Ismail Sabri may be smarter than people give him credit for
The real blood to be spilled will be during the party elections next year, not during the general election next month. And that will be when Ismail Sabri Yaakob will really have to fight for his life. And if he succeeds in bringing Umno-Barisan Nasional to victory next month, it would be easier for him to grab the even bigger prize, the presidency of Umno.
NO HOLDS BARRED
Raja Petra Kamarudin
Political analysts (plus Najib Tun Razak’s inner circle and team of advisors) say Najib should have held the 14th general election in 2017 instead of 2018. The general election was held one year too late, they say, and this resulted in Umno-Barisan Nasional getting wiped out.
Umno won only 54 parliament seats while the original “Alliance Party” (Umno, MCA and MIC) won only 57 seats. Even with the other ten BN component party members included, the combined seats for all 13 parties were only 79 — a far cry from the 135 parliament seats which Barisan Nasional had expected to win.
If what Reuters reported (READ BELOW) is true, maybe holding the general election next month instead of next year is a smart move after all (because JPMorgan Chase & Co has forecasted a recession around April-July 2023).
If what they forecast is true, a general election after the 1st quarter of next year would be suicide and a repeat of GE14 in May 2018.
Maybe the forecasted April-July 2023 recession was not in Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob’s mind when he had his audience with Seri Paduka Baginda Yang di-Pertuan Agong to request His Majesty’s consent to dissolve Parliament. However, intended or not, this may finally work out in his favour, even if it happened by accident.
I have been through three recessions, and trust me, it is no fun. If the recession does happen, it would probably linger for two years and will need around five years for things to bounce back. By then it will be time for the 16th general election around 2027 or so.
By the time the recession hits, say around April-July 2023, it will be time for the Umno party elections. And that will be when the ‘fun’ starts. GE15 will be very tame by comparison, a sort of trial exam for the finals.
The real blood to be spilled will be during the party elections next year, not during the general election next month. And that will be when Ismail Sabri Yaakob will really have to fight for his life. And if he succeeds in bringing Umno-Barisan Nasional to victory next month, it would be easier for him to grab the even bigger prize, the presidency of Umno.
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JPMorgan chief warns of recession in 6 to 9 months
(Reuters) – JPMorgan Chase & Co chief executive Jamie Dimon said the US and the global economy could tip into a recession by the middle of the next year, CNBC reported on Monday.
Runaway inflation, big interest rates hikes, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the unknown effects of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative tightening policy are among the indicators of a potential recession, he said in an interview to the business news channel.
“These are very, very serious things which I think are likely to push the US and the world – I mean, Europe is already in recession – and they’re likely to put the US in some kind of recession six to nine months from now,” Dimon said.
His comments come as the big US banks are set to report their third-quarter earnings from Friday. So far this year, the benchmark S&P 500 index has lost about 24%, with all the three major US indices trading in bear market territory.
Dimon said the S&P 500 could fall by “another easy 20%” from the current levels, with the next 20% slide likely to “be much more painful than the first”, according to the CNBC report.
Earlier this year, Dimon had asked investors to brace for an economic “hurricane”, with JPMorgan, the biggest US investment bank, suspending share buybacks in July after missing quarterly Wall Street expectations.
In June, Goldman Sachs had predicted a 30% chance of the US economy tipping into recession over the next year, while the economists at Morgan Stanley placed the odds of a recession for the next 12 months at around 35%.
World Bank president David Malpass and International Monetary Fund managing director Kristalina Georgieva also warned on Monday of a growing risk of global recession and said inflation remained a problem after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
