Financial markets thrive on news. Every day we glance at hundreds of headlines as they scroll up on our Reuters or Bloomberg terminals and we make (almost) instant value judgments on their likely impact on the markets. But you don't always get the full sense of the news reports from the headlines, and you don't get the full picture when you're sitting at a desk thousands of miles away either.
So, when one of my colleagues went on holiday to Thailand, my request was simple. Tell me what it's really like there. What do the people really think? What's the sentiment in the region?
When you send a woman to get a job done, you know it'll be done well. Despite lugging heavy suitcases (full of duty-free) halfway around the world, she found time to bring me back a selection of Asian newspapers. So I thought you might like to see some of the stories that were news in Asia earlier this month.
The business section of the Bangkok Post led with a story about a squeeze in bank interest spreads. Apparently, higher funding costs, stricter rules on provisioning and a decline in asset quality means that margins could slip into the red this year.
Analysts expect non-performing loans for the banking sector to reach 30 to 35 per cent of total outstandings by mid-1999, and the tougher provisioning means that loans are to be classified as non-performing after three months.
The other problem is that funding costs can be higher than they are booked because there's a practice of offering higher than normal deposit rates to favoured clients. I suppose a favoured client is almost anybody who can afford to deposit money with a bank in Bangkok right now.
The Nation ran a story about competition for global funds as South Korea had announced a privatisation programme aimed at raising up to $8 billion (£5.7 billion).
Korea is looking at about 11 firms for privatisation, including some well-known corporates like Pohang Iron and Steel and Korea Electric Power. I don't know whether holders of either issuer's bonds will feel relieved or more stressed by privatisation.
And, according to government statistics, an average of 1,600 people are being laid off every week in Malaysia. This story was about the injection of government funding into stalled development projects which was hoped might prevent layoffs in the construction sector.
Apparently, in recent layoffs, 42 per cent are from manufacturing, 32 per cent from construction and the remainder from various other trades. Which paints a horribly bleak picture of the Malaysian economy.
None of the graphs on the business pages made comforting reading most of them still had a distinct downward trend about them, despite the occasional spike.
There were pictures in the papers, too, of Indonesians crowding around a truck from which government-subsidised sugar was being sold 79.4 million, or 40 per cent, of Indonesians are living in poverty. According to the Central Bureau Statistics this figure will increase to 95.8 million by the end of the year because there is no economic recovery in sight.
The main picture of people around the sugar truck accompanied a story about the Suharto family it seems that two companies controlled by Suharto's daughter, Tutut, were downgraded by Standard & Poors from CC to CCC minus. Not a happy time for Tutut, since she's also been sacked from the Cabinet as social affairs minister.
Meanwhile, her father has asked the government to postpone a planned gift of almost $2 million to him. (I had to read this twice I thought at first it was Suharto who was making the gift but then, why would he change the habits of a lifetime?)
The gift can be given to him under a law passed in 1978 (when he was president) to help former presidents and vice-presidents build houses. He feels that he can't accept a gift in times of such economic hardship for Indonesia. It says a lot that the government even considered it. The Suharto family wealth is estimated at around $30 billion. Why on earth would the government want to give the man another $2 million?
Other stories in the newspapers reflected the turmoil that continues to beset the region. The Jarkarta Kompas printed the exhortations of the chairman of the Indonesian chamber of commerce to punish the perpetrators of the May riots and ensure the safety of Indonesian entrepreneurs.
There were also accounts of violence against Chinese Indonesians, particularly women. A woman who couldn't afford medicine for her sick baby threw the child to its death from a hospital window. Thailand's National Counter Corruption Commission brought a Bill to set up a commission to rout out corruption in high places.
Among all the regional news, however, was a report on the Orange Order's planned march down the Garvaghy Road, accompanied by a photograph of a British soldier, gun in hand, standing outside Drumcree church.
The lead stories, though, in both The Nation and The Bangkok Post for Saturday, July 4th, had absolutely nothing to do with economics, currencies or the stock market. Colour photographs and bold headlines informed us about the caddies who were protesting about plans to turn the Railway Golf Course into a public park.
The protest probably caused more disruption than the stock markets as caddies and railway workers blocked the tracks north of the Bang Sue station and left tens of thousands of commuters stranded.
It seems that, following the protests, the golf club will re-open for four months while the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration negotiates with caddies on how to recruit them as city workers.
Meanwhile, back home, the news stories keep scrolling up the screens. According to Bloomberg the recent stories that had the most hits were four sports stories; four financial market stories with a lead story about Microsoft and the story that registered most hits the one about TV host Jerry Springer's female "companions", Kendra and Kelly, who are bringing their sex-romp with Jerry to the internet, where I guess it'll register a lot of hits too. Never let it be said that we don't know real news when we see it.
