If you walk around the streets of Perth, you could see few buildings are being sold off or rented, businesses were closing down, and I just heard few students walking passed by me who were saving money due to the recession. However, I still believe that most people continue to spend in order to generate the economy. I am just waiting for major wholesalers such as Woolies, Kmart, Target, and Big W to announce their Q1 profit this year. I believe these companies are the best benchmark to see how consumer spendings measure up at this time.

In December we heard some shopping centres in the US were practically empty. I read on CNBC that roses were drying up on Valentines day providing losses to many florists. Some florists actually had to close down because they were already making losses as not many are buying flowers as a gift during this recession.Then hoping to register profits,ther ordered more flowers in bulks. I wouldn’t say they were stupid, but it is the recessionary effects. There are still avenues that governments around the world are offering. Being typical me, not a believer of Keynesian supply-side economics rather believing in the demand-side, I just believe government spending will provide further losses in Malaysia (Well I am no economics major, but I Wiki from time to time). I want to see more schemes towards small businesses and the financial industry. They should provide a certain form of assurance for people who wants to start a business. I for one would like to have a small business on my own as a side income and this is something that should be promoted. Schools in the country should be given emphasis. Certain school are already practicing this by having Hari Keusahawanan and I think it would be best if education is given a higher boost at this times of crisis. One thing I doubt about this system is when students aren’t given capital to start their own mini businesses on a single day. Schools with middle class students have a lot of advantage over this but not in the outskirts. There are strategies that could be adopted at this time but even I can’t really predict what sort of economic impact students will be making but the educational experience they get from this will be priceless.

Secondly, I just hope that Malaysia will soon be able to get out of the Doctor/Pharmacist-science stream emphasis in schools. I understand that it is good that we are advocating to have more doctors in Malaysia, however I have doubts over this mentality from time to time. I believe we should concentrate more on increasing the knowledge capital in Malaysia rather than working on the career based capital increment that we tend to think would be the best choice right now. I personally don’t care what you studied in Uni and I personally respect people who venture into something that not many Malaysians are currently doing based on their interest rather than following the market interest. I also think that Malaysia shouldn’t be looking to much on the issue of having limited doctors. Realistically speaking, it is not about having many doctors in our country right now. We should concentrate on managing the doctors in Malaysia at a better rate. Let’s look at it this way, we tend to have an interest in getting more construction workers from overseas, is it wrong if we want to get more doctors from overseas? Is it wrong if we could increase the minimum wage of doctors working under the government? Most economists are advocates for a long run equilibria in the market, but I think certain solutions need immediate attention. Australia has their fare share of overseas doctors, apparently they are about 60-70% of them weren’t born in Australia.

A lot of issues need to be addressed in this situation but most people tend to be to0 academic when it comes to managing the recession. Sometimes they just need to listen to the average Ali, Ah Chong, and Maniams in order to manage this crisis. Oops, I’m starting to sound a bit like a socialist.

Well, till then.