The Treasury secretary-general, Mohd Irwan Serigar Abdullah, has come up with some explanations on why the Malaysian ringgit has weakened considerably and why the global economy has become volatile and uncertain.

I must say the explanations provided were rather conventional in the sense that he has not put much thought to the validity and rationality of these explanations.

To some extent, countries depending on commodities have suffered more than those which are not. The Russian ruble, the Norwegian krone, the Australia and New Zealand dollars and of course our own ringgit have depreciated significantly against the US dollar. But here is my question: did commodity-producing countries enjoy significant currency appreciation when commodity prices hit the roof? If they had not, why must they suffer more than others now?

I remember many cursed the rapid rise of oil prices. It affected global growth, caused inflation and in our case, it imposed a great burden on our fiscal position and subsidy programme. Pump prices were raised repeatedly to rein in the oil subsidy.

But now with oil prices hovering around US40 per barrel, did we reduce the pump prices as quickly as we raised them earlier? Instead, the collapse of oil prices is now a curse, too - it caused currency depreciation and turmoil around the world, so to speak.

I want to ask: where did the ‘dividends’ of low oil prices go? If oil is the basic commodity that drives the economies, why are low oil prices not a good thing? Instead, many countries are now indulging in some forms of competitive devaluation to keep their economies afloat. Seriously, I do not quite understand and I think we need a better explanation to our current economic predicaments than just ‘low commodity prices’.

We conveniently blame China’s yuan devaluation for our woes. But we must understand our ringgit started to skid way before China devalued its currency. Furthermore, China has done it deliberately by recalibrating its equilibrium exchange rate, unlike the Malaysian ringgit which was literally forced down by market forces.

The strength of the US dollar is probably beyond Malaysia’s control. But I would prefer to see the appreciation of US dollar more uniformly applied than Malaysia suffering more than others.

True enough, some countries have probably suffered like Malaysia. But I think the phenomenon in other countries has not caused the same degree of anxiety and panic as among Malaysians. I was in Norway recently; the weak krone has not caused a ripple as far as I know.

I think in Malaysia’s case, we must bring the confidence factor into our equation. To ignore this is being dishonest.

It is a fact Malaysia is a strong country with strong fundamentals and well-endowed resources, including human resources. But I think the Achilles heel is our macroeconomic management.

No money sense

We have no money sense; we spend but not to build capacity; borrow recklessly, set up more off-budget agencies to benefit cronies and corporate bigwigs and to camouflage our fiscal position, allow more monopolies to stranglehold our economy; introduce more irrational subsidies and welfare programmes; impose more taxes instead of curtailing wasteful expenditure, create more fake jobs in the public sector and allow even more foreign workers to fill up the vacancies in the private sector.

Look, we can’t be proper if we are a do-nothing nation, can we?

Very soon, our prime minister will assemble an Economic Committee to discuss and find solution to the nation’s economic and financial problems. I don’t want to sound negative, but this is what I am predicting. He will probably gather around him corporate bigwigs and individuals with high net worth to provide ideas and to advise him.

I have observed long enough, corporate bigwigs and high net worth individuals are usually people who love to profit from distortions than solving them. I think Irwan understand me. We shall wait and see.