Men of Words

Global Inflation Crisis July Coverage

While global economy outlook has gone down over the past months, inflation hasn’t.

Let’s review some interesting data on the current inflation rate in some countries which have taken a heavy toll.

In ZImbabwe, we are witnessing an annual inflation rate of 2.2 million percent. That’s the official data released by the government. Analyst would put the actual rate at 10 million percent!

Without a doubt, the country is experiencing an extreme case of hyperinflation.

In fact, the ZImbabwe government has recently introduced a 100 billion dollar note, which ironically is not even sufficient for someone to afford a bread.

So what is the Zimbabwe government doing right now?

Interestingly, they have decided to strip the zeros off the currency as the denominations proved too hard to manage.

In Europe, inflation rate continues to soar to record heights at 3.3% and 3.8% in Germany and England respectively.

In Asia, the Singapore economy threads along an inflation rate of 7.5% in June and South Korea is reaching a 10 year high at 5.7%. Thailand saw a rate of 8.9% in June.

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Tags: economics, global financial crisis, global inflation crisis, inflation, oil prices, price hike

What is your interest rate really?

Are what your bankers and accountants telling you really true?

Can you believe them when they feed you information and statistics, coupled with jargon only those in the financial industry would truly understand?

If your answer is yes, there is no further need to probe the rest of this article. However as I predict, many smart readers (like yourself), would already know the first 2 statements to be not entirely true. After all, it is NOT the banker’s job to make you rich. Their job is to protect the bank’s money!

Worth sharing is an interesting example that has stumped and intrigued me as I read the 2nd book of the Rich Dad series, Cashflow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki.

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Tags: cashflow quadrant, interest rates, rich dad poor dad, robert kiyosaki

Is network marketing a scam?

Rich Dad’s The Business School by Robert Kiyosaki provided me an interesting perspective of network marketing business. While he was great in extolling the benefits of joining network marketing, I am not too convinced.

Robert Kiyosaki sees network marketing business as an opportunity, with a low barrier of entry, for someone to learn about business. Moreover, a traditional business requires much more capital than what it takes for someone to own his very own network marketing business. There’s higher risk too.

True enough. I can’t disagree with that. I’m maintaining my objectivity in this discussion. However, what you learn in network marketing does not necessarily apply for traditional businesses.

Unfortunately, I guess that the majority of people who want to join or are already in network marketing aren’t concerned about that. Their motivation is not to learn about business. The true motivation, more than ever, is getting rich, fast.

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Tags: get rich, multi level marketing, network marketing, network marketing scam

Where is the world economy heading?

Failure of IndyMac Bank, the following collateral damage to Freddie Mac (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation) and Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association), the weakening US dollar, Wall Street’s straight fall, global stocks continues south, weakening sentiments and confidence of investors and consumers around the world.

I guess that kind of sums up the major economy climate across the world for the past week. I have not seen such huge economic corrections of such magnitude that has brought the whole world into a cloud of poor sentiments and uncertainty. I’d say that the current economy crisis is unprecedented in recent years.

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Tags: economy, global financial crisis, global inflation crisis, global recession, price hike, subprime mortgage crisis, US

Malaysia Politics Struggle

There has been much news coverage on the recent case of alleged sodomy by Mr Anwar Ibrahim, the ex deputy Premier of Malaysia.

My sympathies go to Mr Anwar Ibrahim. He is definitely not new to this circumstance, which draws parallel of the incident in 1999, when he was sacked by the then Premier Dr. Mahatir and jailed for corruption. A sodomy charge was also levelled against Anwar in 2000, threatening a possible jail term of nine years. It was reversed later in 2004 under the current Premier Abdullah Badawi

As victim of this fresh apparent politically motivated legal charge, it appears that Anwar is not too surprised.

While there are no tangible supporting evidence, I believe that the motivation behind this political scandal is fear, caused by the increasingly strong support for the opposition party led by Mr Anwar Ibrahim.

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Tags: Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia, Politics, Scandal