Malaysia may face full blown recession

From The Star:

There is a 50% chance Malaysia will fall into a “full-blown” recession this year, said Malaysian Institute of Economic Research (MIER) executive director Prof Datuk Mohamed Ariff Abdul Kareem.

“Technical recession is almost certain. The 1.3% (real gross domestic product (GDP) forecast in January) is considered optimistic. In fact, I think the best-case scenario will be 0.5% growth this year.

He expected the fiscal deficit to increase to more than 6% of GDP if the second stimulus package was RM30bil, which is about 4% of GDP. Financing the deficit budget was not a problem as there was a lot of liquidity in the local financial market, which funds 93% of the government deficit.

However, he said it was “not about how much you spend, it is how you spend that matters.”

Looks like people are starting to get realistic. But the question on the stimulus is where will it go? Most likely to waste. Huge white elephant projects, lining corrupt people's pockets.

What makes people think that this stimulus will be any different from other past spending catastrophes?