Friday, December 26, 2008

CADANGAN PENSWASTAAN IJN PERLU DILUPAKAN SAJA

Abdul Rahman Sulaiman

SECARA umumnya, bagi kebanyakan warga emas, terutama pesara, ada beberapa keutamaan yang menjadi fokus kehidupan harian mereka dalam meniti saki baki usia yang masih tinggal.

Antaranya ialah kesihatan diri, kebajikan keluarga bagi yang masih mempunyai keluarga dan hubungan yang diperbaharui dengan Pencipta, walaupun senarai keutamaan itu tidak semestinya dalam bentuk demikian.

Ini tidak pula bermakna golongan yang lebih muda tidak mengutamakan perkara yang disebutkan. Bezanya cuma orang yang berusia, mungkin lebih perhatian terhadap isu berkaitan kesihatan, keluarga dan kerohanian berbanding orang muda.

Sebab itu bukanlah sesuatu yang menghairankan apabila keputusan kerajaan untuk menswastakan Institut Jantung Negara (IJN) yang dibuat dengan tidak semena-mena, mendapat tentangan yang boleh disifatkan di luar jangkaan daripada pelbagai kalangan, terutama golongan pesara.

Adalah jelas bahawa berdasarkan kepada laporan media, cakap-cakap di kedai kopi, mesej yang diterima menerusi khidmat pesanan ringkas (SMS) dan ulasan melalui pelbagai blog, persetujuan kerajaan - walaupun hanya pada dasarnya dan belum dimuktamadkan - untuk membenarkan konglomerat Sime Darby Bhd mengambil alih 51 peratus kepentingan dalam satu-satunya hospital jantung milik kerajaan itu ditentang sekeras-kerasnya sehingga ada yang menyifatkan tentangan itu lebih berbentuk emosional daripada kewajaran.

Walaupun kerajaan sebagai pemilik dan Sime Darby selaku pembida masing-masing memberi jaminan bahawa tanggungjawab sosial hospital yang ditubuhkan 16 tahun lalu atas ilham bekas Perdana Menteri, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad itu, akan diteruskan walau apa pun statusnya selepas ini, rakyat tidak mudah menerima jaminan berkenaan.

Mereka pantas menuding jari kepada pelbagai entiti kerajaan atau agensi milik kerajaan yang diswastakan sebelum ini seperti Telekom Malaysia, Tenaga Nasional Berhad dan lain-lain yang menaikkan caj masing-masing dengan menggunakan pelbagai alasan.

Berdasarkan kepada pengalaman ini, mereka bimbang IJN yang selama ini tempat bergantung harap kepada golongan berpendapatan rendah, pesara kerajaan atau rakyat miskin yang mengidap masalah jantung atau penyakit berkaitan akan bertukar sifat daripada sebuah hospital pakar yang profesional, cekap dan bertimbang rasa kepada gergasi komersial yang terlalu mementingkan keuntungan.

Tidak keterlaluan dikatakan bahawa jika cadangan penswastaan ini diteruskan, kerajaan akan menghadapi risiko politik yang lebih berat, terutama pada saat imejnya yang belum pulih selepas mengalami prestasi terburuk dalam sejarah pada Pilihan Raya Umum Ke-12 Mac lalu.

Lihat saja apa kata bekas seorang menteri dalam mesejnya menerusi SMS yang diterima: "Saya cadangkan supaya IJN dikekalkan di bawah kerajaan, tetapi skim gaji doktor hendaklah tidak mengikut gaji kerajaan. Jika gajinya sama, doktor yang baik akan lari ke swasta."

[Datuk Rahman Sulaiman ialah bekas Ketua Pengarang Bernama] Baca artikel beliau sepenuhnya di:

9 comments:

Mika Angel-0 said...

Sdr Ruhanie Ahmad,

Di Sebalik Tabir Kekecuhan IJN
(silap langkah hancur negara, det)


Sekirnya entiti koporat kerajaan tidak mendatangkan untung bagaimana
skim-skim amanah saham jaminan kerajaan dapat membantu rakyat? Persoalan ini telah ditimbulakan oleh The Scribe:

Friday, December 19, 2008
IJN: For The Health of The People Or Sime Darby?

A Kadir Jasin

A KADIR JASIN said...
Sdr Syamsul Azuar menulis: " Datuk, Boleh komen sikit pasal cadangan Airport baru di Labu oleh Sime Darby & Airasia."

1. Dalam istilah korporat dan perniagaan, para pengulas pasaran saham dan penganalisis, mengkategorikan syarikat seperti Sime Darby dan AirAsia sebagai "blue chips" dan entiti yang mendapat layanan istimewa.

2. Kemunculan tiba-tiba AirAsia sebagai kuasa korporat ada kaitan dengan statusnya sebagai peneroka bidang baru;

3. AirAsia juga sangat bijak dalam hal public relations dan pandai ambil hati;

4. Ia mumpanyai sokongan politik yang kuat. Ramai pembesar politik dapat saham apabila AirAsia membuat IPO. Mereka buat keuntungan besar kerana harga naik dengan banyak bila diniagakan di Bursa Malaysia;

5. Kini AirAsia mengalami masalah perniagaan dan kewangan. Ia sudah mula mencatat kerugian dan saham sudah jatuh kepada 85 sen daripada RM1.30 bila diniagakan;

6. Sime Darby juga mengalami kesulitan, kejatuhan pendapatan dan harga saham selepas mengambil alih Golden Hope dan Guthrie. Sahamnya jatuh dari paras tertinggi RM13 Ogos lalu kepada sekitar RM5.50 sekarang;

7. Sime Darby memerlukan bantuan kerajaan melalui kontrak dan penswastaan untuk mempertahankan kedudukannya;

8. Sime Darby rugi, PNB rugi. PNB rugi, pelabur saham ASB rugi.

Terima kasih.

10:48 AM




Negara ini di ambang kemelesetan ekonomi akibat kemelesetan ekonomi negara-negara maju yang tercetus dari Krisis Sub-Prima Wall Street yang sebenarnya disebabkan Alan Greenspan yang 'naive' dengan fahaman free market dengan langkah-langkah 'deregulation' yang telah hilang kawalan dan kewibawaan.

Pendek cerita dan sebenarnya kita mahu bertanyakan:

1. Apa dasar kesihatan untuk rakyat -'healthcare blueprint for the nation' dalam jangka masa panjang.

2. Bagaimana insurans kesihatan Islam boleh berperanan?

3. Adakah Krisis Sub-prima-US$ akan hilang dan pergi dari menghantui dunia dalam masa yang terdekat atau ianya akan meninggalkan kesan yang panjang sapertimana Krisis Kewangan Jepun 1992 yang belum boleh dikatakan sudah sembuh. Seumpamanya kerja orang nippon menyelimuti bangkai dinasuar yang masih mereput?

4. Sekiranya Pakistan boleh bankrup apa jaminan negara ini juga tidak akan bankrup? ('politcal instability' akan mengundangkan kemusnahan ekonomi sesuatu negara sekiranya saya faham kata-kata Mahathir)

5. Semestinyakah penswastaan IJN perlu dilupakan saja atau kita lupakan sahaja Mohd Najib dari menjadi Perdana Menteri dan minta MOF2 letak jawatan!(yang mana adalah punca segala kemelut kewangan negara kita yang diburukan lagi oleh PM Abdullah yang nyata tidak berbakat dan keberkatan lagi untuk memimpin sebuah negara saperti Malaysia ke arah yang lebih progresif and dinamik; dan Mahathir pun tidak lagi mampu memberi kepimpinan itu)

Akhirkata, apa pandangan kamu kata-kata ini:
"Saya cadangkan supaya IJN dikekalkan di bawah kerajaan, tetapi skim gaji doktor hendaklah tidak mengikut gaji kerajaan. Jika gajinya sama, doktor yang baik akan lari ke swasta."

Jadi doktor-doktor yang ada di hopsital kerajaan itu apa? Dan mengikut che det dalam blognya, gaji pakar-pakar itu pun tidaklah sama gaji pakar-pakar di hospital kerajaan.

Mahathir menyeru agar cerdik pandai negara kita dan mereka yang mencintai negara ini dapat menghasilkan jawaban jitu kepada cabaran yang pasti datang dan sekiranya tidak maka negara ini akan tergadai maruah dan kemerdekaannya.

(Nah tengok apa yang sedang berlaku di negara Arab Timur Tengah dengan harga minyak mentah yang jatuh keparas bawah US$36 per tong dan pembangunan yang dirancangkankan pun tertunda; dan harapnya dunia barat tidak murka kepada Iran dan kita pun turut kena tempias Obama-Hilary)

Seruan Mahathir masih tidak difahami, Mas Kuda Kepang.

dan kajang said...

As'kum Dato',

1. Hari ini kita dengar bahawa IJN tidak mempunyai masalah kewangan bagi membantu pesakit miskin dan yang berpendapatan rendah dan sederhana.Ini kerana IJN sentiasa dibantu oleh penderma2 di kalangan syarikat2 swasta dan individu.Menurut pihak IJN sumbangan secara konsisten diterima setiap tahun sebanyak lingkungan RM 3 juta.

2. Jika IJN diswatakan maka sumbangan ini mungkin tidak akan datang lagi.Oleh itu jika apa yang disuarakan oleh Tun Musa bahawa pihaknya ada peruntukan untuk membantu gulongan berpendapatan rendah jika IJN di serahkan kepada pihaknya maka apa kata jika peruntukan tersebut disalorkan kepada IJN sekarang bagi memantabkan lagi tabung kebajikan IJN.Tak payahlah nak ambil alih.

mn said...

Datuk,

1. Saya lihat isu IJN sama dengan isu harga minyak.

2. Nak jaga rakyat atau nak jaga Doktor pakar?

3. Dalam isu penurunan harga minyak, saya nampak kerajaan lebih nak jaga Pengusaha Stesyen minyak. Bukan nak jaga kepentingan pengguna/rakyat.

Gagak di Rimba said...

Salam,

Saya adalah salah seorang yang berharap supaya cadangan penswastaan IJN itu dibatalkan terus dan bukan ditangguhkan saja kerana pilihan raya kecil Kuala Terengganu.

Walaupun penswastaan itu mungkin ada juga baiknya, tapi yang lebih dikhuatiri ialah implikasinya dari segi perkhidmatan kepada golongan yang berpendapatan rendah dan sederhana, termasuk para pesara. Apabla telah diswastakan IJN tentu mementingkan keuntungan, dan tidakkah nanti bayaran perkhidmatannya akan begitu tinggi, sehingga diluar jangkauan "rakyat biasa"?

Di samping itu, walaupun implikasi politknya belum dapat dipastikan, tapi sedikit sebanyak tentu ada, apabila penswastaan IJN itu dilihat oleh rakyat lebih mementingkan para kroni, dan seolah-olah mengenepikan kepentingan rakyat terbanyak.

UMNO PARTI PENJARA said...

perlu dilupakan..
saya masih sayangkan kerajaan :-)







(( Renungkan )) Ke Mana Kita Mahu Pergi?
http://TeamPemudaUMNO.blogspot.com
Forum Generasi Muda
http://Forum1Malaysia.blogspot.com
Pakatan Antara Parti Lawan Tidak Kekal
http://pro-faizal.blogspot.com

Kamarulzaman Kamdias said...

Dato Ron,
IJN baru saja extent bangunan dan facilities lain yg menelan belanja hampir 300 juta. Kenapa Sime Darby tak mahu ambil alih dulu. Jadi tak payahlah kerajaan nak keluar wang sebyk itu semata2 utk diambil alih alih oleh korporatyg memang berduit. Kenapa nak untung free...?

Dato, kalau ada kesudian, sudilah kiranya buat pautan Kepal Nasi, Kepal Beras ke blog kudakepang

ChengHo said...

'Elegant Silent ' Pengerusi Sime Darby Musa Hitam tidak membantu kita untuk memahami tujuan sebenar penswastaan IJN. Prestasi Sime Darby makin merusut setelah mengambil/bersatu dgn 2 lagi syarikat gergasi perladangan satu lagi contoh saiz bukan nya ukuran kejayaan dan saiz yg besar juga menyebabkan kepala pengarah bertambah besar dan lupa kepada tujuan asal mengapa perniagaan itu perlu kepada kecekapan pengurusan nya.

politica said...

Sunday, December 28, 2008

SERTA MERTA BATALKAN PENSWASTAAN IJN – RAKYAT

Dah, jangan buat-buat pekak, jangan buat-buat bodoh. Penswastaan IJN is a no go deal – satu usaha yang dibangkang keras oleh rakyat jelata.

Rakyat Malaysia dah bersuara dan terus bersuara. Tak putus-putus. Di mana-mana saja. Mereka bangkang penswastaan IJN. Verdict atau keputusan mereka – batalkan penswastaan IJN dengan serta merta.

Suara rakyat adalah suara keramat. Dalam PRU13 nanti, suara mereka cukup penting. Dalam hal IJN ni, dah ada yang kata, kalau IJN terus diwastakan, dalam PRU13 nanti, mereka akan lupakan BN.

Lantas, batalkanlah penswastaan IJN ni serta merta. Ini bukan kerana rakyat menang dan kerajan kecundang. Ini kerana rakyat mahu kerajaan buktikan yang kerajaan benar-benar prihatin dan sensitif kepada suara rakyat.

Kalau tak, banyak lagi akan dibongkar. Setakat ni pun banyak pihak dah tau apa kata-kata Dr. Izzani sewaktu mesyuarat pengurusan IJN dua-tiga hari lalu. Dr. Izzani ni dikatakan bertindak sebagai pendorong IJN diswastakan. Sapa dia ni? Adakah dia ni proksi menantu Abdullah Ahmad yang secara kebetulan berbua-bual mesra dengan Izzani di lobi IJN tempoh hari?

Kita juga dapat info, baki saham IJN 49 peratus yang kononnya akan dipegang sepenuhnya oleh IJN kalau penswastaan ini terjadi, bukan solid untuk IJN sahaja. Sebaliknya akan diagih-agihkan sedikit sepada sesetengah pihak sebagai beneficiary atau penerimanya. Jangan sapa-sapa cuba nafikan ura-ura ini.

Oleh itu, sebelum rakyat bersuara dan bertindak lebih serius lagi dengan pembongkaran demi pembongkaran perkara tak betul di sebalik ura-ura penswastaan ini, lebih elok batalkan penswastaan ini dengan serta merta. – http://politica-net.blogspot.com

Mika Angel-0 said...

Untuk Kuda Kepang

The Madoff Double Bluff
By Muhammad Rafeeq
Global Research,
December 24, 2008
Rense - 2008-12-18

At first sight it was extremely refreshing. A white-collar financial crook raising his hands and pleading guilty to his financial crime. This has to be almost a first. Usually financial criminals when caught in the most obvious of wrong-doing plead 'not guilty'. The criminal can be caught boarding the plane, with a suitcase containing US$100mn of someone elses cash, with his mistress holding on to his arm, he will look into the camera with his most genuine 'Tony Blair look of sincerity' and say "What we have here is a misunderstanding.... " You make up the rest of the excuse, there is a million of them.

So yes, an outright confession, "It was me, I chopped down the apple tree" is so against the current socio-political culture it was almost too good to be true. Especially given the pedigree of this perp, the CEO of one of the busiest and most prominent financial exchanges in the world. After his confession the world goes into shock, especially the Jewish world, since affluent members of this community had previously flocked to his door, seeking his world famous high returns. Since his arrest the press is full of people extolling his virtues as a decent human-being and "who would ever of believed it?". It would be so easy for this man to deny any wrongdoing because he could bring out an army of good character witnesses and he could just point at some suspect-looking goy in his hedge fund organisation to lay the blame on.

So a truly heartwarming confession. And it was apparently made to his 2 sons, both of whom who worked for the fund and who had absolutely no idea that this fraud was being perpetrated, until such time as this astounding confession.

But then I started to look more closely at the mix of investors who have lost money. About half of them are professional investing institutions. Look at this quote from the UK's Daily Mail newspaper

(online http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/article-1096228/Lloyds-London-braced-claims-Madoff-meltdown-makes-directors-targets-lawsuits.html )

"Full details of the exact losses are yet to emerge. Hedge funds and banks have so far admitted to having around £16billion with Madoff - only half of the total that is reckone d to have been lost. Some of the biggest casualties are Swiss private banks, which have taken hits amounting to about £2.5billion. Spanish bank Santander had £2.1billion of client money with Madoff. HSBC has admitted to lending about £600million to funds who wanted to use debt to gear up their positions with Madoff. RAB capital, the hedge fund that lost huge sums on investing in Northern Rock, has revealed that it is exposed to Madoff to the tune of around £6million."

Now the confession does not look right at all.

It is possible to accept the idea of a Ponzi scheme be played on members of the public, who are ignorant of how such schemes are worked, in fact the schemes are targetted specifica lly at such people. Yet Madoff would have us believe that he managed to convince professional investment companies to put their funds with him without any due diligence being performed. This is clearly nonsense.

I have acted as a professional consultant to major EC and US financial institutions on corporate and institutional credit risk and the idea that anyone in HSBC or Santander could authorise large investment without the internal checks and controls being employed is almost impossible. To try and believe that EVERY institution that invested in Madoff circumvented their internal control procedures IS impossible.

Why is this important? Simple. If someone approaches the HSBC credit risk team, for instance, with a view to making a loan or investing a sum as large as £600m to what is ultimately a single institution (therefore a single counterparty credit exposure) a significant number hoops would have to be jumped through. Firstly there is the credit officer competence limit, which is the maximum amount that a single credit officer may be allowed to authorise. More than his/her limit must be referred up the credit approval food chain. In an institution like HSBC or Santander etc, £600bn or US$1bn will have been referred to the very top of the food chain, the banks' credit committees at the board level. This is an enormous sum and no lacky is going to be able to approve this by themselves, ever.

When the credit committee are called together to review an application, everything is ready prepared for them, so they can cut to the chase . The lower levels of the credit approval process will have prepared a summary of all the application documentation, included in the meeting bundle, with the strengths, weaknesses, and other important credit risk points. This application will usually contain a set of audited accounts going back a minimum of 3 years and most likely 5 years. There will be a full credit breakdown of the investment profile of the business, Madoff's hedge fund, looking at how the fund obtains its returns; investment assets and investment methodology. After the committee is satisfied that all the issues and concerns have been addressed they will vote on the approval or otherwise.

So there is no way that Madoff could have been pulling a scam. It would have stood out as clear as day to professional financial analysts, whose only job in life is to examine the management of companies and their reports and accounts, to make sure that all is in order. Its their job, its what they do. They are the world experts in spotting anomalies. The idea that all these professionals in all these companies were all duped is absolute nonsense. It is highly improbable that one such evaluation process could have been fooled, but all of them, never. A Ponzi scheme is easy to spot when you have the audited accounts and the full range of investment assets and investment metodologies employed.

Also, this scam avoided the attention of all the funds employees; accountants, traders, auditors and the US regulators, all of whom are also financial professionals.

This again is absolute nonsense. A ny company that I have ever worked for would have known internally that such business was being done, because they are all involved. For instance, a trader goes on buying equities from the worlds stock exchanges that go down in price for 5 continuous years, but the company just keeps giving him more money to top up the trading, continues paying his salary and even annual bonus. Absolute rubbish. But assuming this actually did happen, the market risk team would have been watching these losses, as would have the accountants. It is not possible to hide things like this internally for very long, months at the most; 20+ years, NEVER.

So why plead guilty? The answer is simple. Look on the net and you will see that because this case is being labelled a fraud, it would appear that investors are going to be able to claim their investment back under the US government's financial fraud protection scheme. A judge has already given his approval in principle for compensation, w ithout any evidence having been presented and financial fraud being demonstrated in a court of law. And it would appear that there will never be such a demonstration in a court of law. Why? It would appear that all the funds financial records are mostly "missing" (rather like Dov Zakheim's US$1.4tn) and those few records that do survive are in a terrible mess.

However, since the guy has pleaded guilty we do not need to demonstrate the fraud, because he says he is guilty.

And look further on the net and you will see that these "victims" have also been told by the US tax authorities that they will probably also be entitled to claim back some taxes on these defrauded sums.

Rather than saying this hedge fund has gone bust, due to its choice of investment assets and investment methologies, a scenario which is highly probable in the current financial paradigm, since all the professionals are predicting that at least 30% of all hedge funds are about to fail, more than 700 of them, the CEO chooses to fess up to fraud. If the CEO admits the fund has gone bust, then all those wealthy members of the Jewish community get nothing, but if the CEO admits to fraud they get their money back as compensation from the US tax payer, just as they are also drawing money back from the tax payers with the other hand.

And, as can be seen at the Daily Mail link above, the investors in this fund only get to litigate the fund directors against Lloyds insurers in London for even more compensation. Done properly the compensation could end up paying out far more than the original fund returns (yes this is sarcasm, it was bound to creep in eventually in yet another swindle like this).

Would that I could believe that Madoff were a good guy who slipped and then became repentant. But given the facts, this simply cannot be true.


...We’re back with the old notion of a secret, all-powerful permanent government, engendered in the WASP-nest of Skull and Bones, headquartered in Langley and locked in alternate collusion and combat with another permanent secret all-powerful government, headquartered in Zion and, if we are to believe the conspiracists, exultant at this hour at the tremendous coup of Bernie Madoff’s supposed victims.

Coup? I refer you to a scenario circulating the internet, titled “The Madoff Double Bluff” and credited to Muhammad Rafeeq, who makes the fatal presupposition – very common among conspiracists – that things work in the fashion advertised by the manufacturer on the outside of the box. As many children and parents learn at this time of year, this is not always the case.

In Rafeeq’s case, he assumes that fund managers and bankers invariably exercise due diligence on behalf of their clients, subjecting each proposed investment vehicle to merciless scrutiny. In the mighty backwash of the Fall of the House of Madoff, we are learning once again that many fund managers and bankers did no such thing. Whether in Switzerland, London or New York, they established themselves as feeders for Madoff and rushed him the money entrusted to them by their eager customers without a qualm, winning handsome commissions from Madoff for so doing.

But since Rafeeq thinks that Madoff’s operations were under conscientious scrutiny, he concludes that “there is no way Madoff could have been pulling a scam.” Having established his initial erroneous assumption as the foundation of his conspiracy, Rafeeq then raises a Gothick folly on this sand, claiming that the dirty work afoot here was not a Ponzi scheme (impossible because of zealous scrutineers) but an insurance fraud, led by Madoff to cover genuine losses from Madoff’s trades by claiming a Ponzi scheme and taking full responsibility:

Rather than saying this hedge fund has gone bust, due to its choice of investment assets and investment methologies, a scenario which is highly probable in the current financial paradigm, since all the professionals are predicting that at least 30% of all hedge funds are about to fail, more than 700 of them, the CEO [Madoff] chooses to fess up to fraud. If the CEO admits the fund has gone bust, then all those wealthy members of the Jewish community get nothing, but if the CEO admits to fraud they get their money back as compensation from the US taxpayer, just as they are also drawing money back from the taxpayers with the other hand.

In other words, it’s a vast Jewish conspiracy, rather flattering to the Jews, as such conspiracy theories often are. (For such reasons Benjamin Disraeli, for one, liked to foster the notion that indeed the Jews are all-powerful.) Just as he assumes that all fund managers are conscientious, Rafeeq obviously thinks Jews are too smart to lose money.

I sent Rafeeq’s reflections along to CounterPuncher Pam Martens, a former Wall Street stockbroker who really did exercise due diligence on behalf of her clients and who was on to Madoff’s game back in the early 1990s. I strongly recommend her recent piece on the Madoff affar on this site, which we ran last Monday.

Martens wrote me back as follows:

The author [i.e. Rafeeq] is missing a few important points. First of all, the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) will only cover a maximum of $500,000 per account owner; some accounts had tens of millions in them. Secondly, the account owner would have to show beyond a shadow of doubt that they actually gave money to Madoff in order to seek a SIPC refund and would be subject to jail time themselves if they lied. Since Madoff never owned a bank, all records of incoming funds and outgoing funds, along with the name of the beneficial owner, would be easily accessible at his clearing banks, two of which are listed in court documents as JPMorgan Chase and Bank of New York Mellon. And, finally, the author neglects the most important point: why would Madoff be willing to spend the rest of his life in jail to make others rich from SIPC refunds. I'm not buying this story. My guess (and it's just a guess at this point) is the following happened: the people who had been with Madoff since the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s had multiplied their original investment (on paper) many times over at the fictional annual rate of 10 to 13 per cent. Many wanted out once the market was down over 40 per cent. Once he paid them out, he had little left to meet regular income payouts and meet his high family salaries, overhead, multiple homes, yachts, private plane interests, office and payroll in London, country club memberships on Long Island and Palm Beach, etc. Then, apparently, some large redemptions were requested, totaling $7 billion. If he didn't pay, those people would have turned him in anyway. He had no choice but to fess up.

There’s now much bellowing about the need for new regulations to head off the Madoffs of tomorrow. Such calls have the effect of suggesting that there were no locks on the stable door and that hence no one was really to blame for not checking that the stable door was securely shut. The deregulatory binge of the last few years notwithstanding, there are still plenty of locks – that is, regulations – on the books which, if actually used, would have stopped Madoff in his tracks. But the regulators and overseers were corrupted. In her piece for CounterPunch, Martens quoted the detailed 21-page denunciation of Madoff to the SEC in 2005 by Harry Markopoulos, outlining with great accuracy the huge fraud underway. The letter was dismissed out of hand by the SEC, one of whose regulators married Madoff’s daughter, a union given a rapturous retrospective green light in the New York Times after the scandal broke.

Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC was a crime scene for 20 years at least, and it looks as though half Wall Street was privy to the fact, not to mention the regulators and the politicians in Congress in receipt of their portion of the $590,000 which, from 1998 through 2008, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities spent lobbying Congress and the SEC, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. It was a huge conspiracy, though not in the least like the one sketched in by Rafeeq. Conspiracies, like accidents, very often turn out to be normalcy suddenly raised to the level of drama...
The Medusa's Head


Why did Cockburn have to say it was a Jewish conspiracy and Martens did not address Rafeeq's allegation convincingly. Maybe the Daily Mail did but I do not have to fnd out that, do I.

What gives with Cockburn? No way did I see Rafeeq was saying it was a Jewish conspiracy but Madoff did it to save alot of money for some.

As for going to jail it is better than having your body -and your family members- burn after being chopped to pieces.


Sdr Poilitca,

Rakyat ini tidak anti-pengswataan IJN.

Saya mahu yang terbaik bagi rakyat negara yang bertambah bilangannya saban tahun.

Sekiranya ini akan mempengaruhi PRU13 maka eloklah. Dan sekiranya banyak lagi yang hendak dibongkar eloklah.

Adakah anda mengikut Mahathir membabi buta? Atau anda tiada suatu penyelesaian yang win-win, Sdr Politica?

Kita juga dapat info, baki saham IJN 49 peratus yang kononnya akan dipegang sepenuhnya oleh IJN kalau penswastaan ini terjadi, bukan solid untuk IJN sahaja. Sebaliknya akan diagih-agihkan sedikit sepada sesetengah pihak sebagai beneficiary atau penerimanya. Jangan sapa-sapa cuba nafikan ura-ura ini.

Tolonglah buktikan dengan fakta.

Bukan senang nak jerat leher seorang Tun Musa Hitam adalah pendapat saya dan Sime Darby adalah hak rakyat juga, Sdr Politica.