCI today closed 10 points higher at 1206 points. But that comes after a series of declines over concerns on inflation and political uncertainty. With the energy price adjustment, the market is worried that inflation might exceed 7% from its usual 2-3% range (from what I last recall), which could also lead to interest rate hike of between 25-75 basis points (from what brokers been telling me).

For an average guy on the street, all this means higher cost of living. Suddenly your take home pay is not worth that much any more. You may need to adjust your lifestyle and cut leisure spending, dining out etc. The low-income bracket might not see direct hit on their electricity bills, or will only see a small increase in petrol expenses on their motorbikes, but prices of other products are rising too because of the general increase in energy cost. So all in all everybody is affected, both direct and indirect way.

The political drama is not helping either. Foreign investors often ascribe a premium to political stability, though the exact premium amount is still debatable. With all the noises of political defection and power transfer, investors are likely to take the sideline and wait for things to unravel. Shorter term investors might even decide to sell first and worry later. Perhaps one might not see rampant selling by all of them, but clearly there's no reason to favor this market when there is political and social tension on the ground.

We're lucky in the odd sense that the rest of the world are also facing challenging times. So the impact on Malaysia is not isolated. China market, for example, has fallen over 40 percent ytd. But this makes their market no longer expensive when compared to Malaysia. US is still unravelling the sub-prime losses on its financial sector and now coming to feel the effect from the spiralling fuel cost. It is a worldwide phenomenon not unique to Malaysia.

I think it is going to be a while before we see market recovery. Right now there are so many theories on how the market will react. Any data releases can have double meaning. Even further increases in oil price can be seen as a positive sign that demand is still strong. Less than three months ago the US Fed was cutting rates, now there are talks of a rate hike soon. May be the market is confused. I know I am.

-AY-

Anti Ghout Cocktail

Assalamualaikum friends.
Kepada kengkawan yang suffering from Ghout, please try this at home.
Kawan aku yang dah kena dan sembuh yang mengajarkan resepi ni...

Segenggam Ibu Kunyit
Segenggam Ubi Cekur
Segenggam Lempoyang

dibersihkan dan dibuang kulit.

1 Cawan Air Masak

Blenderkan semua ramuan di atas dan minum 1/3 resepi ini setiap kali, dan minum 3 kali seminggu,i.e Isnin, Rabu, Jumaat selama 3 bulan dan pantang makanan yang boleh trigger ghout seperti kekacang, daging, ayam, telur, tomato etc. dan banyakkan ulam, ikan dan banyak air kosong.

Semoga Allah taala menyembuhkan penyakit anda.