關於 financial contagion ，我們在網路上蒐集到這些相關的討論、資訊與評價

QUARANTINE

1. Today is 18th March. I am at home. I have been quarantined, required to stay at home because the Government has ordered a partial lock-down, to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus.

2. On the 12th of March, I met a group of young members of Parliament of Pakatan Harapan (PH), to explain what happened. At the end, before leaving they requested to have a picture with me. I did not think much of it. I did not think they would be infected. They crowded around me, closely so as to be in the photo.

3. On 17th March my assistant Sufi, showed the photo and told me one of the MP from Sarawak had proven positive when tested for Covid-19.

4. I did not think much of it. I was feeling well.Indeed, many visitors remarked on how well I looked. But the authorities thought differently. A team of doctors and nurses had arrived at the Perdana Leadership Foundation where I was working and stopped me as I was going home for lunch.

5. They took a swab and told me I had to be quarantined for 14 days from date of contact.

6. And so here I am, home-quarantined. I had been talking to people to be serious about this pandemic. I have even done a video clip. Now I must be serious and accept being quarantined.

7. This Coronavirus is something that we never had before. It is easily infectious or contagiousand in a number of cases it is fatal. We have no medicine or vaccine to counter it. All we can do is to treat symptoms like fever, cough, breathlessness and if there is lung infection and you are old, you may die. I am old, 94 years old.

8. The threat posed by Covid-19 is due to ease of infection and possible death. To manage the infection or contagion, it is necessary to isolate people. They must avoid being close to each other. Since we usually do not know who has the virus, everyone has to be far apart from each other.

9. Since men by nature are gregarious, keeping millions of people apart from each other is extremely difficult. When we work, travel, play, watch games or at the cinemas we would come together.

10. When we travel, almost always we would be confined in vehicles close together. To avoid this, we have to stop travelling. This affectsthe tourist industry greatly. In many cases there is a 70% decline.

11. The airlines would suffer. The tourist industry would suffer. The hotels ground transport, restaurants would suffer. Employees would suffer as they may be laid off. Their employers will not be earning money enough to pay them.

12. For Malaysia the tourist industry is the secondbiggest foreign exchange earner, after Petronas. The Government would lose a lot of revenue.

13. People working in the tourist industry would lose jobs and income. This would be terrible because these people need food and drink.

14. In Malaysia the Petroleum industry is not big. But it’s a big contribution to Government revenue. At times Petronas paid to the Government as much as 80 billion Ringgit. The budgeted price of one barrel of crude for 2020 was fixed at USD63 per barrel. It is now selling at less than 50% of the budgeted price. Government revenue may go down to 30 billion.

15. The stimulus package involved an increase in Government expenditure and a decrease in taxes. Meeting this extra expenditure with decreased Government revenue would be challenging.

16. In the meantime, even a partial lock down would reduce business and profits. Again,Government revenue would be affected.

17. For the small enterprises, the loss would be terrible. These people earn today for today. Even if they are able to do some business it would not be sufficient to pay for their food. The Government may have to give them financial support.

18. What is happening in Malaysia is happening to the rest of the world also. Industries may have to stop or at least reduce production. Exports and imports would be affected. Economies would go into recession worldwide. Even the richest countries would suffer.

19. Truly we all are faced with a terrible catastrophe.

23 March 2020
http://chedet.cc/?p=3026

The mighty Chinese juggernaut has been humbled this week, apparently by a species-hopping bat virus. While Chinese authorities struggle to control the epidemic and restart their economy, a world that has grown accustomed to contemplating China’s inexorable rise was reminded that nothing, not even Beijing’s power, can be taken for granted.

We do not know how dangerous the new coronavirus will be. There are signs that Chinese authorities are still trying to conceal the true scale of the problem, but at this point the virus appears to be more contagious but considerably less deadly than the pathogens behind diseases such as Ebola or SARS—though some experts say SARS and coronavirus are about equally contagious.

China’s initial response to the crisis was less than impressive. The Wuhan government was secretive and self-serving; national authorities responded vigorously but, it currently appears, ineffectively. China’s cities and factories are shutting down; the virus continues to spread. We can hope that authorities succeed in containing the epidemic and treating its victims, but the performance to date has shaken confidence in the Chinese Communist Party at home and abroad. Complaints in Beijing about the U.S. refusing entry to noncitizens who recently spent time in China cannot hide the reality that the decisions that allowed the epidemic to spread as far and as fast as it did were all made in Wuhan and Beijing.

The likeliest economic consequence of the coronavirus epidemic, forecasters expect, will be a short and sharp fall in Chinese economic growth rates during the first quarter, recovering as the disease fades. The most important longer-term outcome would appear to be a strengthening of a trend for global companies to “de-Sinicize” their supply chains. Add the continuing public health worries to the threat of new trade wars, and supply-chain diversification begins to look prudent.

Events like the coronavirus epidemic, and its predecessors—such as SARS, Ebola and MERS—test our systems and force us to think about the unthinkable. If there were a disease as deadly as Ebola and as fast-spreading as coronavirus, how should the U.S. respond? What national and international systems need to be in place to minimize the chance of catastrophe on this scale?

Epidemics also lead us to think about geopolitical and economic hypotheticals. We have seen financial markets shudder and commodity prices fall in the face of what hopefully will be a short-lived disturbance in China’s economic growth. What would happen if—perhaps in response to an epidemic, but more likely following a massive financial collapse—China’s economy were to suffer a long period of even slower growth? What would be the impact of such developments on China’s political stability, on its attitude toward the rest of the world, and to the global balance of power?

China’s financial markets are probably more dangerous in the long run than China’s wildlife markets. Given the accumulated costs of decades of state-driven lending, massive malfeasance by local officials in cahoots with local banks, a towering property bubble, and vast industrial overcapacity, China is as ripe as a country can be for a massive economic correction. Even a small initial shock could lead to a massive bonfire of the vanities as all the false values, inflated expectations and misallocated assets implode. If that comes, it is far from clear that China’s regulators and decision makers have the technical skills or the political authority to minimize the damage—especially since that would involve enormous losses to the wealth of the politically connected.

We cannot know when or even if a catastrophe of this scale will take place, but students of geopolitics and international affairs—not to mention business leaders and investors—need to bear in mind that China’s power, impressive as it is, remains brittle. A deadlier virus or a financial-market contagion could transform China’s economic and political outlook at any time.

Many now fear the coronavirus will become a global pandemic. The consequences of a Chinese economic meltdown would travel with the same sweeping inexorability. Commodity prices around the world would slump, supply chains would break down, and few financial institutions anywhere could escape the knock-on consequences. Recovery in China and elsewhere could be slow, and the social and political effects could be dramatic.

If Beijing’s geopolitical footprint shrank as a result, the global consequences might also be surprising. Some would expect a return of unipolarity if the only possible great-power rival to the U.S. were to withdraw from the game. Yet in the world of American politics, isolation rather than engagement might surge to the fore. If the China challenge fades, many Americans are likely to assume that the U.S. can safely reduce its global commitments.

So far, the 21st century has been an age of black swans. From 9/11 to President Trump’s election and Brexit, low-probability, high-impact events have reshaped the world order. That age isn’t over, and of the black swans still to arrive, the coronavirus epidemic is unlikely to be the last to materialize in China.