What good is there to support Mahathir and Daim?

Tun Dr Mahathir is visually and vocally active again advocating to topple yet another government not to his preference for reasons obvious to all and many. 

Mahathir met Isham Jalil few weeks ago and likely to have recruited him into his fold since Isham was caught in discussion publicly with his henchman Khairuddin Abu Hasan and admitted to have met him several times. 

His criticism of UMNO was in unison with Mahathir and certain PAS leader. However, the go-between man between him and Mahathir is someone else. 

The latest development surrounding Isham gives the impression Najib is cooperating with Mahathir, but that is affirmatively not true and in contradiction. 

It is also not true the Mahathir's claim that Najib was involved in the Sheraton Move to topple the Pakatan Harapan government he led and instilled Muhyiddin as Prime Minister. 

He made the claim in The Star interview last year October leading to GE15th in November. 

China's rating downgrade have impact on Malaysia

AP reported on Moddy's downgrade of China's debt yesterday here.

For Malaysia, the bilateral trade with China for 2022 is US$203.6 billon and a delicate situation arising from the semi-conductor boycott. May need to read Edge's June 2023 article:

The State of the Nation: Why weakness in China’s economy is a problem for Malaysia

According to a 2019 study, a 1% slowdown in the Chinese economy will translate to a fall by 0.11% of the Malaysian economy. 

Tengku Zafrul proudly announced recently FDI commitment of RM212 billion, in which the bulk of it, RM170 billion is from China. It will mean some of the commitment may not come to realisation just like what is happenned to Country Garden in Johor Baru. 

Declining productivity concern

An illustration of declining productivity 

This is not a new issue but had been left to prolong. SERC contributed an article to BERNAMA in 2020 here in view of the challenges to come from the pandemic. An updated view is the extract from Thick as a Brick's Declining Productivity: Worrisome economics beyond politics below: 

To ... appreciate the problem and able to understand the implication, the issue of declining productivity raised in the recent Keluar Sekejap interview with World Bank Chief Economist for Malaysia, Aporva Sanghi incapsulate the crossroad situation we are in.         

Aporva mentioned of the long term decline in productivity. Decline in investment at below 20% of GDP and the investment coming Malaysia's way lack quality.

One area in investment decline is education or in other words, human resource investment. He described and quantified Malaysia as facing learning poverty at 40%. There is lack of nutrition in school children,  in which we recalled the late Ungku Aziz (Al Fatihah) talking about kerangka minda decades ago.