Malaysia : Economics Does Not Work In A Sentiment War

Malaysia is having a rough year, rocked by aerial accidents, oil prices and most of all, political scandals.

To an economist central banker like Zeti, it must be a nightmare because she is right, you know. That the currency will eventually reflect their “strong fundamentals” and the country is not in severe distress economically more than it is sentiment wise. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-27/malaysia-fund-s-debts-make-defending-ringgit-tougher-currencies

Analysts out there find it hard to articulate in any quantitative terms what is happening in Malaysia and the political undercurrents that is dominating the alternative media space on the scandals behind its political leadership, that is allegedly being challenged by former Prime Minister seeking to supplant power for his protegee and implicating corporations in the process with accusations flying on anonymous blogs such as the one about The Edge publication shorting the ringgit and more.

These are the big stories.

• Mongolian model murder case revisited which is rumoured to be linked to high places
• rift amongst family members of the prime minister
• 1MDB, a quasi sovereign fund, that failed in its IPO attempt and delayed debt payment before bailouts from both tycoon Ananda Krishnan and the Ministry of Finance
• businessman Jho Low’s acts of corruption
• Jho Low vs The Edge owner, trading insults and anonymous blogs detailing each other’s misdeeds and threats of lawsuits

Given that economic numbers and indicators are still looking decent, we can only surmise that Malaysian ringgit weakness is more a function of sentiment erosion than fundamental weakness.

Table of Asian countries data

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