40 million to lose jobs...

That's the estimate of the number of people who will lose their jobs because of the current economic recession... going to be the worst recession since WWII....kinda depressing actually to know that the economy is slowing down and grinding to a halt in some places and many people will be affected. As it stands 11 million in the US have lost their jobs...and the number is set to rise. For Malaysia, the worst is yet to come.

But it is fascinating to learn that some countries are in heavy debt because of the excessive spending during expansion of boom times... Iceland is one such example and the gahmen there has collapsed under the huge debts that it amassed during the good years! And amidst this catastrophe, the media saw the news worthiness in proclaiming the new PM's sexual preference... that she's gay! Going to be the first gay premier in the world!

Whatever happened to the old fashioned ways of saving up some your income?? Keeping some for a rainy day?? Guess while the going was good, spend, spend and spend....the money has got to go into someone's pocket, right?

And it's also logic defying to see Wall Street dishing out USD18 billion as bonuses to its staff end of last year... goes to show, in this modern and sophisticated economy that we've created through the likes of Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes, the man on the street is still on the receiving end... he gets nothing while the people who controls the stock marts and financial institutions reward themselves unashamedly as the world spins into recession. Then, they, with their pockets full, outwardly lament the difficult times and appeal for help from governments... and they say to save the little people... oh crap! It's to gather as much as possible for their own hide first and then leave the crumbs for the little people!

The excesses are there. They need to be trimmed. Recession gives companies reasons to retrench, close, relocate.... you name it. Just as in the oil prices went northbound crazily and then for equally crazy reasons, went plummeting within a few months. Demand and supply theories have no place here. Greed does... speculation working overtime. All that money lost.... they can't simply evaporate into thin air, can it? Someone's got to be pocketing it.

Many tend to think that the days to come are going to get tougher... generally a gloomy outlook.

But this is one bitter pill that needs to be taken. We need to weed out the excessive practices from those fat years which make us complacent as well as inefficient. It also trims of the excesses of societies grown fat on cheap labour and easy money, questionable practices.... some soul searching is needed before things can become right again.

I used to think that globalization is good.... I'm not so sure anymore. Once upon a time, things operated within a smaller territory; these days the world becomes everyone's playground. Hence, when institutions like Lehman collapsed, even solid banks like DBS got very badly burnt! So when speculators speculate, small people like us suffer. 8( Globalization compounds that...