Dear Melissa

Assalamu 'Alaikum,

Dear Melissa,

I am so glad you found my blog. By the time you read this I am probably long gone. I wish I was there when your mum gave birth to you but it was not to be as God had other plans. The reason I am writing to you is so you know a little about your granddad and most of all I did my best to protect you. Honestly I did. I saw what was coming for you and your generation I raised the alarm bells everywhere I went but Melissa, I am so sorry nobody heard me. I was not a leader of a country, a world famous author nor any kind of famous person. I was an ordinary Grandad who thought about a lot of things and mostly I fear what I foresaw will happen to you. I was mostly a finance guy and I saw the ravages of finance that is going to destroy the life of my grand daughter.

Darling, I am so sorry for the financial mess the country have bequeathed you. I am sorry you don’t have a house you can afford to buy nor a car you can call your own. Both are beyond the reach of your salary. I daren't even think about the price of food you have to pay. I told everyone who cared to hear we can’t go on like this, creating money like there’s no tomorrow. There must be a limit to the amount of money a country has, only then will people maintain the spending power of whatever income they have. They said I was an alarmist; they said I would destroy the harmony the country is in, but most of all they ignored me. I said you can’t give a young person a salary and then not tell him or her how you are going to steal away its spending power! He believes his salary will buy a certain number of things and will continue to buy the same number of things for a long time. You can’t then without his knowledge continue to create money that eats away at his ability to buy. That’s cheating ; that’s a lie! But darling they called it a different name, they call it fractional reserve banking. This is where banks are allowed to create lots and lots of money from an initial amount of money deposited in one bank. I told them how the price of cars went up from RM14,000 to RM40,000 in a space of 25 years ; and how over the same period of time the price of a house went from RM60,000 to RM300,000. I also showed to them that over the same period of time a young person’s salary only increased from RM1,200 to RM2,500. I told them these were warning bells. I told them when my grand daughter starts work her salary will be RM5,000 but the price of a car will be RM100,000 and the price of a house RM1 million. They did not believe me sayang; I am so sorry for you to live the truth.

Darling, I should have articulated better, I should have made them heard me but I was just an ordinary man, nobody cared about what I said. All I wanted was for them to think about the problem, to worry a little about it. And if they do worry a lot about it that would be good, and we may have then worked on a solution and prevented the problem from reaching you.

Darling forgive your Grandad, I did my best for you.

I love you sayang. I love you very much. Please forgive me.

Grandad.

Note:
Sayang = Darling