Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 28 November 2016 issue)

Is it my imagination or has the ringgit dropped in value? A lot.
Mr RM Low

Whenever our ringgit takes a tumble, and it happens far too often, there’s always the wistful hope that our exports will benefit. But unless there is a sudden surge in demand for smartphones made entirely from rubberwood and swiftlet nests, I don’t see how because most raw materials are imported and paid for in US dollar. We are exposed to the buffeting winds of troubles in faraway lands because Malaysia’s economy and culture is globalised. We can thank our history for that and although it can lead to deep trouble, we probably wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s a fact of life that our currency fluctuates in value but our ringgit has been really suffering recently. This is especially important at the moment because I’m planning an overseas holiday for December and, well, things are not looking good. But on the bright side, I’ve seen that many BN supporters are excitedly pointing out that it’s not the government’s fault. I’m happy for them because for once, they’re right. The US dollar has been surging and emerging markets have been suffering and all because of the fear of Donald Trump.

There’s a sad irony that the markets should be so full of fear when the one who looks most frightened is Trump himself. During his first trip to the White House and in his utterances since, it is clear that his usual bigly braggadociousness has evaporated and that he is terrified. And yet it is the Malaysian ringgit and my holiday that suffer.

If it’s any consolation, the currency of this land has always been unstable. I’ve read quite a few Malayan journals and newspapers from the late 19th century onwards and fear of currency fluctuations was a fact of life for British colonial civil servants, planters and miners. I’m not sure what the “natives” felt about exchange rates because they didn’t leave any written records. The British Empire did not have a common currency and whereas sterling was on the gold standard, Malaya and India were on the silver standard. Just like many of the middle class of today’s Malaysia, the British back then lived with one foot here and the other in another land. Their consumer tastes were culturally western and they planned to move to the west as soon as they could. Sound familiar to anyone?

I have read how the “Europeans” (the term covered all white people) were always keeping an eye on exchange rates and how their moods would rise and fall accordingly. Almost all of them worked for somebody else, very few of them made anything like a fortune and suicides were fairly common. In the 1920s, there was a collapse in the currency and the price of rubber … and several planters hung themselves in their lonely bungalows.

Some enterprising retrenched planters started a shoeshine business in Singapore which was very popular because people just couldn’t believe that white people were actually shining their shoes. The British authorities were horrified and paid for the shoe-shiners to be sent back to England. Perhaps local businessmen were slightly less exposed to the fluctuations in the global markets because they had trade networks within Asia and they were also servicing the local market where everybody, and I mean everybody, would always need their opium.

The mining and plantation companies were just as likely to be French or American as they were to be British. The British authorities didn’t care where they came from as long as the taxes kept coming, and the locals didn’t care either as long as they got their cut or the jobs.

From the beginning, Peninsular Malaya has been a largely open and globalised economy where not everybody experienced prosperity but where a lot of money was made. An upside is that Malaysia has been exposed to and is familiar with western culture, so much so that many Malaysians still see Kuala London as being an extension of Malaysia.

If even after Brexit and a Trump presidency the West remains the global economic fulcrum, then we’re good there; and if China takes over then we might understand that place too. A downside is that we have always been and will always be utterly powerless in the face of currency fluctuations. Unless the disaster is self-inflicted but, heck, we’ll be fine because we’ve all got property in New York and overflowing Swiss bank accounts. Haven’t we?

Is it my imagination or are things really weird in Malaysia these days?
Dazed and confused

What is the new normal in Malaysia? I carry on doing my normal things like I normally do and yet the other day there was a massive rally on the streets of KL and people are now languishing in jail as a consequence. And yet nothing has changed. The rush hour traffic is predictably heavy and even worse when it rains, we drop the kids off at school and we go to work: it’s a normal day. And yet an ex-PM is sitting on a kerbside wearing a yellow T-shirt and the present PM received a very large donation from a foreign country for being a thoroughly decent chap. It’s all perfectly normal. Or let’s just pretend it’s normal and that this can carry on forever and ever. Then pretending it’s normal will become the new normal.

I think you don’t like Donald Trump but I’m a Malaysian and I love him. I can’t explain why but it’s got something to do with feelings, and that’s much more important than facts.
Mr Trumpeter

Although I’m still in a state of shock that Trump will soon be the US president, I have, to my surprise, discovered that many Malaysians think he’s absolutely wonderful and I’ve been trying to understand why. I think that some Malaysians are hoping that Trump will be such a disaster that he will hasten the end of America’s global hegemony (I think their dreams will come true) while the rest quite correctly assume that Trump will reverse things at the Department of Justice.

But I couldn’t understand why other Malaysians trust in Trump until I discovered that he has refused to terminate his global business interests and that his daughter, who will apparently be taking over the day-today running of his businesses, has been joining him in meetings with world leaders. Trump clearly doesn’t care about a “conflict of interest” and sees the presidency as an extension of his portfolio. So now I understand. Unlike that boring goody-goody Obama, with the Trumps in charge, there is finally a family that we Malaysians know how to do business with.

Reprinted with the kind permission of