Forum (3) "Policies To Cope Economic Crisis, What can we as Malaysia Prime Minister do?"

INTRODUCTION

Before we go into the scenario of Malaysia, let us first look at the crisis that first haunted the capatalist economy in the Modern World. An economy crisis which was later known as the Great Depression which caused millions of people went bankrupt and many government fall as a result thereof.

We will first analyst the circumstances and policies of the Countries during the Great Depression era and see if what was the most effective way to overcome depression during that period of time.

Causes of the Great Depression

Recession cycles for those who believe in a large role for governments in the economy believe it was mostly a failure of the free markets and those who believe in free markets believe it was mostly a failure of government that caused the problem.

Currently there are 3 theories on the cause. First, there is orthodox classical economics: monetarist, Austrian Economics and neoclassical economic theory, all of which focus on the macroeconomic effects of money supply and the supply of gold which backed many currencies before the Great Depression, including production and consumption.

Debt

Debt is seen as one of the causes of the Great Depression.

In the 1920s, American consumers and businesses relied on cheap credit, the former to purchase consumer goods such as automobiles and furniture, and the latter for capital investment to increase production. This fueled strong short-term growth but created consumer and commercial debt. People and businesses who were deeply in debt when price deflation occurred or demand for their product decreased often risked default. Many drastically cut current spending to keep up time payments, thus lowering demand for new products. Businesses began to fail as construction work and factory orders plunged.

World comparisons during the Great Depression

Europe

The United Kingdom was unable to adopt major programs to stop its depression. That led to collapse of Labour and replacement in 1931 by a National Coalition (predominantly Conservative).

Canada & the Caribbean

In Canada, Prime Minister R. B. Bennett had increased tariffs on non-British Empire goods. This exacerbated the Depression and contributed to the growth of Hooverville-like camps of the unemployed in Canada. Belatedly, he came around to a Rooseveltian-Keynesian approach which met with the disfavor of both the courts and the populace, leading to his defeat in the elections of 1935.

The Caribbean saw greatest unemployment during the 1930s because of a reduction of consumption in the U.S. and Canada as well as in Europe.

Australia & Pacific

In Australia, James Scullin applied orthodox economic principles during the 1930s and cut government spending, which proved ineffective. During the 1940s, John Curtin and Ben Chifley were influenced by Keynesian economics and introduced policies with a New Deal flavour such as: increasing government taxation and spending; imposing economic regulation; and petrol rationing. Along with the stimulus of World War II, these measure proved productive and similar measures remained in place after the war. In Malaysia, during the global fuel-hike in the early Hanuary to August 2008, our government also did the same by cutting off the mega projects such as the 2nd Penang Bridge and so on. Which in my opinion is also inefficient.

In New Zealand, policies similar to the New Deal were adopted after the election of the first Labour Government in 1935.

Nazi economic policy

Policies

Nazi economic practice concerned itself with immediate domestic issues and separately with ideological conceptions of international economics.

Domestic economic policy was narrowly concerned with four major goals to eliminate Germany’s issues:

1.Elimination of unemployment.

2.Rapid and substantial rearmament.

3.Protection against the resurgence of hyper-inflation

4.Expansion of production of consumer goods to improve middle and lower-class living standards.

Outcome:

Between 1933 and 1936 the German Gross National Product (GNP) increased by an average annual rate of 9.5%, and the rate for industry alone rose by 17.2%.

This expansion propelled the German economy out of a deep depression and into full employment in less than four years. Public consumption during the same period increased by 18.7%, while private consumption increased by 3.6% annually. According to the historian Richard Evans, prior to the outbreak of war the German “economy had recovered from the Depression faster than its counterparts in other countries. Germany’s foreign debt had been stabilized, interest rates had fallen to half their 1932 level, the stock exchange had recovered from the Depression, the gross national product had risen by 81 per cent over the same period…. Inflation and unemployment had been conquered.”

German marriages increased from about 511,000 in 1932 to 611,000 in 1936, while births rose from 921,000 births in 1932 to 1,280,000 in 1936. Suicides committed by young people under 20 dropped by 80% between 1933 and 1939. Internationally, the Nazi Party believed that an international banking cabal was behind the global depression of the 1930s. Control of this cabal, which had grown to a position where it controlled both Europe and the United States, was identified with an elite and powerful group of Jews.

Practise:

The Nazis viewed private property rights as conditional upon the mode of use. If the property was not being used to further Nazi goals, it could be nationalized. Government takeovers and threats of takeovers were used to encourage complance with government production plans, even if following these plans cost profits for companies. For example, the owner of the Junkers (aircraft) factory refused to follow the government’s directives, whereupon the Nazis took over the plant, placed the owner Hugo Junkers under house arrest, then compensated him for his loss.

Central planning of agriculture was a prominent feature. the selling of agricultural land was prohibited. Farm ownership was nominally private, but ownership in the sense of having discretion over operations and claims on residual income were taken away. In Malaysia, most agricultural lands are owned by Bumiputeras, which consists mostly of Muslim. In accordance with Syariah law, distribution of estates are to be divided in formula provided and no will can give more than 1/3 of the estate to a particular person. As a result, the lands owned by poor families were distributed to smaller and smaller portion by the generations until the land no longer viable to conduct agricultural works as each own only a small portion which is not cost effective.

Going back to German, central planning was achieved by granting monopoly rights to marketing boards to control production and prices through a quota system. In Malaysia, we too have the corporation which control this monolopy is Bernas but complaints were made by certain quarters which challenge the effective of the organization. The partice in German was that quotas were set for industrial goods, including pig iron, steel, aluminum, magnesium, gunpowder, explosives, synthetic rubber, all kinds of fuel, and electricity. A compulsory cartel law was enacted in 1936 which allowed the Minister of Economics to make existing cartels compulsory and permanent and to force industries to form cartels where none existed, though these were eventually decreed out of existence by 1943 with the objective being to replace them with more authoritarian bodies. Some of these laws were also similar to the ones we have in Malaysia nowadays.

In place of ordinary profit incentive to guide the economy, investment was guided through regulation to accord to the needs of the State. The profit incentive for business owners was retained, though greatly modified through various profit-fixing schemes: “Fixing of profits, not their suppression, was the official policy of the Nazi party.” However the function of profit in automatically guiding allocation of investment and unconsciously directing the course of the economy was replaced with economic planning by Nazi government agencies.

the proportion of private securities issued falling from over half of the total in 1933 and 1934 to approximately 10 percent in 1935–1938. Heavy taxes on business profits limited self-financing of firms. The largest firms were mostly exempt from taxes on profits, however government control of these were extensive enough to leave “only the shell of private ownership.”

Many companies dealt with the Third Reich: Volkswagen was created by the German state and was heavily supported by the Nazis; Daimler-Benz used prisoners of war as slaves to run their industrial plants. There has been some disagreement about whether IBM had dealt with the Nazis to create a cataloguing system, the Hollerith punch-card machines, which the Nazis used to file information on those who they killed.

Summary:

In Nazi Germany, economic recovery was pursued through wage controls, price controls, and spending programs such as public works.

America’s New Deal

Background:

The New Deal represented a significant shift in political and domestic policy in the U.S., with its more lasting changes being increased federal government control over the economy and money supply, intervention to control prices and agricultural production. This was the beginning of complex social programs and wider acceptance of trade unions. The success and effects of the New Deal still remain a source of controversy and debate amongst economists and historians.

The initial crash of the U.S. stock market occurred on Thursday October 24, 1929; then, on "Black Tuesday" October 29, the stock market fell even more than it had the week before. These events were the catalyst of a worldwide economic depression.

From 1929–1933, unemployment in the U.S. increased from 4% to 25%, manufacturing output reduced by approximately a third. Prices fell causing a deflation of currency values, which made the repayments of debts much harder. The mining, lumber, and agriculture industries were hit especially hard by the drop in values. The impact was much less severe in white collar and service sectors.

What Was the New Deal?

The New Deal was a comprehensive series of social and economic programs enacted during the Great Depression (1933-1941) by the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration in order to solve the nation's economic crisis. Many of those programs are still part of our everyday lives today. It included a vast array of public works with which the Roosevelt administration fought the stagnation of the Depression.

President Roosevelt’s role:

Roosevelt entered office with no single ideology or plan for dealing with the depression. In the "First New Deal" (1933-34) many organized liberal groups (except the Socialist Party, which was virtually destroyed) gained much of what they had demanded. This "First New Deal" was thus a blend of self-contradiction, pragmatism, and experiment. The economy eventually recovered from the low point of 1932, with sustained improvement until 1937, when the Recession of 1937 brought back 1934 levels of unemployment. Whether the New Deal was responsible for the recovery, or whether it slowed the recovery, has been disputed.

Roosevelt formed what he called the Brain Trust, a group of academic advisers to assist in his recovery efforts. They sought to introduce extensive government intervention in the economy instead of allowing laissez-faire to run its course. Donald Richberg, the replacement head of the NRA, said "A nationally planned economy is the only salvation of our present situation and the only hope for the future."

The First Hundred Days

Having won a decisive victory in the United States presidential election of 1932, and with his party having decisively swept Congressional elections across the nation, Roosevelt entered office with unprecedented political capital. Americans of all political persuasions were demanding immediate action, and Roosevelt responded with a remarkable series of new programs in the “first hundred days” of the administration, in which he met with congress for 100 days. During those 100 days of lawmaking, Congress granted every "request" Roosevelt asked.

This first hundred days are now used internationally to judge the capability and the political will of elected government including Malaysia, Australia, South Korea and Taiwan recently after the election year. Many may know about the summary of 100 days in office done by the press but not many knows that this evaluation of 100 days in office actually started by Roosevelt in his New Deal.

Policies:

During the famous "First Hundred Days" that followed Roosevelt's inaugural between March and June 1933, Congress passed 15 major pieces of legislation. Among the major New Deal initiatives were the:

• Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), which provided funding to farmers to curtail their production to stabilize prices.

Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA)

The first hundred days produced a federal program to protect commercial farmers from the uncertainties of the depression through subsidies and production controls. This program began with the Agricultural Adjustment Act, creating the, which Congress passed in May 1933. The act reflected the demands of leaders of major farm organizations, especially the Farm Bureau, and reflected debates among Roosevelt's farm advisers such as Henry A. Wallace, Rexford Tugwell, and George Peek.

The AAA implemented a provision for crop reductions known as the "domestic allotment" system of the act. Under this system, producers of corn, cotton, dairy products, hogs, rice, tobacco, and wheat would decide on production limits for their crops. The AAA would then pay land owners subsidies for leaving some of their land idle with funds provided by a new tax on food processing. Farm prices were to be subsidized up to the point of parity. Some crops were ordered to be destroyed and some livestock slaughtered to maintain prices. The idea was that the less produced, the higher the price, and the farmer would benefit. Farm incomes increased significantly in the first three years of the New Deal. Food prices hardly rose at all, the rise in farm incomes was the result of the subsidies.

The AAA established an important and long-lasting federal role in the planning on the entire agricultural sector of the economy. The original AAA did not provide for any sharecroppers or tenants or farm laborers who might become unemployed, but there were other New Deal programs especially for them.

• National Industrial Recovery Act (NRA), which provided for codes of fair competition to regulate industry and for the first time in American history guaranteed the rights of labor to bargain collectively

The Administration insisted that business would have to ensure that the incomes of workers would rise along with their prices. The product of all these impulses and pressures was the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) which was passed by Congress in June 1933. The NIRA established the National Planning Board, also called the National Resources Planning Board (NRPB), to assist in planning the economy by providing recommendations and information. Fredric A. Delano, the president's uncle, was appointed head of the NRPB.

The NIRA guaranteed to workers the right of collective bargaining and helped spur some union organizing activity, but much faster growth of union membership came before the 1935 Wagner Act. The NIRA established the National Recovery Administration (NRA), which attempted to stabilize prices and wages through cooperative "code authorities" involving government, business, and labor. The NRA included a multitude of regulations imposing the pricing and production standards for all sorts of goods and services. Most economists were dubious because it was based on fixing prices to reduce competition.

• Public Works Administration (PWA), which constructed roads, dams, and public buildings

From 1933 to 1935 Public Works Administration spent $3.3 billion with private companies to build 34,599 projects, many of them quite large. In Malaysia, the same was done by our Jabatan Kerja Raya (JKR).

• Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which served to insure deposits in banks. In Malaysia, we now have the PIAM o insure deposits in banks.

• Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which provided for navigation, flood control, electricity generation, and economic development in the Tennessee River Valley, at that time one of the poorest and least developed regions of America. This is similar practise followed by Malaysia in the FELDA development area.

• Resettlement Administration (later the Farm Security Administration) and the Division of Homestead Subsistence created relocation opportunities for families. Other programs provided for the creation of three complete new towns and supported other struggling villages.

Many people lived in severe poverty, especially in the South. Major programs addressed to their needs included the Resettlement Administration (RA), the Farm Security Administration (FSA), the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and rural welfare projects sponsored by the WPA, NYA, Forest Service and CCC, including school lunches, building new schools, opening roads in remote areas, reforestation, and purchase of marginal lands to enlarge national forests.

The AAA was later been replaced by a similar program after been declared unconstitutional by the USA COurt. Instead of paying farmers for letting fields lie barren, this program instead subsidized them for planting soil enriching crops such as alfalfa that would not be sold on the market. Federal regulation of agricultural production has been modified many times since then, but together with large subsidies it is still in effect in 2008.

• Rural Electrification Administration (REA) –the development of a system to provide electricity to rural America.

• Social Security Administration

Two of the most recognizable/remembered programs of Roosevelt's administration were the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) later known as the Works Projects Administration. The CCC was a special work program for unemployed young men whose enrollees planted trees and fought forest fires, built public parks, drained swamps to fight malaria, restocked rivers with fish, worked on flood control projects, and engaged in many other initiatives that

helped to conserve the nation's environment and make it available for recreation for millions of Americans. The WPA was a compilation of varied work projects that provided employment for artists, musicians, actors, authors, and laborers which helped to put millions of men, women and youth back to work. Through these and other programs, the New Deal began a vast documentation and transformation of the United States.

Today, the New Deal legacy still supports USA. Much of America's infrastructure was built by New Deal programs from 1933 to 1941, including roads, electrical systems, municipal power plants, water and sewage systems, and schools. Many government social programs have their roots in the New Deal, including major support for public education, public health and public recreation. Economic policies that were established include banking regulations, Social Security, and collective bargaining. People working in New Deal programs constructed many public buildings, public sites, parks, and public art including murals, sculptures and paintings. Programs promoted contributions to literature, music and theater and oral histories of the period. Most of all, the New Deal restored faith in the America's republic and its institutions.

Bank and monetary reforms

On March 9, Roosevelt sent to Congress the Emergency Banking Act, drafted in large part by Hoover's Administration; the act was passed and signed into law the same day. It provided for a system of reopening sound banks under Treasury supervision, with federal loans available if needed. Three-quarters of the banks in the Federal Reserve System reopened within the next three days. Billions of dollars in "hoarded" currency and gold flowed back into them within a month, thus stabilizing the banking system. During all of 1933, 4,004 small local banks were permanently closed and were merged into larger banks. (Their depositors eventually received 85 cents on the dollar of their deposits.) In Malaysia, for the reason of competitiveness, as at 2008, the banks in Malaysia have merged to ensure growth and financial stability in the local banks. In America, to avoid future "cures" the Congress created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in June, which insured deposits for up to $5,000. The establishment of the FDIC virtually ended the era of "runs" on banks.

In March and April in a series of Acts of Congress and executive orders Roosevelt and Congress suspended the gold standard for United States currency. Under the gold standard, the Federal Reserve was prevented from lowering interest rates and was instead forced to raise rates to protect the dollar. Actions to suspend the gold standard included Executive Order 6073, the Emergency Banking Act, Executive Order 6102, Executive Order 6111, the 1933 Banking Act and House Joint Resolution 192. Anyone holding significant amounts of gold coinage was mandated to exchange it for the existing fixed price of US dollars, after which the US would no longer pay gold on demand for the dollar, and gold would no longer be considered valid legal tender for debts in private and public contracts. The dollar was allowed to float freely on foreign exchange markets with no guaranteed price in gold, only to be fixed again at a significantly lower level a year later with the passage of the Gold Reserve Act in 1934. Markets immediately responded well to the suspension, although it was assumed to be temporary. In Malaysia, during th 1997 Financial Crisis, our country under the leadership of Tun Dr. Mahathir, the then Prime Minister, had done similar actions. Malaysia have unpegged with the US Dollar and that any money taken out of Malaysia or above RM50 in currency value no longer be acceptable after a period of time. As a result of this, the liquidation of Malaysia economic remain solid and Malaysia survived the financial crisis without major restructuring and unemployment unlike Indonesia and South Korea during that period of time when IMF intervened into these companies.

In January 1934, Roosevelt raised the official price of gold to $35 per ounce, thereby devaluing the U.S. dollar by 41%.

Private gold reserves held outside the country (for instance in Swiss banks) were largely undetected and thus unaffected. Rich people who knew or suspected the move was coming or simply did not trust FDR's government therefore made large profits.

Recovery was steady and strong until 1937. Except for unemployment, the economy by 1937 surpassed the levels of the late 1920s. The Recession of 1937 was a temporary downturn. Private sector employment, especially in manufacturing, recovered to the level of the 1920s but failed to advance further until the war.

The Economy Act, drafted by Budget Director Lewis Douglas was passed on March 14, 1933. The act proposed to balance the "regular" (non-emergency) federal budget by cutting the salaries of government employees and cutting pensions to veterans by forty percent. It saved $500 million per year and reassured deficit hawks such as Douglas that the new President was fiscally conservative. Roosevelt argued there were two budgets: the "regular" federal budget, which he balanced, and the "emergency budget," which was needed to defeat the depression; it was imbalanced on a temporary basis.

Repeal of Prohibition

In a measure that garnered substantial popular support for his New Deal, Roosevelt, on March 13, 1933, moved to put to rest one of the most divisive cultural issues of the 1920s. Just nine days later he signed the bill to legalize the manufacture and sale of alcohol, an interim measure pending the repeal of Prohibition, for which a constitutional amendment (the Twenty-first) was already in process. The amendment was ratified later in 1933. States and cities gained additional new revenue, and Roosevelt secured his popularity in the cities, which were overwhelmingly well.

Outcome- Employment

Employment in private sector factories recovered to the level of the late 1920s by 1937 but did not grow much bigger until the war came and manufacturing employment leaped from 11 million in 1940 to 18 million in 1943.

Roosevelt nationalized unemployment relief through the Works Progress Administration (WPA), headed by close friend Harry Hopkins. It created hundreds of thousands of low-skilled blue collar jobs for unemployed men (and some for unemployed women and white collar workers). The National Youth Administration was the semi-autonomous WPA program for youth.

The most important program of 1935 was the Social Security Act, which established a system of universal retirement pensions, unemployment insurance, and welfare benefits for poor families and the handicapped. It established the framework for the U.S. welfare system. Roosevelt insisted that it should be funded by payroll taxes rather than from the general fund; he said, "We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program." One of the last New Deal agencies was the United States Housing Authority, created in 1937.

Defeat: court packing and executive reorganization

Roosevelt, however, emboldened by the triumphs of his first term, set out in 1937 to consolidate authority within the government in ways that provoked powerful opposition. Early in the year, he asked Congress to expand the number of justices on the Supreme Court so as to allow him to appoint members sympathetic to his ideas and hence tip the ideological balance of the Court. This proposal provoked a storm of protest.

In one sense, however, it succeeded; Justice Owen Roberts, switched positions and began voting to uphold New Deal measures, effectively creating a liberal majority in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish and National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation thus departing from the Lochner v. New York era and giving the government more power in questions of economic policies. Journalists called this change "the switch in time that saved nine." Recent scholars have noted that since the vote in Parrish took place several months before the court-packing plan was announced, other factors, like evolving jurisprudence, must have contributed to the Court's swing. The opinions handed down in the spring of 1937, favorable to the government, also contributed to the downfall of the plan. In any case, the "court packing plan," as it was known, did lasting political damage to Roosevelt and was finally rejected by Congress in July.

As a result of the New Deal, political and economic life became politically more competitive than before, with workers, farmers, consumers, and others now able to press their demands upon the government in ways that in the past had been available only to the corporate world. Hence the frequent description of the government the New Deal created as the "broker state," To the New Dealers, the free market meant "cut-throat competition" and they considered that evil. It was not until the 1970s and 1980s that most of the New Deal regulations were relaxed.

The Roosevelt Administration was under assault during FDR's second term, which presided over a new dip in the Great Depression in the fall of 1937 that continued through most of 1938. Production declined sharply, as did profits and employment. Unemployment jumped from 14.3% in 1937 to 19.0% in 1938. Keynesian economists speculated that this was a result of a premature effort to curb government spending and balance the budget, while conservatives said it was caused by attacks on business and by the huge strikes caused by the organizing activities of the CIO and the American Federation of Labor (AFL).

But the Administration's other response to the 1937 deepening of the Great Depression had more tangible results. Ignoring the requests of the Treasury Department and responding to the urgings of the converts to Keynesian economics and others in his Administration, Roosevelt embarked on an antidote to the depression, reluctantly abandoning his efforts to balance the budget and launching a $5 billion spending program in the spring of 1938, an effort to increase mass purchasing power. The New Deal had in fact engaged in deficit spending since 1933, but it was apologetic about it, because a rise in the national debt was opposite of typical Democratic party policy. Now they had a theory to justify what they were doing. Roosevelt explained his program in a fireside chat in which he finally acknowledged that it was therefore up to the government to "create an economic upturn" by making "additions to the purchasing power of the nation."

In 1929, federal expenditures accounted for only 3% of GNP. Between 1933 and 1939, federal expenditure tripled, but the national debt as percent of GNP has hardly changed. However, spending on the New Deal was far smaller than spending on the war effort, which passed 40% of GNP in 1944. The war economy grew so fast after deemphasizing free enterprise and imposing strict controls on prices and wages, as a result of government/business cooperation, with government subsidizing business, directly and indirectly.

A major result of the full employment at high wages was a sharp, permanent decrease in the level of income inequality. The gap between rich and poor narrowed dramatically in the area of nutrition, because food rationing and price controls provided a reasonably priced diet to everyone. White collar workers did not typically receive overtime thus the gap between white collar and blue collar income narrowed. Large families that had been poor during the 1930s had four or more wage earners, and these families shot to the top one-third income bracket. Overtime provided large paychecks in war industries.

CONCLUSION

(I) Reasonable Usage of Manpower of the Illegal Immigrant

In Malaysia, I suggest that our country first dealt with the illegal immigrants in Malaysia. There are millions of illegal immigrants in Malaysia which eat out the lifestocks in Malaysia and at the same time evade taxes thus causing holes that reduce the money cycle in Malaysia.

We should first take stern actions to catch all the illegal immigrants in the Country and put them in concerntration camp whereby the labour forces will be used to support the plantation industries and construction industries and where they will be pay decently and welfare taken care of during the period of time where they are waiting for trial or deliver back to they home country.

To allow these work forces to lurk around in our country is not an option as it created more social problems and put pressure to the livestocks in our country.

As such, I propose that illegal immigrants must be dealt with in the most economic ways but of course their rights should be observed with dignity.

(II) CREATE NEW MARKET FORCE

I also proposed that we scraped the National Service (NS) which is viewed as no more than summer camp for the unemployed and business opportunities for the related fields.

I suggest that we replace National Service to National Youth Movement, to replace the plan of allowing 18 years old to join in and have fun (whilst the government suffered financially) to a new formula-- to drive them into the market on a compulsory basis and ensure that the strength of the youths are put into full use.

On rotation basis, they will be put into a 2 years programme whereby in every 3 months they will be move from agriculture, to manufacturing, then ICT and BioTechnology etc. The youths must understand the foundation of the national economy and treasure the technic use by the Country (at the same time explore their interest) then they must be expose to the latest technology whereby they will have hands on experience and learn how to shape the Country's future. Youths should not be just about exploring and having fun, it should also a market force to ease the Country's burden and not to be a burden to the Country.

I also proposed that military personnel should be made part time ie- half in labour forces and half training, this will prevent wastage of good manpower in the military in the time of peace. At the world of technology, numbers no longer counts. We need the military personnel to be in the modern technology world.

With the continuous labour force in Malaysia, we do not need illegal immigrant in our country to share a cake that they will save to bring back to their homeland.

(III) REDUCE INVOLVEMENT OF GOVERNMENT IN MARKET FORCE

The Government should only intervene in the case of economy crisis and not the everyday project. The Government will suffer a lot financially if it doesn't stop the financial support to Government Link Company. Should the Government continues to intervene with the free market, the Government will be bankrupt and the market force will be destroyed by the political will of the government.

I propose that the Government should be market neutral and withdraw its interest in the market and take back what has been given especially to the GLC (ie toll companies and plantation business) and be like a parent who stand back and watch his children fall and grow. Too much pamper and we kill our future.

These are my proposal if I am the Prime Minister to deal with the Economy Crisis. Labour forces creates market and market generates money, money attract investors and investors attracts opportunities. With opportunities we can spearhead new projects for the Companies.

Prepared by Tan Chun Ming

Sources Edited From Wikipedia

Forum (3) "Policies To Cope Economic Crisis, What can we as Malaysia Prime Minister do?"

Date : 26 July 2008

Time : 9.00 pm - 10.45pm

Venue : Puchong, Selangor