Welcome to the Australian National University's Malaysia Update 2020. I'm Stuart Nixon, the PhD student at the Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU. This biennial update conference is brought to you by the ANU Malaysia Institute, based in Canberra, with today's panel all joining you from Malaysia. The institute was established in 2016 to develop research and collaboration on Malaysian politics and society, but is based on a long history of Malaysian scholarship at the ANU. More information about the institute can be found at Malaysiainstitute.anu.edu.au. This year we are working with Malaysia Keeney and the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs in Kuala Lumpur on the theme of alternative visions for Malaysia. Although this conference is held virtually, the ANU is built on indigenous Australian land of the Ngunnawal and Nambri peoples, and we acknowledge and pay respects to the Elders past and present. Today it is my pleasure to host the Economic Update, Impact of COVID-19 on Vulnerable Groups in Malaysia, which begins with a 30-minute keynote address from Dr. Muhammad Abdul Khalid. This will be followed by a 60-minute discussion with expert panellists and the Q&A session in which you are all encouraged to participate. Introducing my esteemed fellow panellists. Dr. Muhammad Abdul Khalid is a former economic advisor to former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahatir Muhammad, a member of the Economic Action Council from 2019 to 2020. He has served as a consultant to the World Bank and numerous UN organizations and has held positions at prominent institutions including the Kazanar Research Institute, Securities Commission of Malaysia, Institute of Strategic and International Studies and UNDP Malaysia. Dr. Muhammad is currently the Managing Director of Boutique Consulting Firm DM Analytics, a research fellow at University Kabang San Malaysia, and the author of the best-selling book, The Color of Inequality. Joining him is Prof. Dr. Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Senior Advisor at the Kazanar Research Institute with a long and storied history of contributions to economic thought in Malaysia and internationally. He was a professor at the University of Malaya for almost two decades before becoming UN Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development, following which he held senior positions at the Food and Agricultural Organization and Institute of Strategic and International Studies. More recently, he was a member of the Council of Eminent Persons, appointed to advise the former government on major reform priorities. Last but certainly not least, Trisha Yeo is the CEO of IDEAS, a public policy think tank here in Malaysia, where she has previously held positions of Chief Operating Officer and Fellow. She is also a PhD candidate at the University of Nottingham, Malaysia, examining federal-state relations and opposition and sub-national durability within dominant party-authoritarian regimes. She was formerly Research Officer of the Selangor Chief Minister and has previously served as Director of the Asli Centre for Public Policy Studies. I now cross to Dr. Muhammad to provide the keynote address. Hello. Thank you for the kind invitation to share with you my views on the impact of COVID to the vulnerable group in Malaysia. How I'll do the session today is as follow. First, I will share quickly what's the macro impact in particular to the economy. Then I'll focus on the topic of the day, who are those impacted and how are they impacted due to COVID. And finally, I will share some recommendations on my views, what can we do to address this. First, on the macro, on the economic impact, the economic contraction due to this crisis never happened before. In fact, when the economy contracted by a negative 17% in the second quarter is the worst that we ever experienced. In fact, it was then the most difficult period during Asian financial crisis. It was then global financial crisis of 2008. It was then the economic contraction of our neighboring countries, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and even Philippines. We contracted by a 17%, Singapore 13, Thailand 12, Indonesia 5. The impact to Malaysia is worse than we have experienced and worse than other countries in this region. And the impact is quite prominent in the labour market. The number of unemployed has increased about 50% between last year and in August. We look at the unemployment rate. Unemployment rate now, although it has moderated a bit, compared to two months ago, is still higher. In fact, it is the highest in 30 years. Again, higher than during the Asian financial crisis and higher than global financial crisis. So at the macro side, the economy has contracted. The number of people without jobs has increased. One are then the impact to vulnerable groups. Who are the vulnerable groups that impacted due to COVID? Maybe I would share who are not impacted. Those who are not impacted from this crisis are two groups. The rich were not impacted at all. Another group is the politicians in this country. They got jobs, so they are not impacted. The rest, majority of Malaysians are impacted. Why do I say majority of Malaysians are impacted? Malaysians, while they are not many or poor, poverty rate is about 5.66%, but a lot of them are vulnerable. If there are health shocks, employment shocks, they will fall into poverty. Ben Agarra says 75% Malaysian cannot even raise 1,000 during emergencies. And if you look at the poverty rate, poverty rate now is 5.6%, but if you lose 708% of your household income, the poverty rate will increase by additional 11%, or additional 800,000 households. If one household has four members, that additional 3.2 million would fall into poverty, just by losing 700 million. And many have lost, or their income reduced by 700 million during the crisis, during the MCO, because they cannot go to work, in particular the informal sector. So majority are impacted. But if you want to slice it further, who are the most impacted? I would put, I would list down few. Number one, those informal workers. Informal workers in easy terms, if you want to understand, are those like Macikya, not the ones who work alone. Informal workers, the most impacted. Number two, children. Children are also the most impacted, both in terms of education, and also in terms of health. I would explain that. Number three, the other groups that are most impacted are migrant workers and refugees. The third group that are most impacted. Number four, those who are impacted are the young ones, especially the young graduates. So informal workers, children, migrant refugees, and young graduates. Let me go slightly in detail. For the informal worker, if you lose your job, which many have lost their job during MCO, you are not protected. Compared to many of us, many Malaysians, about 80% are employees. If you are employees, if you lose your job, most probably you contribute to Employment Insurance Scheme, with SOCSO. If you lose your job, the insurance will kick in. You will receive, depending on the period, about 80% of your last drawn salary, the first two months, until 30% of your last drawn salary in the last two months of their six months period. So you get something, you have room to breathe. If you are employees.  Because you are not contributing to SOCSO. Our policy is not that compulsory for people in informal sector to contribute. And when we look at SOCSO data, out of 100 of Machikia, those in informal sector, how many contributed to SOCSO? Out of 100, about 3 contributed to SOCSO. If 100 workers or employees lose their job, they are protected for six months. Insurance kicks in. But if you Machikia, only three protected, the rest you own their own. That's why we see data from the department of SES6, those who lost their job, the most other self-employed, because people cannot do their business. So one group that heavily impacted is the self-employed. The other group that are impacted are the children. The children are impacted in two ways, both negatively. One in terms of health, the other in terms of education. In terms of health, they have issues in malnutrition. Globally, the level of stunting has been on the decline. But in Malaysia, it has been on the increase. In fact, the level of stunting among Malaysian kids here is higher than in 1990. Country is getting richer, much, much richer. But the kids are doing not doing worse in terms of health. In fact, for certain groups, we should already consider it's a health crisis. On average, about one in five of Malaysian kids consider standard or standard. But for certain groups, kids in certain states, in Kelantan and in Tengganung, one in three are standard. In fact, if it's above 30%, it should already be called a crisis. So we already have existing crisis before COVID happens. The kids, the malnutrition among our kids has been increasing. To put things in perspective, the level of stunting in Malaysia among Malaysian kids is worse than poorer countries such as in Gaza and even in Ghana. Our kids, it doesn't make sense how can a country richer than some African countries, richer than war-torn countries, our kids are doing much worse. That has been going up. The level of stunting has been going up. And it's not just a matter of not enough height of two inch, it's about mental development which has a long-term impact. This before COVID, during COVID, they cannot go to school. 500,000 of Malaysian kids got meal supplement in school. Don't talk about additional food. About 500,000. During COVID, when schools close, they do not get this nutrient, nutritional food. Is it being supplemented at the house? There's a study done by UNICEF on the impact of COVID to families in low-cost flight in Kuala Lumpur. And we see because of the job loss and reduction of income, they have to adjust their diet. And what do we see? Less protein and 40% increase in instant noodle consumption. They're already not doing well, but because of COVID, they're doing much worse because they don't have good nutrients. 40% increase in megimi or instant noodle consumption. So in health, it's going to be much worse. Number one. On education, the same thing. There's a study done to look on online learning, impact of online learning. How many of Malaysian kids or households have laptop? It's very small. Only 1 in 10 have laptops. 1 in 3 has no equipment whatsoever. Sizeable number have to use the mobile phone of their parents. So online learning doesn't work for a bulk group of Malaysians. So in health terms, they're not doing well. In education, they're not going to do well. So this group, children, is the most impacted. Another group that most impacted is Shem Fu really is the impact on migrant and refugees. Even before the crisis, we looked the way we treated the refugees. It's not, it's rather inhumane. The living conditions is extremely bad. We took advantage of them despite they developed this country. And now we're seeing, because of our failure, a lot of COVID cases now because of migrant workers, undocumented workers started in the prison or in the detention centre. We have addressed this much earlier based on Singapore experience. Singapore protected their citizens very well, but they ignore to a certain extent those foreign workers. And the cases because of foreign workers, virus don't discriminate. It doesn't matter your nationality. And the way how we treat our migrant workers, refugees in the living condition, this is bad for for health. And many of them scared to go for health checkups because they're scared they'll be caught and be repatriated back. Impact on informal workers is quite bad, especially on protection, on children, education and health and also on migrant and refugees. The other group that are impacted are the young ones. The young graduates in particular. There's a statement issued recently. The number of unemployment among graduates will increase because economy contracted there's not many job opportunities. So what do we do with our graduates? The number of young graduates or rather unemployed graduate would increase to about one out of four. So we will have a group of graduates without jobs out of four, only one will have 25% unemployment rate. And those who get a job doesn't mean they're doing well because there's a serious issue of under employment in Malaysia even before crisis. If people say oh they're lazy they choosey that's not true it's not based on facts. If you look at the percentage of graduate who work in low or mid-skill sector has been increasing. They're not choosing the reason why they cannot get their jobs or being paid optimally because we don't create high income jobs. Year 2000 for every one graduate that we produce there's one high-skilled job. No for now or last year for every one high-skilled job that we produce we produce four graduates. So the creation of high-income jobs doesn't catch up with the number of graduates they will produce. So he's going to have a serious implication in the long run. So four groups inform and worker, children, migrant, refugees and also young graduate. I would add the last group they are vulnerable or has been negatively impacted by the COVID which is single mothers. Single mothers if we take let's say in low cost flat in Kuala Lumpur one in five of the head of our solar single mothers and the data from UNICEF shown for this group the highest the biggest impact is on mental health 80% of them stated that they are mentally stressed because of COVID and one of the main factors of stress for them is unsure about the future either they can provide for the children meal and provide for the children education and this also a new challenge for Malaysia in terms of addressing mental health so if I can summarize those group that impacted the informal workers there's no protection the children impact on education and health on migrant refugees on graduates, young graduates and also on single mothers or Ibu Tunggal so those are the group that impacted then what can we do or rather what have the government done and what can we do to address this then what what do we do to address this how do we ensure that those impacted will get help, will get protected number one we should spend more we do not spend enough to address the impact of this crisis yes we spend total package about 300 billion but if you slice it the direct physical injection from the government is about 45 billion in relative to the size of the economy our injection is very small Singapore spend 4 times more than Malaysia Thailand spend double than Malaysia, Philippines spend more than Malaysia we spend too little if you are self employed you only get one-time assistance those Machikia, those the most impacted you only get one-time assistance of about 1600 ringgit one-off and this amount is too small if you are a worker government give a wage subsidy a wage subsidy also quite small we give equivalent about 25% of median wage Singapore give 75% to assist the firm so for on account workers we give one-time for the workers we give quite a small number so although the size seems big but is too thin to make a meaningful impact even assistance to SME, soft loan for SME is quite underutilized the total SME that receive the soft loan is very small doesn't even reach 5% and when you compare to Singapore our neighbour down south the way they did it if you are workers you get 75% of your salary if you own account workers you get monthly assistance all until end of the year for you to have a room to breathe before to manage the crisis so we should spend more and we should spend in particular on self-employed because they have no protection whatever if I want to choose I would choose that group number one number two and because we cannot spend because we do not have money yes we have money we can borrow, our borrowing still our deficit still for budget deficit from surplus last year it gonna be double digit in fact the targeting about 15% deficit this year we are too obsessed there is like a fetish on ensuring deficit too low or rather deficit 5% to 6% why we have to be 5% to 6% because rating agency say you cannot increase we too obsessed to become a servant to foreign rating agencies what matters is the well-being of the rakyat if you need to spend you spend whatever it takes so we can spend number one if you don't have money we can borrow we have room to borrow in fact the interest rate now is too low it doesn't make any sense if you don't borrow number one number two amendments that you can do in particular on tax tax rate and tax coverage in Malaysia is very low total tax tax revenue per GDP in Malaysia is about 12% of GDP OECD countries is 3 times higher personal income tax is about 2% of GDP in rich country OECD country 4 times higher so tax collection of economy is quite small and many people do not pay tax tax not really progressive because all sources of earnings are not treated fairly earnings from employment and tax earning from capital are mostly not tax or rather not tax at all and tax not progressive it is pro-rich rather than pro-workers we can we can revise the tax to make sure that it is more progressive the tax is still too low and many do not pay tax last year when the government wanted to do this or did the special voluntary program so if you have account overseas register with us and the government send letters to all of them about 500,000 Malaysian letters were sent for those Malaysians that have accounts overseas and to put things in perspective when the government increased tax rate last year or the year before to 30% top marginal tax rate those who earn more than 2 million ringgit the number of Malaysians who reported income more than 2 million ringgit in this country is only 2,000 people we sell 25,000 Mercedes last year it doesn't make sense because the rich do not pay or they got to look poor so tax should be revised and you get additional revenue we have to be clear it's not to punish the rich but to ensure the tax is fair so we have money to help the poor so we can spend more either by borrowing the interest is very low or we relook our tax number 1 number 2 we need to protect those vulnerable groups in particular the self-employed self-employed not contributing to EPF not contributing to SOC so we encourage them it's optional it's not compulsory it should be made compulsory we should not differentiate types of employment doesn't matter you are self-employed or your employees contribute there are workers number 2 if we come to the third part what can we do so when the crisis happen again if there's income shop, employment shop whatever shop in May you are protected so there's a social protection that's number 2 finally what is important is to ensure that institution works which means we have good people and we have good laws we cannot have laws or rules that only applicable to the poor and not applicable to the rich we also need to ensure those with high integrity in charge of this trust agencies to ensure what need to be done is being executed fairly and optimally without good people without good institution you can have good policies but you will still fail I think I will stop here I will share what's the impact of Covid economy who are the groups that impacted and what can be done thank you for listening I look forward to the discussion by the panelists and thank you welcome everyone welcome to the live part of the event and thank you very much Dr.Mahamud for your presentation there's so much we can digest from their videos and microphones by way of introduction just some housekeeping rules we have the Q&A button at the bottom strongly encourage you to raise some questions and provoke some debate and I will try to feed them in as best as I can the discussion will have today one interesting thing I guess by way of introduction it's staggering how quickly things change when I was preparing for this a few weeks ago the situation in Malaysia pandemic wise was fairly contained economic data was recovering quite quickly in terms of month on month so we were quite excited by that and the easing of restrictions moving through different types of movement control orders there was a degree of optimism I think how quickly that's changed in the sense that now Malay livelihoods is getting much more complicated for policy makers and the government and the topic today is around vulnerable Malaysians the vulnerable Malaysians as Dr. Muhammad pointed out the ones that are facing the greatest hardship through the crisis if the response is not as effective as it could be there were three I guess key points or three key stats jumped out at me from the presentation the first one unemployment at the highest rate in 30 years that's obviously a pretty scary statistic for everyone in normal terms it's a quite small number relative to a lot of countries but in the Malaysian context where social protection is much less extensive it's a very significant number also that 75% of Malaysians can't raise a thousand ringgit which is about 340 Australian dollars or 240 US dollars and finally that if household income declines by about 700 ringgit that's another 11% of households in poverty so there are three statistics that jumped out at me and are quite striking so what we'll do is to kick things off I'll pass over to Prof Jomo to speak for about 3-5 minutes on his reactions or other points that he'd like to make and straight after that to Trisha as well for her observations and then we'll get into a more free-flying Q&A discussion over to you Prof Jomo Thank you very much Stuart for this kind invitation let me get straight to the point since you've given me 3-5 minutes I think there are four issues which we might want to quickly mention first I think from a comparative public health point of view Malaysia has had certain advantages being located in Southeast Asia having experienced a number of virus epidemics in the recent past but unfortunately did not leverage on that very effectively and part of the reason I think is now undisputed is because we lost about a month from the second half of February into the middle of March due to the which took place and resulting the change of government related to that as well we should recognize that in the rest of East Asia including relatively poorer countries such as Vietnam, Laos, even Kerala and Southwest India and so on they have been able to contain the contagion which hit them much earlier without resulting to stay in shelter lockdowns which are very very instrument for dealing with COVID-19 the second set of points would relate to macroeconomic considerations I think one has to recognize that stay in shelter lockdowns are basically are self-inflicted okay so the disruption at the macroeconomic level is certainly self-inflicted but it also means that it is not very easy to simply turn the button off and on for the economy to restart after stay in shelter lockdown is not terribly easy especially for relatively small businesses but arguably even for larger businesses another important consideration is the fact that Malaysia has always been a relatively open economy at least since the colonial period what this has meant is that we have been especially vulnerable to supply chains disruptions and this has been exacerbated by the fact that both President Trump and the former Prime Minister Abe of Japan both decided to punish China in different ways by withdrawing investments from China and in so far as Malaysian production is integrated supply chains involving China this has been very very disruptive now a third consideration of course is that we have had as Dr. Maumat emphasized a relatively modest fiscal response that's to put it very mildly the bulk of the public sector of the government response was essentially monetary and the monetary measures which accounted for about 90% of the value of the measure really do not affect many people outside of the formal sector because it is extremely difficult even for medium-sized enterprises let alone family enterprises and so on in the informal sector to access credit from the formal economy hence the appeal for extended has become quite popular in many circles the other point to be made is that we run the risk like many other economies in the world COVID-19 recessions becoming depressions if we do not act rapidly enough if we do not act strongly enough and this is I think very important to recognize the third thing is of course the impacts I would say that besides those mentioned earlier we have to recognize that many public sector employees have come through reasonably well they were provided with additional allowance the big private sector has also done reasonably well in so far as the government has provided some degree of financing to keep people on the payroll unfortunately for the rest of the economy there has been very little for that part of the reason of course is that we have adopted policy measures looking at the west looking at how western economies have responded to the crisis and basically mimic them rather than looking at the nature of the relation economy where the people are who are working and doing what and how to best adjust so this is very important not only for relief measures but also for recovery measures the other point which needs to be made in this connection is the impact which Dr. Mohamed has elaborated on on the informal sector informal sector is huge in the Malaysian economy and we are talking about half of the labour force even if you exclude the estimated 6 to 7 million foreign workers who are in Malaysia only 2 million or so are documented and other 4 to 5 million are undocumented so all this has to be seen in the bigger mix of things but since I am running out of time let me stop here, thank you very much thank you Ravityu Trisha good morning to those of us in Malaysia and good afternoon for those of you in Australia thanks very much to ANU for inviting me and I will also thank Dr. Mohamed Khalid for presenting what I think is a very comprehensive overview of the impact of COVID on the vulnerable groups in Malaysia I think I will just lay out some of my points this way so I will speak on 3 additional issues apart from what he has already mentioned and then I will talk about 3 policies perspectives or solutions to address these and then I have 2 additional points so my 3 additional issues so I agree on all the things that he has said I think maybe he did not spend enough time on the first which is on small business owners so I think he did talk about it in the sense of informal workers but I think it is also clear to talk about the impact on small business owners so what we now call as M SMEs so not just SMEs anymore but the micro enterprises I think many of these have also been impacted seriously those who own mom and pop shops those who own very small businesses restaurants even I think even these are impacted heavily many of them are already highly extended on their loans and are unable to take anymore so that is one the second issue which ideas has done a lot of work and research on GLCs the question was for me what has the GLCs contribution been to the COVID-19 crisis I think the contribution to the COVID-19 crisis as well as to share prosperity in the country more generally has been rather unclear there is an article that says that they have contributed slightly less than a billion ringgit to the COVID-19 crisis but these have come in the forms of only medical assistance so providing additional finances to pay for extra PPE and gloves and things like that but I guess the question is where are they in the ecosystem and it seems to be rather limited in terms of what they have provided as assistance I imagine that they could have done a lot more in also contributing to financial assistance in a larger way in supporting the government efforts and the third point is fiscal squeeze so while I agree with Dr. Mohammad Khalid that the government could have spent more I think it was disingenuous of them to say that the stimulus package was as much as it was because actually a lot of it was in the form of moratorium so the direct fiscal injection was quite limited so while I agree that government can be spending more I think we also still need to recognize that the government is under fiscal pressure a lot of our revenues come from oil and gas contributions about 19% it used to contribute more like over 30% but now it's gone down to 19% and we know that Petronas has had an unprecedented loss of like 21 billion ringgit in quarter two we have not seen the quarter three numbers in fact we have not seen the quarter three numbers of the macroeconomy as a whole so understanding that fiscal squeeze is also where we need to really think about what's the correct tax base what's the taxation system that we need to keep going forward so those are the additional three issues on top of what Dr. Maumat Khalid had already pointed out so I'll just talk about three kind of like policy directions that I think would be good for us to expand on during the discussion so first is yes government social protection needs to continue to protect the most vulnerable that are falling through the cracks however it needs to be very highly targeted so because of the fiscal pressure I think the solutions need to be highly targeted and this is where information and data needs to come in data needs to be highly accessible you know decentralized in a way that all different government agencies can have access to it I know that some of the ministries can't even have access to some data even though they are from within government itself so the availability of data would be very helpful for not just interagency coordination but also for the non-government sector to be able to know which groups are actually needing the most assistance now I think again going back to informal sector everyone seems to be in agreement here that there needs to be a systematized approach to protect informal workers you know these micro and small businesses they do not have access to financial aid the SMEs soft loans I think Dr. Maumat Khalid said that the take up is quite low and that's also because there are very stringent requirements so you need to be able to show that your business fell by 50% from before the crisis and after the crisis when in fact even before the crisis many of them were already suffering because of other structural problems within the economy on social protection I want to add something that not many people are talking about which is that our social protection system is not institutionalized enough a lot of our social protection is actually highly politicized in my own research you know you can see very clearly that a lot of the assistance the financial assistance from the federal government flows through elected representatives right it goes through members of parliament and they can apply from it from the prime minister's department and we also know that it is highly politicized because once you are an MP that's not within the political coalition that's represented at the federal government you lose access to this assistance and a lot of the constituents especially in the semi-urban and rural areas depend on social protection from their MPs it's sort of a relic of the past if you would like because of our patronage system and the fact that people actually go to their political hits rather than seeking help from institutions so that's on social protection the second point is on job creation while we talk about social protection and that's going to continue I believe for the next three to five years especially as the country tries to recover from the pandemic but over and above social protection is the need to look at creating new jobs I think the economy was already facing structural problems before the crisis and the crisis merely exacerbated the structural challenges that our economy faces so we go back to the economic conditions and how can we stimulate the business environment so that jobs can be created and I think some of the quick wins which our research has been showing is that we really need to industrialize and upgrade our SMEs provide them with a sophisticated ecosystem to ensure that the recovery targets are hit some of those things it would be to assist them in the digitalization process and that's already happening but it's really still not enough and if you ask SMEs today they don't really want to invest into digital because they are barely making ends meet but how can the government play the role of encouraging, of nudging them to what that direction and also attracting high value adding activities so can we think about creating for instance a regional manufacturing hub in Malaysia within only high tech sub sectors and also being selective in what kind of investments that we get I can't emphasize this more the need to have a clear and predictable rules based environment I think the MCO management has been very poor I think a lot of the regulations and the announcements have been very haphazard, they have changed as well and this has made it extremely difficult for businesses to know how to operate even I we're not really a business but we run a small think tank I have found it very frustrating because the announcements from government saying how many percentage of us can come into office and how many percentage of us can't so it is the opposite of clear and transparent there really cannot be at this point any halfway announcements and measures and this is the time to provide absolute clarity and already we are grappling at straws and so we need to provide that transparent and accountable and clear announcements for the businesses to know exactly what they're getting and I also want to highlight what Dr. Mahmoud Khalid said about good institutions completely agree that those are sorely needed but what exactly specifically can we talk about in good institutions I would say that one of them would be to provide a more transparent public procurement regime public procurement is a great source of corruption at all levels, at the federal, at the state and the local levels and finally going back to the GLCs I think GLCs can be dependent upon a lot more to achieve the country's social objectives and also to ensure that they are non-politicized and we know that throughout this year we see a lot of the members of boards of directors as well as the heads of boards being removed after the change in government so I think the question is you know are our GLCs used for its intent and purposes and also by putting politicians there is that damaging the social objective achievement so I've laid out kind of three big issues that were not really emphasised in his presentation laid out three policy directions and I just want to add two more points which is to agree with Dr. Mohamed Khaled that it's absolutely appalling that a country like Malaysia is going through such high stunting rates I think our health and nutrition especially for children really needs to be looked at they are the future of the country and Malaysia is not quite a developed country but we are not we should not be having that kind of stunting rates as we do and that's because of the nutrition mix that they are getting as he said in the presentation there's been a 40% increase in the consumption of instant noodles and I think I saw the UNICEF report as well that shows that there's a negative 30% consumption of fruits during the MCO period which means they're eating more instant noodles and they're eating less fruits and I suppose vegetables as well so what's going to happen to the next generation and finally this is also something that I personally believe that the mental health following from the uncertainties this year in 2020 really need to be looked at as well because if you don't have a population that is mentally healthy this is going to affect their ability to contribute to the economy as well so that's all from me I hope it's not too far above 5 minutes but over to you back Stuart Thanks very much Trisha and Prof German as well there's obviously a very wide range of issues that we can discuss here and how we're going to do that in about 40 minutes is very difficult to foresee but I think one I'd like to start with because it's come up in all of your your comments so tax I know tax isn't the sexiest but it's something that's integral to everything that's going on here and I think when we talk about a response economists think about a response tax collection coming down you think about social protection kicking in but as Prof German mentioned in terms of how Malaysia needs to tailor its response to its own circumstances it doesn't have those buffers that developed countries have put that in his presentation quite clearly in fact the latest data I've seen from MOF says that tax as a percentage of GDP has gone down further in the first half of 2020 to just 8.9% which leads the government with very little sort of fiscal ammunition to provide the sorts of wage subsidies and other measures social protection so and feeding that into the narrative around responsibility I guess the question is and I'll start with Dr. Muhammad on this because you made the link between tax and spending quite explicitly I guess in terms of the tax reform of a future package to ward off the investment agencies how do you see the mix in terms of how tax plays a role now versus preparing for the future certainly an issue that needs to be addressed but I imagine a lot of Malaysians will react and say well I can't pay more tax now in the middle of a crisis thank you I think it's not entirely correct to say that we do not have a buffer we do have ample buffer GDP, debt to GDP is still low compared to many countries and even compared domestically in history our deficit is still low when you compare during 80s it was double digit we have if now it's quite sensitive quite difficult to implement tax reform because not many people are making money so you're not going to collect from tax but what is important you can spend more the government can borrow you look at yesterday UK which is the latest number the highest debt to GDP in 30 years we can borrow and now the interest is too low it makes no sense not to borrow why you don't want to borrow thinking now we said we do not want to borrow because we don't want to to upset rating agencies we don't want to be doubted and so on and so forth the interest is too low at the moment it makes no sense to confirm to ensure that debt to GDP is very low but people are dying people have no jobs what is important to ensure that people have food to eat and you have policies to create jobs GDP per capita rating agency you put aside first the priority is to ensure that people are healthy people can eat kids can go to school safely and you have jobs now as Trisha mentioned there is a lot of stress among Malaysians and if I want to zoom into one group it is mostly female head single mothers before the crisis when we studied just in Kuala Lumpur we did study with UNICEF before the crisis the unemployment rate among single mothers was 10% during the crisis right now 1 in 3 are not working we can ask the stress level 80% are mentally stressed only 2% said we look forward to the future we are very positive in the future and we ask do you get any assistance we say we only get one time 1600 it has been 6 months 1600 you divide by 6 months nothing we can spend is our obligation to spend we have the buffer we can borrow Prof. Jeremon or Trisha would you care to jump in on that I think what Dr. Momat said is quite correct we have a serious problem which predates this crisis we have had a situation where there has been a steady shift especially over the last 35 years or so in the direction of greater greater tax regressivity my late friend pointed out many years ago that the relation tax impact incidence on the public is actually regressive and became more regressive over time in the 60s and 70s what has been shown by other studies is that this has continued and has become much worse in the last 35 years or so this shift from direct taxation to indirect taxation has been quite popular in the recent period because when you are paying indirectly you don't feel it so and so politically it is popular but what it has meant is that the overall impact of the tax system has been regressive and the tax collection has declined for reasons which we have heard now the big challenge I think in Malaysia is not really to try to fiddle with the tax system in the middle of a crisis you don't do that what you need to do is just get rid of this kind of antiquated thinking which says you have to tax first and then spend later what you need to do is spend first and tax later in the middle of a crisis that's what you have to do there's no choice about it because for people to claim that there are fiscal constraints as Dr. Mohamed has emphasized the fiscal constraints are in the minds of financial market analysts they are not real constraints by any comparative standards now what has to be different however is the design of what needs to be done in terms of stimulating both relief enabling relief and recovery but what needs to be done it has to be far more targeted to people who are largely ignored by the current slew of measures and this I think is crucial this is where we need to learn be humble and learn from countries like Vietnam and Kerala and so on and so forth and where there's much to be learned what we have done is to mimic measures in terms of trying to what has been happening in western economy so this has been very unfortunate I think also rather than think in terms of traditional Keynesian employer of last resort measures we really need to think of a different approach of what some people have called a pair of last resort rather an employer of last resort and this is especially important for dealing with the relatively small businesses which are the most hard hit by the current measures so I think the thing to get away from is this kind of antiquated thinking about fiscal constraints move boldly but judiciously in terms of making sure that you're getting a bang for the buck not just spending for the sake of spending without really considering the impacts of that additional spending so we really need to be bold in terms of spending much more as Dr. Mohamed emphasized earlier and we really need to think a new about how to borrow the central bank for instance can easily buy government debt from the ministry of finance there's no need to go to markets and pay discounts which is what is likely to happen in a situation like this so you need to think a new quite creatively and there are people all over the world who are thinking about these kinds of issues but if we take an ostrich in the sand approach and ignore what everybody is learning very very quickly we've had three quarters of a year already of COVID-19 and as Dr. Mohamed knows in the economic council we push and the prime minister at that time wanted a spending bill much earlier in February itself he insisted on it and unfortunately as we know the coup meant there was a delay of a month and all this basically slowed the whole process of providing relief as well as recovery so we really have to learn very very quickly and unfortunately we are not learning and the design for example of the latest measures which have just been imposed today is really very very counterproductive and usually problematic excellent it certainly sounds like we need to spend more Tricia do you want to weigh in? I agree that this is not the time to during a crisis try to impose more tax but I do think that the problem of low tax collection has been identified even way before the crisis and yes it is crisis time, yes borrow more spend more but at the same time we also need to think about revenues that are coming in and some of the things that we have actually thought about proposing which we've written some papers on is things like having a progressive capital gains tax so these are just kind of thinking outside the box looking at other additional measures that the country might be able to depend on now but you're talking about long term how much can we borrow and for how long and yes you're right that these limits are self-imposed the debt limits the deficit limits but at what point do we want those limits are those limits going to just continue increasing so I think those are just some questions that I'd like to pose and I know this is not probably the right time to talk about our GST but the previous administration had introduced the GST which was then eventually replaced by the SST again this is perhaps not the right time to talk about it because we're in crisis mode but we know that the SST does not number one collect as much as the GST and that's where the government has also reduced its ability to spend and of course the GST is just a much more comprehensive tax collection method compared to the SST so I'll just stop there for now yeah it's a couple of stats I like to throw in here just for the perspective of the audience so widely bandied around that less than 17% of individuals pay tax in Malaysia less than 5% of companies and in terms of the individual tax so the median taxpayer in Malaysia pays about 1.5% of taxable income they wouldn't be caught in the system compared to say Poland which is developmentally a quite similar country to Malaysia that figure is 16.4% is what they would pay so the difference is staggering and the arguments around affordability you know Malaysians can't afford to pay tax they don't really hold much water I think that's a neat place to segue into the social protection side of these things as in if we have more tax or we borrow a lot more what are we going to spend it on there's a couple of questions in the Q&A that I can feed into this but part of it is so there's been a lot of talk of a social protection system at least under the former government and for several years that Malaysia has needed one but that hasn't quite come to fruition why is that so I guess there's a question saying you're all eminent commentators in this space and advisors to the government how come these messages are not coming through and there's a technical there's the current support for B40 compared to under the previous government and how that might fit into the response to the crisis maybe would you like to go first on that yes thanks to it I think it's important to emphasize that everybody in Malaysia is paying taxes albeit indirectly what you are referring to are the income tax people who pay income tax and that's only about a six of the population in Malaysia as well as in Poland and so on but the point really is and this addresses Trisha's concern that you know if you have indirect taxation on the one hand which actually affects everybody and then you have direct subsidy payment the ultimate form is political patronage this is the heart of the problem and this is precisely what has happened with the kinds of reforms which have taken place in the last three or four decades and this is what needs to be stemmed from the outside and I think unless we address this problem we are not going to get anywhere now as far as social protection is concerned the last deputy prime minister did try to organize reform of the social protection system and as was pointed out there are more than more than 80 different types of subsidies and grants what the existing system or non-system is a better way of describing it is a bunch of different types of handouts which are used essentially for political patronage okay and there is very little doubt about it and so developing instead of having price subsidies you have a subsidy in the form of a cash transfer recommended by the World Bank and all these other institutions you basically are trying to develop a system of patronage precisely what needs to be gotten away from you have to contrast the cost of a system of patronage that's huge because you have many machineries involved in trying to determine including the machineries of so-called targeting trying to determine who is eligible and who is not eligible etc etc when you in fact have very effective means of transfers or making transfers already existed about two decades ago the Malaysian government introduced a mycard system the mycard system can be used to make transfers it can be used for both taxation as well as transfers all this could be done very very effectively and you could have a comprehensive database which would expose those who are on the one hand in Dr. Mohammad's example buying huge Mercedes and BMWs on the one hand but not paying taxes on the other hand you would basically have a developed data system where things are going in the world today but you would also need to do so with corporations because the biggest tax evaders in the world as we all know are corporations corporations pay a retinue of lawyers and accountants basically to minimize liabilities so we really need to get away from this kind of system and it can be done through very many of the reform measures which have been proposed all over the world now what we need to think about in terms of what kinds of measures of subsidy measures are appropriate I think I'm generally opposed to what are called social safety nets what we need is a comprehensive system of social protection but on the other hand one has to think in terms of this is a time if there was any where you do need a social safety net COVID-19 the pandemic the imposed lockdowns and so on are so exceptional that you really need some very special temporary measures that doesn't detract from the need to reform the social protection system and I very much appreciate the sentiment expressed by the panelists about the need to do so but that does not mean there are some extraordinary measures given the nature of this particular crisis and given by the uneven nature of who is being adversely impacted most of the small family enterprises which Tricia and Dr. Momat talked about are not going to survive at the rate things are going they were struggling to come out many of them were struggling to get back into business after the first crisis and now many of them at least in the Plank Valley where I live which accounts for about two-fifths of the nation's economy they are going to be so hard hit I'm not sure whether many of them are going to be able to survive so we are talking about almost apocalyptic type of impact in this country due to the measures to handle this crisis and unless we develop a combination of both social protection reforms which are very very badly needed for the reasons all the panelists have emphasized and then some appropriate relief measures which are definitely needed because of the exceptional character of this crisis I just want to jump in here what Prof Dromo has said what do we know about the kinds of social protection that we have we've got SOCSO we've got EPF we've got our Jabatan Kebajikan which is the welfare department which runs this database which is supposed to be centralized but the database is actually not like I said in my short that data is actually not made available to say some state governments especially so the states actually are operating in the dark they don't know people within this database are these people getting the kind of aid that they are supposed to be getting and then we've got the MPs that receive aid from different ministries as well so they've got aid from the ICU in the Prime Minister's department they're getting aid from the Ministry of Rural and Regional Development and then in turn the MPs give the aid downwards to their constituents so there's a big bunch of things happening that's like it is rather a mess and I don't think anyone really has a comprehensive overview of all the different kinds of aid that exist you also have say from the Lubaga Zakat at the state level and so someone like an individual who is in the B40 who does deserve to get that is possibly getting three or four multiple different aid packages I'm not saying that they don't deserve it but there needs to be some kind of system that allows us to indicate how much these families are getting because they might be getting more over and above another family that's maybe in like the B20 should be getting so this all goes back to the need to have data sharing and the way our government manages its data needs to be reformed I think MDAC and the two agencies that are supposed to reform the way data is managed and distributed but it's just not happening fast enough and during a time of crisis this is really the time that these reforms need to be sped up very quickly and as I said it's not just government agencies that will benefit from it it's the NGOs, it's the civil society and I think we also see from the pandemic that it's not just government that has played a significant role in providing some of these I wouldn't call it social protection because the social protection system should be managed by government but they have been able to plug the gaps and if there was data available this is where the civil society could also make use of that and optimize to the vulnerable groups that need it the most yeah absolutely data and there were two measures earlier this year around the poverty rate belatedly being raised and widespread praise for that so in the context of the crisis the idea that they're politically expedient what goes for social welfare at the moment was enabling payments to get out quickly which is true but as you've all pointed out targeting is much more important in this space and having a coordinated system between institutions is something that would better target and have a more holistic approach to social protection and welfare Dr Muhammad did you have any additional views on that maybe tying into the issue of institutions here more broadly we've heard a lot you've mentioned previously around we've got GLCs and their contributions so I might sort of feed that one in too certainly my reaction to Trish is mentioning that around how GLCs can contribute more GLCs shouldn't be trying to get rid of those but I'd like to I'd like to get your views on how GLCs and institutions and social protection I guess all sort of fit together in this crisis context and longer term in terms of reform maybe an answer like this what we need we can talk about the reform in taxation the reform in social protection but what the prerequisite of ensuring this happen it's executed well is trust people must have trust on the institution people must have trust on policy makers, governance matters if you don't trust those in charge or you disrespect the law that being implemented there's no point now the way being seen those in charge are either trustworthy, incompetent or criminals why should I then pay tax if I pay tax the money is siphoned off the rich do not pay, the poor has to pay like what Jomo mentioned is indirect tax section covers on why should I pay number two the law is not applicable not equally applicable to everyone yesterday there's an important case that if you're a certain stature if you're poor you go to jail trust is important you can have a fantastic idea if people have no trust is a major issue so the governance side is important you need a good people to be there and the law to be applied failing if you don't have this is no point so trust matters and in this current people do not care either we're talking about we have the liberty to talk about what kind of debt levels fiscal deficit, what level should it increase debt to GDP, whatever should increase vulnerable groups do not have this luxury to discuss this thing what they want, do I get the assistance or not does the assistance reach me on time is it efficient, is it optimal, now they do not have those assistance so the government immediately Jo Mo mentioned provide the assistance cash assistance is the easiest and fastest and that's what they need therefore we have what we do not have I have to choose my words carefully maybe get rid of this from what Jo Mo said, this archaic thinking maybe archaic people archaic people doesn't mean old people young people with archaic thinking this is what we need we are talking about good people as number one priority that's what we need good policies, nothing which I mentioned we have too many assistance programs we have 110 assistance programs across 28 agencies and ministries we spend about 25 billion minus the BFM before the coup they form a deputy prime minister in charge of this to coordinate all the social assistance social protection so we know who gets what and how do you choose properly executed and more efficiently but after the coup we do not know but I want to go a bit brutal here it's going to be very difficult for the vulnerable when it is seen those in charge busy for the thinking they are taking care of the right and on top of that we do not want to spend I am very very pessimistic given the budget they are going to announce in two weeks time still thinking of managing the deficit right yet well-being is number one the rest is secondary that's it excellent, well thank you very much for that you have inadvertently answered a fair few questions around informality, trust in government there are a few questions that are a bit political in nature around can these all be achieved under this government I will leave that one aside deliberately because that was probably a better place for the political forum but maybe one topic I would be keen to sort of dovetail into digitalization was mentioned earlier by Trisha in terms of it's obviously a key theme of this crisis that people interactions are a risk so the more things can be moved online the better Dr. Mohamed pointed out in his presentation the lack of access to technology and resources for schooling and implications for education I guess I just in a very general way want to open it up in terms of opportunities and challenges for Malaysia in this area of digitization both in the crisis and preparing for the recovery happy to open to whoever wants to okay well I can go so before I get into the digitalization part before I forget I just want to continue off where Dr. Mohamed talked about governance and trust in institutions it's true that whichever government of the day comes into place the trust in institutions needs to be there because if not then people would just not be willing to subscribe to anything that the government is announcing nobody will want to pay their taxes that's when the beginning of the tax evasion begins because this is really just loose talk on the ground if the government is going to be siphoning off the money then why should I pay that tax to this government but there are some things whichever administration is in power they can do to restore trust and I don't think even some of these were being fully addressed by the PH administration it did put some of this in its national anti-corruption plan but as to how soon these things would be executed one doesn't know and some of these things would be for instance number one the political financing bill that would really reform the way political parties are financed in Malaysia and you know why I mean talking about politics in a panel that's supposed to be on economics it's because our economics is politicized you know our social protection everything that we talked about earlier it is politicized so unless we can you know regulate and all parties are on equal level playing field where they get their money from what they can spend on then you won't have this problem of siphoning off monies that will go into politicians pockets which would otherwise could have been otherwise used for the benefit of the rug yet so that's one I think a second one would be you know reforms in our procurement system I mentioned that earlier procurement is always you know time and again brought up in the Auditor General's report year after year or rather three times a year because now they split it down to three reports and you see that a lot of the government procurement takes place in highly compromised ways and that could be another thing that we do you know as a quick win not just the government procurement but I think we've also not talked about another big thing which is the mega projects that government you know regularly gets itself tied to or it subscribes to yes these these big projects are important but you know what is the transparency around that where are the feasibility reports that the public can actually download for themselves and see whether these projects are you know why it's going into and how much government is going to spend and how much debt it's going to impose on itself for the long term future and the third I guess so the top three would be like I said political financing procurement and the third would be like reforming of the GLCs right so where are the GLCs in this you know what role can they play are some GLCs still relevant you know if they're actually competing against the very SMEs in the market that they're trying to grow and to flourish in that business anymore but I think those questions and that analysis has not yet be comprehensively done so going back to digitalization well the the government has like this big 4IR program right which I think the ministry of what Miti as well as the EPU are supposed to take charge of and they are providing this like big digitalization grants for SMEs but in order to get there to qualify to obtain these grants they need to spend some of their own money and I think that already comes up to like more than 10k and that's not something that they can afford to do right now I mean there are many of them already in the rate so it's very difficult for them to take up these government grants but I think that ecosystem still needs to be provided from government a lot of the SMEs that managed to get onto the digital bandwagon early have now you know they are writing the ways because they managed to get there quickly enough but there are many others that have fallen away and I think if we just give them an additional push they would be able to digitalize quickly enough and get the benefits from it I think from what I've heard there's been an increase of apps download for health related apps where you're not so willing to go to the hospital to ask your doctor what to do but you consult the doctor on your phone imagine if all of the good iron shades and your hawker stalls are all like on your grab app and you can get them immediately then they would be able to survive because the only thing that I'm buying for lunch today for instance would be those that are available on the app so if many of these can get digital then they could perhaps just barely survive It's interesting that was actually something that worked fairly well at least during Ramadan the e-bazars working with Grab and others and it's a shame it hasn't really taken off as a model more permanently and I thought myself on other things like how shopping malls can help their smaller businesses to get online via their sort of funds and centralized platforms and things like that so definitely an area that's underutilized and your point is well made in terms of all that may not be available to SMEs We're either of Dr. Marmad or Prof Joma want to jump in on digitization before we move on Let me suggest that I think we really are paying too much attention to digitization This is I've seen how policy agendas have been taken over by the Davos crowd Every year we look in January thankfully this year Davos is not going to be what it was but otherwise Industrial Revolution 4.0 Davos invented this myth digitization has been going on for at least my entire adult life and we can see how gray my hair is not exactly new but we act as if all this is terribly new In fact companies, small enterprises are making decisions all the time as to whether or not digitization is in their own interest and it's not as if they are ignorant of this What we need to do I think quite correctly is to enable them to be aware of the range of new technologies which are available digitization just being one of them but we also have to be very very careful because digitization has often meant the increasing manipulation of our needs The whole idea of ordering your food through apps also involves the manipulation of needs and this is now very well established for anybody who is interested in what all this new economy is all about and we really need to begin to think about many other things, I mean Malaysia for example needs to think very seriously about what now that food supply chains have been disrupted what are we going to do as far as food is concerned what are we going to do to address the nutrition concerns my two panelists have eloquently talked about we need to do much much more much healthier food and get away from this single-minded preoccupation which dates from the colonial period of of rice self-sufficiency there's much more to food security than rice self-sufficiency and it should be combined with our concerns about nutrition so there's a great deal which needs to be done in terms of producing much more food and one of the things which Dr. Mohammad did when he was in government was to enable the government to address some of these to think about some of these problems to have a school feeding program for the entire for the entire nation for all children and this was something which was in at least in some stage of discussion unfortunately it has been hijacked such discussions have been hijacked and they have not really gone forward we have inter-ministerial rivalries so that the food the food food which is being prepared by the Ministry of Education is not overseen by the Ministry of Health and the food is not supplied in consultation with the Ministry of Agriculture so the result is that you have a bunch of large food companies dominating these food programs so we really need to rethink and I think the COVID-19 as Sinek would say you don't let a good crisis go to waste and it offers us an opportunity to rethink a whole variety of issues involving governance which we have had a great deal about today as well as the way we think about supply chains and this kind of naive belief that somehow other trade liberalization is going to save us is really misguided the situation we are in right now is a situation where jingoistic nationalism has been rising for the last decade or so and we are not going to see an immediate reversal of this or for that matter in the near future regardless of the election results next in a couple of weeks time in the US so we really need to begin to think of the very different world which we are in right now and to use this opportunity of recovery what was called penjana by the Malaysian government was a half hearted attempt and I don't blame them frankly because it is very difficult to make sense of what should be the priority but certainly for example there are those things which are staring in our face Australia has made a deal with Singapore to supply electricity from northern territory why aren't the ASEAN neighbors involved in supplying electricity to Singapore we should be beginning to think about the potential for example for developing much more Malaysia is already the single largest source of photovoltaic solar panels which are imported into the United States why aren't Malaysian companies doing it instead of American and European and Chinese companies we really have to think about why we haven't done much much more with palm oil based biodiesel Europe went with biodiesel in 2006 and for palm oil based biodiesel there's not figure at all in the European consumption of biodiesel so we really need to think out of the box and to think much more boldly and this is an opportunity for fundamental reforms in a variety of areas and unfortunately we do not have the conversations which are needed in Malaysia to take that process forward John I thank you very much for that unfortunately we're running short on time so I'll take that as your concluding comment but I'll throw to first Trisha and then Dr.Mahamud for a very quick sort of final thought on something that a key takeaway that Malaysia should be focusing on. Thank you Stuart, I just want to add that I think the problems of health or the lack of nutrition should not be the reason for us to reject digitalization because there can be other ways of ensuring that there is balance so I could imagine that if I was a government agency providing incentives to food panda and grab to ensure that more of the healthy options are made available at first instance when you open your app you see the healthy options as opposed to the unhealthy options that pop in my head but my point is that we should not reject something just because of another policy matter because I believe that there is a way that government regulators can nudge the market along rather than impose blanket ban so I'm sure that's not what he meant but I'm just saying that there are ways around it so my concluding thought I just want to I guess emphasize again the few points that I had at the very beginning which is that social protection to protect the vulnerable groups especially the informal sector but even more importantly think about creating a good business environment that can create jobs because ultimately you can't help everyone forever we need to be able to have the ecosystem that is naturally creating the environment that's right for small and individual businessmen to start businesses to have their restaurants and put their factories together again and then the jobs will come back so that when jobs are available incomes rise and finally have a clear and predictable rules based environment I think the governance angle is just imperative at this time there are many things that we cannot do because we're affected by the pandemic and the economy of course we're also caught in a global crisis but there are things that the government can do and those are governance related so administration needs to get onto the low hanging fruit immediately and contrary to what somebody said I think in the Q&A I am not unfortunately one of the advisors of government but of course we do send our policy proposals to government and we hope very much that they listen thank you very much my conclusion or the final say is that the government shouldn't be stingy they must spend there's no point like I mentioned earlier we get good fiscal numbers that lower ratings good interest deficit is good but people are dying people have no jobs we can spend and we should spend we at the moment we are not contrary the term that we use we are pre-hatined we are not pre-hatined at all how can you say we are pre-hatined let's say for M40 we only give 500 ringgit that's less than 7% of their monthly income we are very stingy and we shouldn't be because we are a rich country we have the resources to do it if we do not change our policy meaning we do not spend or we do not change certain people who's in charge of clearly incompetent I'm very pessimistic that's it well thank you very much to you all first and foremost for joining in what's been incredibly wide ranging and stimulating debates we did have a number of questions and apologies to those we didn't get to your questions but we did manage to cover a fair few of your topics indirectly thank you very much to everyone for participating both via the Q&A and as part of the discussion a reminder that we have the cultural update tomorrow at the same time 10am Malaysian time 1pm Australian time so please do join us for that it will be an equally stimulating discussion so thank you again to the panel and enjoy the rest of your day thank you


news update. Good afternoon, folks. So this is Steve Rhodes coming to you live from the shores of a wet Delray Beach, Florida with your 2 p.m. update. And currently have most of the US indices trading the upside. The only one that is not are the transports are down 35 points, but the price there as you'll see in a moment is pulled back and tested a level of support potential level of sport. You've got the Dow of 42 S and P's of 26 Nasdaq one or 248 one and seven tenths per cent to the upside. Semis are up a little over 1% of 38 points. Russell just slightly green up one point. Gold is up nine bucks. Silver down seven pennies likes we crude up nearly three bucks. Natural gas up three pennies and the 30 year treasury trading out at 149 to one. That's pulling back 25 ticks as we speak right now. Let's go spend a little moment. A little moment. Let's go spend our time. Take a look at the cash indices charts out here and up in the upper left hand corner, you're going to see the Dow. What did the Dow do on Friday? Even though there's no topping pattern out here. What the Dow did. It's also done. Change line change colors price pulled back and tested and rejected that level. It has done that again today. That suggests that the Dow wants to make a move up to the 35 431 level. The S and P 500 has not tested its green. Also turned change line got close, but no cigar out there. Nonetheless, this may be targeted as TD nine count top and that TD nine count top is for the S and P 500. The trading day from March to 29th, the price were to close above that. You'd be looking and moved to 47 44 NASDAQ 100 has a TD nine count top as did the S and P 500 price should test that green outside and change line, but has no mood to do that right now. It's trading into the swing point that created that TD nine count top. It's doing so with lighter volume, but nonetheless, it's trading inside there as long as you close inside that swing point, which for the index 100 would be a close above 15 039 61 prices likely to go target the top Russell 2000. It tested its green outside and change line on Friday. That puts it back into the bullish camp and suggested wants to try to target 22 10. The semis are having a nice bounce, but they need to close above its red outside and change line. Otherwise, the semis are suggesting lower price. The transports pulling back to old resistance 15 420. That may be new support. You got a hammer candle going today out there, but big wide range of bar to the downside. You got to wait for a couple of days to see what the transport signal to us. New York Stock Exchange has a TD nine count top. It has a date with that outside or change line. It just hasn't found the time to make that happen. The same is true with the NASDAQ composite. So folks, stay tuned. Your favorite polar bear, David whites up next. Thanks much for joining me on Magnificent Monday. Take care. We'll see you tomorrow on terrific Tuesday.


Our intensity picked up consistently. I think we couldn't get over the hunt. We kept preaching that throughout the course of the game that we got to get over the hunt. We get it to seven. The end one point, we got it to two. We got it back up to double digits. So we just continued to fight, continued to fight. And that fourth quarter, the entire quarter, I think we just turned it to another level. Offensively, we got every shot we wanted. And then defensively, we just were engaged. Every person that checked in the game. You've been in a lot of the game before, played in a lot of the games. So, physical, do you think unique about this second game of the season, this type of environment and battling through this together? I mean, as a home opener, you know, we knew as an organization, as a team, they're going through whatever they're going through. So we knew it was going to be a lot of emotion in here. For us, we just wanted to win. We wanted to come in here and do whatever it took to win. We didn't play well our first game. And so we wanted to kind of bounce back and kind of put it together for four quarters. And I think we did that, you know, we're still trying to figure it out. But I think, you know, we're headed in the right direction. If we can play hard, every, try to play hard every possession and be on the same page and keep communicating through our mistakes, good things are bound to happen. You know, one thing about us, we had a lot of versatility. So, you know, obviously we started the game with Nick and he gives us that lob and that, you know, to the rim target, L.A. checked in. He got it going and he finished the game strong. The way you guys finished the game, kind of, Court v.  Just how useful was that defensively being able to kind of get into them? It was great. Patty and JC picked up and, you know, appreciate their guards who were pretty much comfortable all night. You know, they bring a different dynamic. They bring shooting. They bring, you know, the speed that we need. And then, you know, as far as for me and Kevin, we just, we do, we do, you know, make plays, score the basketball and just try to play the right way. And then as far as Lamarcus, I think he did a really good job on Joel on that fourth quarter and then offensively he spread the court.  That's what you guys had tonight, just like in Milwaukee. Is that just growing pains? Yeah, we figured out, we figured out. And we don't like it at all. That's one thing that we talk about is the slow starts, but, you know, we'll get past it. We'll figure things out and we're trying to get off to a better pace, better start. Because ultimately, if we jump out, it's gonna be difficult for teams to keep up with us.