Ganesh Sahathevan

According to the Malaysian Insider, 25 Feb 2009: Malaysians have been subsidising the Express Rail Link (ERL) service since last April, it was revealed in Parliament today Transport Minister Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat said that YTL Corporation’s ERL Sdn Bhd, the operator of the high-speed rail service from here to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, had been indirectly subsidised since last April because the company is unable to cover costs due to poor sales. Ong justified the allocation to ERL by pointing out that there had been a massive capital outlay to operate the rail line but that ticket sales “cannot cover the cost of the outlay and maintenance.” http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/malaysia/19086-fly-ride-or-neither-taxpayers-still-pay-erl- And who made the most money on the "cost of the outlay"? According to the YTL website, 2001: 1. Ideal order book. Over 90%, or RM800m, of order book is for the ERL project. We value the core ERL project at RM0.25 sen DC...

"The time has come, off the back of the current crisis, to proclaim that the great neo-liberal experiment of the past 30 years has failed; that the emperor has no clothes....Neo-liberalism and the free-market fundamentalism it has produced has been revealed as little more than personal greed dressed up as an economic philosophy.....Minor tweakings of long established orthodoxies will not do," Lu Kewen, aka Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia ; The Monthly, February 2009 , No. 42 (http://www.themonthly.com.au/tm/node/1417) "....it is necessary to reassess the existing US dollar-dominated international financial system. It is a speculation-rife, supervision-lacking system. After the collapse of the Bretton Woods System in the early 1970s, the US rushed to introduce the Jamaica System, which is still in effect, in an attempt to carry forward its financial dominance. The Jamaica System, strictly speaking, is not new, and it has elements of Bretton Woods. Under this fina...