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

Lee Man Fong’s “Bali Life” sells for US$3.3 million!

You know the economy is picking up when works of art start to sell for record breaking prices: 

A 1960s oil painting of Balinese villagers by Indonesia’s Lee Man Fong fetched a record HK$25.3 million ($3.3 million) in Hong Kong, the top lot at an Asian art auction marked by signs of return to pre-credit-crisis prices. Lee’s 2-meter-long “Bali Life” depicts a rustic scene of the islanders at rest. 

Source: Bloomberg

Lee Man Fong’s “Bali Life” sells for US$3.3 million!Lee Man Fong painted classic Bali scenes and was - for obvious reasons - one of Sukarno’s favorite painters. 

And the buyer of “Bali Life”? An unidentified Asian private collector, according to Sotheby’s (let’s just hope he’s not an employee of the Indonesian tax office). 

Interestingly, 78 of the 145 artworks at the auction were done by Indonesian artists. They include Affandi’s “Cuenca,” I Nyoman Masriadi’s “I’m Still Lucky” and Agus Suwage’s studies of human psychology, “I See, I Hear, I Feel” and “Don’t Be Amazed, Don’t Be Entitled.” 

Affandi is of course an Indonesian legend, and while it is worrying that many of his artworks have gone overseas it may for the better given that high air humidity and high temperatures are raising concerns about the condition of his paintings kept in the Affandi museum in Jogyakarta. 

And as for Agus Suwage, well you may remember him for the controversy surrounding his wonderful Pinkswing Park exhibit at Jakarta's international biennale a number of years back. 

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