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Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Book Intro2: THE COLLAPSE OF GLOBALISM and the reinvention of the World

This is a must read book for those who want to understand the real BASICS of what the much touted "globalisation" crusade that the West has been preaching and imposing on the rest of the world. John Ralston Saul is a novelist, historian and philosopher and received his PhD from King's College.

The book provides a vital analysis of why globalisation was never unavoidable and always destined to fail, and what will come in its place. It is completely shocking that we have for years tolerated politicians and bureaucrats who condone globalism without even understanding what it is.

Interestingly, John Ralston Saul has praise for Malaysia' policies in the late 1990s in particular how we challenged traditional economic understanding to combat and mitigate the effects of the currency speculators. He writes " Malaysia remained a pariah for about twelve months. Sometime in 1999, its pegged currency, tariffs and capital controls metamorphosed into normalcy for most bankers and bureaucrats. How? Why? Because regulations had worked. The country's foreign reserves had begun to grow. By 2002, Mahathir was lecturing the world on the need for a proper international financial system and describing the seven steps of global financial decline, which led to the crisis, ending with the rampage of the 'currency traders. By 2003, he was received as a hero at Davos..At last even the IMF leadership put thier seal of approval on his policies. The principle of reregulation has been demonstrated (by Mahathir)."

Of course I was pleasantly pleased to read that Malaysia challenged accepted economic principles and come out with its own model that saved the country from the aftermath of the currency pirates. This aside, it is a must read book.

I only wish the bureaucrats will stop hitting small balls with a big stick (golf) and learn to read and think before shooting their mouth and leaping. This goes for politicians too!

3 comments:

True Malaysian said...

We need also to understand THE NEW WORLD ORDER............

Anonymous said...

true_malaysian,

please enlighten us.

Anonymous said...

I think this is the only Malaysian Blog (apart from Walski) that features a book review regularly. But so far the comments about books are few. It only goes to show that Malaysians are very poor readers.