What do we do?

The world is facing an economic stagnation and Southeast Asia is no exception. Oil and commodity price are roaring.

What do Southeast Asian governments do?

Thailand and Indonesia are having quite a similar policy to help poor people by reserving some goods i.e. rice to sell to the poor cheaply. Indonesia is going to have rice-for-poor packages to sell and Thailand is having "blue-flag" project by reserving some goods to sell at the price lower than the market rate.

My first question is: who are the poors?

and my second question concerns economic perspective: Does this distort the market machanism?

Ps. Malaysia's PM announced that the oil price in Malaysia will not increase again for the rest of the year. I don't think it is possible.

Good Governance in Developing Countries

I have attended Prof.Mushtaq H. Khan's inaugural talk today. He talks about "good governance" in developing countries.

He argues by casting doubts on the issue about wheather good governance is either achievable or necessary for developing countries in order to have economic developement. There is no country in history that has been through this process; by having a good governance an then follow by economic development.

He concludes that each country has its own particular kind of patron-client relationship and needs to be reformed in a particular way.

Throwing somewhat a vague concept calls "good governance" to those countries cannot make their economic develop.

Roaring rice price

Are we really going to say goodbye to a cheap foodstuffs? It's worrying that foods are getting more and more expensive these days.

Rice price makes the record. I don't want to be too pessimistic by saying that, no too far in the future we will witness the food-war.

We are having an oil-war, aren't we?

It is possible.