REPO 150

1.I have been away in Argentina and have not been reading the papers or watching news on T.V. Back in London I picked up The Times newspaper and the front page reads, "Lords place themselves beyond the reach of the law."

2.It is about MPs and members of the House of Lords giving their main home addresses out of London in order to claim £174 per day allowance during Parliamentary sitting even though they actually live in London. Seems that some vagueness in the rules has placed the Lords beyond the reach of this rule.

3.Next, on an inside page, the headline reads "City's biggest names face legal action over Lehman's collapse." I am sure Malaysian papers would have reported this.

4.Lehman of course is the biggest bank in the world whose collapse started the 2008 financial crisis which we are still suffering from today.

5.This bank had been hiding the huge debts worth as much as 600 billion US dollars by an accounting trick. Debts of billions which were unpaid were reclassified through some accounting procedure called Repo 150 and they became assets of the banks.

6.And it went on for years until the amount became so huge that they cannot be hidden any more, Repo 150 notwithstanding.

7.As we all know Lehman Bros. was allowed to go bankrupt and other banks and industries went down with it. And so the great financial crisis of 2008 began.

8.Globalisation is about opening borders to those who have the means to do so. The big banks, industries, accounting firms and consultants firms are certainly the greatest beneficiarists of globalisation. But now we know that in many instances they collude with their rich and powerful clients to cover up wrongdoings. Their being internationally well known ensures that their reports are accepted by the directors of companies and banks and by the public.

9.I had often said that globalisation is inevitable but we, the developing countries should not accept globalisation as interpreted by the rich countries. We should seriously think again about the interpretations of globalisation. We should think again about open borders. We may be letting in some of the most unprincipalled professionals, some of whom are the most greedy international crooks into our country.

10. Of course this is only my opinion.