There's no such thing as a free lunch...Or is there?

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It's official. The next president of Indonesia is former army general Prabowo Subianto. Quite how the next five years will pan out is anyone's guess but hopefully the foreign pundits who always bring up his dodgy human rights record will be proven wrong. Nonetheless, on policy making, Prabowo's popularist move to literally offer the poor 'a free lunch' every day of the week does not augur well for the future. Such a policy - if it ever came to fruition - would cost a phenomenal amount of money and likely lead to huge inefficiencies (food waste) and poor incentives (make people lazy). Another concern is Prabowo's strong nationalist bent. Thus, in the possible event that he finds himself with his back against the proverbial wall in the face of stern economic challenges, there is a big chance that he will simply scapegoat foreigners. But he will have to be careful. Construction of the new capital city, Nusantara, for example, is highly dependent on foreign in
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Indonesia outperforms Google in 2009!

The Decade From Hell. That’s what Time call it. Bird flu. Swine flu. Facebook. The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. Iraq. Bush. Taliban. Ahmadinejad. The Patriot Act. Katrina. Guantánamo Bay. Chavez. Sharia. Suicide bombers. Beheadings. Ringtones. Abu Ghraib. The Crackberry. Wacko Jacko RIP. California wildfires. Sarah Palin. Zimbabwe. Dafur. Gay marriage. New pope. Amish school killing. Benizir Bhutto RIP. Virginia Tech shooting. WorldCom. Enron. Oil. Cheetah Woods. Camwhores. Recession. Bailouts. Debt. More debt. …..

Arggggggggggggg!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

But a good year for Indonesia in 2009 as shown by my “Indonesian market cap to Google” indicator which is still in positive territory! At the beginning of 2009, Google was worth US$95 billion and all the Indonesian companies listed on the Indonesian stock market were worth US$125 billion combined. So how did they fare during 2009?

Well, Google had a great year and its shares nearly doubled in value, pushing up the total value of the US search engine giant to an astonishing US$189.4 billion on 22 Dec, 09, or much higher than the value of all the Indonesian companies combined at the beginning of the year. 

But during the year, the value of Indonesian companies also rose and by mid-December their combined value was US$210 billion, meaning they are still worth more than Google – but only just!

Comments

  1. Amelia24 December 2009 at 08:01

    Good :) Hope economic in Indonesia go higher and higher. Our export may be not bigger than our neighbor but it seems like for this year, Indonesia is more stable than others.. :)

    Nice article

    ReplyDelete

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