Crisis
In March 2018, about 17 months ago, President Donald Trump confidently – even arrogantly – said that trade wars are good, and easy to win. His first shot at Mexico, imposing a 25% tariff on steel and a 10% tariff on aluminium, helped spark a 420-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) and […]
... written on Aug 05 2019A day after the Wall Street crashed 333 points as a result of less than impressive interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve, the stocks made an incredible rally – skyrocketed to as much as 311 points – until Trump spoils the party. The president dropped a bombshell when he declared an additional 10% tariff […]
... written on Aug 02 2019According to the New York Times, the two optional safety features which could have saved the Boeing 737 MAX jets from crashing would probably add US$800,000 (£640,000; RM3.3 million) to US$2 million (£1.6 million; RM8.2 million) to the price of the aircraft – about 5% of the total cost of the jet purchased by Lion […]
... written on Jul 25 2019Suddenly, Mahathir’s party – PPBM (Bersatu) – may balloon to 41 Parliamentary seats from the current 26 seats, which was doubled through defections of UMNO MPs. Not bad for a party which won only 13 seats in the May 2018 General Election. If that happens, it will be an appreciation of 215% of seats to […]
... written on Jul 22 2019Two weeks earlier (July 4), Britain’s Royal Marines seized an Iranian oil tanker carrying more than 2 million barrels of Iranian crude oil in Gibraltar, a British overseas territory. Britain accused the ship of transporting oil to Syria, hence had violated European Union sanctions. Officials initially said the seizure happened on orders from the United […]
... written on Jul 21 2019American plane manufacturer Boeing has every reason to be worried even after 4 months its best-seller 737 MAX aeroplanes has been grounded. It seems the safety scandal isn’t going to be solved as quickly as Boeing and its stakeholders had expected – suggesting that the problems plaguing the aircraft’s flight-control systems are not as simple as […]
... written on Jul 10 2019US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday that slaps Iran with new economic sanctions. Among those targeted is Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The latest move came on top of actions already taken by the administration in April to cut off all revenues from Iranian oil exports, the lifeblood of the nation’s economy. […]
... written on Jun 25 2019An estimated 1-million people flooded the streets of Hong Kong on Sunday (June 9) in a massive demonstration against what the Hongkies called an “Evil Law”. The controversial extradition law would allow suspects to be sent or extradited from Hong Kong to mainland China for trial. Critics say the new law will undermine the integrity of the city’s […]
... written on Jun 14 2019China just revealed that its overall trade surplus registered US$41.65 billion last month (May 2019) – despite ongoing trade war with the U.S. That’s a mind-boggling number as economists polled by Reuters had expected the country to post an overall trade surplus of only US$20.5 billion. Instead of forecast that both exports and imports would […]
... written on Jun 11 2019Pork prices in China have been hitting the roof thanks to highly contagious African swine fever. Because there is no vaccine or treatment for this disease, the only option is to exterminate the infected pigs. More than 1-million pigs have been slaughtered so far. Between February and April, prices of pork skyrocketed almost 50% within […]
... written on Jun 08 2019
