It’s Not A Bubble Until It’s Officially Denied, Malaysia Edition

ARCHIVES 2013

By admin-j On Oct 18, 2013

It is very difficult to completely deny the existence of a bubble in China, and even worse to say that Southeast Asian economies won’t be affected by its popping.

Jesse Colombo, Forbes

My recent report about Malaysia’s economic bubble has generated quite a bit of a interest and controversy in the past few days. In addition to receiving over 45,000 views and 3,000 Facebook shares on Forbes, it made the headline of The Malaysian Insider, where it continued to spread virally in Southeast Asia.

The report received a favorable response from Lim Guan Eng, the Chief Minister of the State of Penang, who said in a press statement, “Even renowned financial analyst Jesse Colombo wrote in the Forbes online magazine that Malaysia’s economic bubble will burst due to its high government and household debt.”

Lim went on to say, “Interestingly, Colombo said that plans to build the tallest building in Southeast Asia, the 118-story and RM5 billion Warisan Merdeka Tower, is a major Skyscraper Index red flag.” The Skyscraper Index red flag refers to a Dresdner Kleinwort report in 2009 which showed a correlation between the construction of the world’s tallest buildings and the impending end of business cycles.

The report also struck enough of a raw nerve that Malaysia’s International Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed refuted my assertion that the popping of China’s precarious bubble economy will also pop Malaysia’s bubble in a press conference in Kuala Lumpur, saying “The Chinese economy is not going to tumble. It’s going to stay strong. We’ve seen high growth in China for many years.”

“Malaysia is not going to be adversely affected. Anyway, we are focusing more on domestic resources growth and it’s becoming more relevant in this context,” he added.

There seems to be an unwritten rule that government officials across the world must deny the existence of economic bubbles that pose a great threat to their countries. When I was warning about the U.S. housing and credit bubble in 2005, Ben Bernanke infamously denied its existence. Officials are denying the UK’s and Australia’s housing bubbles, along with many other post-2009 bubbles that I am currently warning about.

I don’t see how public officials’ bubble denial does anything but harm to their countries’ citizens. Denying the existence of bubbles does not make them disappear, but only serves to hamper the early detection process that is so critical to the survival of terminal illnesses, whether physical or economic.

I also don’t see how denying the risks posed by China’s massive economic bubble does any good either. I will be writing an extensive report about China’s bubble after I finish covering bubbles in Southeast Asia, but for starters, they have a multi-trillion dollar debt bubble that has exploded in recent years as their government has encouraged the building of scores of empty “ghost cities” to generate economic growth.

Charts show a ballooning Chinese credit bubble: