Budget Day? I’ll Read About It Tomorrow

I confess. I have stopped watching the live Budget presentation.

Not because I have lost interest in the country's finances. Quite the opposite. I have probably become more interested in what lies behind the numbers. But after years of watching Budget Day unfold, I have discovered a more efficient way of doing it: read the newspaper the next morning.

By then, the numbers have been digested, the important announcements separated from the decorative language, and someone has usually produced a useful table telling me what the Budget actually means for my pocket.

The Government's version will have been delivered. The coalition MPs will have praised it. The Opposition will have criticised it. Somewhere in between, someone will have discovered a number that appears to have been overlooked, misrepresented or interpreted differently.

And then comes the familiar political choreography.

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When Bankers Become Power Brokers

The Uncanny Parallel Between J.P. Morgan and Tun Daim

History occasionally produces two men separated by an ocean, a century and vastly different political systems, yet connected by an intriguing similarity: both understood that the power of banking extended far beyond money.

J. Pierpont Morgan was born in 1837, when the United States was still transforming from an agrarian society into an industrial power. Tun Daim Zainuddin was born exactly a century later, when Malaya was still a developing colonial economy. Yet both would eventually operate at moments when their countries were undergoing profound economic transformation.

The comparison is not to suggest that Daim was simply a Malaysian J.P. Morgan. Their circumstances were fundamentally different. Morgan was a private financier whose influence grew through Wall Street. Daim, although a businessman with substantial banking interests, eventually became Finance Minister and therefore possessed something Morgan never did have direct access to the machinery of government.

That difference may be precisely what makes the comparison so fascinating.

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What Modern Economics Can Learn from Prophet Yusuf

Khalilah Dato' Mohd Talha's reflection, Was Prophet Yusuf the World's First Economist?, is more than an interesting observation about a Qur'anic story. It raises a question that modern economics may have become uncomfortable answering: What is an economy actually for?

Prophet Yusuf's economic wisdom was remarkably simple. When abundance was forecast, he did not ask how much could be consumed, how quickly wealth could be accumulated or how much return could be extracted. He asked how today's abundance could be preserved so that people could survive tomorrow's scarcity.

Somewhere along the evolution of modern capitalism, that priority appears to have been reversed.

In the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and the Christian Bible, Prophet Yusuf in the Qur'an is the same figure known as Joseph. 

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All the tough talk at UNGA, yet the market takes a different cue

 

The theme of The Edge HSBC Pre Budget 2027 Roundtable discussion was the challenges to the fiscal consolidation coming from external uncertainties. Read HERE.  

After the display of power, defiance and political legitimacy from the three appearances together at the UN General Assembly — US President Donald Trump on September 22, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on September 23, and Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on September 24, 2026, followed by a mass walkout by 73 countries representatives, one would not have expected market to react as it did last night.

Following the UN General Assembly spectacle to project an image of political strength and certainty, the oil market told a different story. 

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Beyond the Debt Blame Game: Malaysia Needs an Honest Conversation

The national debt is approaching RM1.4 trillion. Yes, it is large. Yes, it deserves scrutiny. 

But Malaysia needs something more useful than another round of political arithmetic over which Prime Minister accumulated more debt.

Early this year, the Prime Minister's remark that there would be no new borrowing has been seized upon by his critics as evidence of another broken promise. It may well have been an unfortunate slip of the tongue, particularly when made in the heat of a political rally. 

But it should not become a substitute for discussing the much more important question: What is Malaysia actually doing about its debt trajectory?

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The Middle East Shock Returns: What It Means for Malaysia and Budget 2027

For a brief moment, Malaysia appeared to have gained some breathing space on the fuel subsidy front.

The feared explosion in the government's fuel subsidy bill did not materialise to the extent initially feared. The move towards targeted subsidies, particularly through BUDI95, gave the government greater control over its fiscal exposure while keeping subsidised RON95 at RM1.99 a litre.

But the latest developments in the Middle East are beginning to test that resilience.

The renewed confrontation involving Iran, the continuing uncertainty surrounding the Strait of Hormuz, the Houthi advance around Yemen's Red Sea coast and the temporary closure of Saudi Arabia's East-West oil pipeline have created a much more serious threat to global oil supplies. 

Brent crude has moved back above US$100 a barrel as markets increasingly price in the possibility of actual physical disruption rather than merely a geopolitical risk premium.

For Malaysia, the timing could hardly be more sensitive.

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El Niño Is Coming: What Malaysia Should Expect

 

Do you realised that lately, in the afternoon, the car air-conditioning does not seem to work? The air-conditioner may be working perfectly in the morning and evening, yet by mid-afternoon the car becomes unbearably hot and the cooling seems inadequate.

There may be nothing wrong with the air-conditioning. The problem is the extraordinary heat load outside. What we are beginning to experience is the early manifestation of a much larger weather phenomenon: El Niño.

El Niño is not simply “hot weather”. It is a disruption of the normal ocean-atmosphere system in the tropical Pacific that changes rainfall, temperature and atmospheric circulation over a huge area. 

The World Meteorological Organization now says the current El Niño is firmly established, is expected to strengthen to a very strong event, and has an almost 100% probability of continuing through February 2027.

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