economic sizzle

I was having a conversation with 4 other people last week, they were your day-to-day working class people from the community. After 20 minutes of chit chat, it dawn to me that malaysians are very much unaware how deeply the economy has retracted locally. Our newspaper has been reporting job cuts at some factories and such, but the general public aren't aware of the retrenchments happening in other industries such as SMEs, international companies, banks, etc.
While interest rates have been cut, loans reduced or slashed, i doubt most actually know the true picture of these effects. Every store in most shopping malls are now having sale! It's just after the new year, stores don't usually conduct sales right after the festive season. Even top brands, Armani, Tods, etc are giving rebates ... unheard of phenomenon. And now, we have another mini budget of RM60billion - of how much goes to the coffers and all the mid layers in govt projects imagine the amount that actually reaches the community .. its more money thrown to some &$^%@. Have you heard how much bonus were still given out by a big glc whilst our economy is going down, it's shocking and yet the public is still oblivious.