zzzz Best Rates 2011 July 25 Update

Fix Deposit

Affin Bank still offers the highest 3.6% for 12 months. 3.1% to 3.35% is common with all other banks. 1 month FD is mostly at 3% to 3.05%. Most of the foreign banks continue to offer lower FD rates.

Base Lending Rate

Most banks offers 6.6% now except JP Morgan Chase offers the lowest at 6.2%.

Saving Accounts

The Bank of Nova Scotia offers 2.05% while Bangkok Bank and Bank of Tokyo offers 2%

CIMB Air Asia Saver Account offers 1.6%

Don't forget you can get a simple widget

like above to show on your blog / web site.

Just visit here to see how.

Car Loan

Maybank continues to offer the lowest car loan rate starting from 2.7%. However, this is NOT a standard rate apply to all applicants. The actual rate can range up to 4.3%. Alliance bank on the other hand offers 2.8% to 3% which may be a better deal in general sense.

Bank Muamalat offers 2.85% for both New and Used cars but it requires an admin charges of RM600.

CIMB offers 3.25% for used cars.

Don't forget Car Loan rate is Fix Term Rate

which is effectively a MUCH HIGHER

than variable term rate

like House Loan and Fix Deposit.

House Loan

There are too many factors in considering a good house loan, so we don't think its fair to simply summarize them here.

Our advice is to source for at least 3 offers, preferably a mix of local and foreign banks.

Bank Negara Museum Opening May 2009

zzzz's Bank Negara Museum opening this May 2009 !!

Where Money Matters and Practical Knowledge is Important ...

Money As Debt Video

I have told a long story how Money Turns Evil in the past.  ( Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 )  The last part was actually more like a basic tutorial to forex trading as a matter of fact.

Anyway, I read from Meshio blog about an interesting video - Money As Debt.  The story line may have some similarity to my story but this video is 10 times better !!

A 47-minute animated short by Paul Grignon (via BB) explaining how the monetary system used to be, and how the existing mo

netary system works

 

Have FUN watching !!

Currency Turns Evil - part 2

At first money is invented to facilitate buy-sell transactions which is the best invention of all time.  Then value of money is tighted to gold as a standard (what I called Big Bang in Finance World).  

Then some greedy person use war to conquer and take over other people's gold ( click here to see old post about this )

But very soon "WAR" becomes a very costly way to acquire gold to print more money.

( but its not costly to launch war against petroleum - another story)

But very soon some smart people figure out that they don't have to follow the standard of gold-money-value.  Afterall, that is just a standard set for more stupid people to follow.  In reality, like everything else, the value of an item is driven by Supply and Demand.

So USA quickly set ONE standard - use US Dollar in inter-country transactions.

Whenever USA take over a country, they set USD as the standard global currency before they leave.  When USA lends money to a country, they set USD as standard there.  Whenever you want to buy and sell with USA, you HAVE to use USD.  These are all fine ... because afterall, its their right to request so.

The sad thing is everyone else followed blindly.

Says country A and B deal with USA using USD which are perfectly fine.  However, because the banking systems in A and B were greatly influenced by USA, all the transactions are FIX (hard coded) to USD.  

Hence when A and B are doing businesses, they use USD as standard even though it is NOT their home currencies.

Imagine you are sending money from zzzz to China, you cann't use MYR ( or RM ) and you cannot use CNY ( or RMB ), you will have to buy USD using your MYR in order to send the money over.

So whoever you are, wherever you are, if you are transacting globally, you will have to BUY USD.  As mentioned before, when demand rise, value rise.

The increase of this Demand alone allows USA to continously print more money almost forever without the need of gold at all.  Because there is no sign of over hauling our global banking system at all.

Some people are still wondering if World War 3 will occur one day.  What they didn't know is WW3 is way over and USA has conquered world economy many years ago simply by implementing one global standard in currency.

The only smarter people who were able to protect their own territory is Britain.  And some better light shed among all these is the creation of Euro - where the smaller players group together 'trying' to break away with the permanent damage cause by this currency standard WW3 domination.

Up until here, its still history, although recent history.  We cann't blame USA for playing this trick because who wouldn't want to print more money, especially when all I need to do is just to ask the other party to use my standard ?  My standard is better than no standard isn't it ?  

Most of the 3rd world countries were in deep shit that time.  Imagine we didn't even have enough food to eat, how could we be smart enough to say NO to a non-intrusive USD standard ?

The next part is the last part.  Like before we didn't eat enough food, today we don't really get fed enough neither spiritually.  Which is also the part when currency really turns evil .... stay tune ...

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Finance Big Bang Theory

I have this Big Bang theory about Finance ...

At First, there Was Nothing,

Then there is Everything !

Long long time ago, we exchange goods for a living.  Sometimes I asked for 4 chickens to exchange my 1 bag of rice, but some other times, my friend is only willing to give 3 chickens.  So as times go, more and more people do not like this constant changing of 'price' and they want standardization.  So 'Money' is born.

We look down and there are some stones on the ground.  First we 'define' the chicken as 10 stones, since my bag of rice is 4 chickens then my bag of price is worth 40 stones.  So we started collecting stones instead of keeping too many cows and sheeps at home to represent our wealth.

It was all fine within our own family and friends because we trust each other.  Then some stranger came and just pick up stones from the ground to buy my rice.  Soon I ran out of rice and he has all the rice, so basically he took over my rice business and started to control pricing in my town.

So we need some special way to identify our special stones.  I started marking all the stones that I used to buy and sell things.  The chicken guy did the same.  Soon all sort of marking stones are in the market and guess what ?  A stranger came in and arbituary do some marking on the stone and took over the chicken business.

Then we learn that we have to 'standardize' the marking on the stones and it is too big a task for us because we are already full time producing rice and chicken.  The stranger volunteer, "Since I am able to twist all the systems you guy come up with, apparently I am a smarter guy in this area.  So if you let me come up with a special marking stones for you and everybody use that stones, there will be no problem !"  He ended with a strong .. " Trust me !".

So the first 'modern day money' is born. It is a piece of metal with hard to replicate marking represending the value of the stones we used before - the stranger called it coin.  So all of us including the rice and chicken producers keep our stones in the stranger's house.  For each stone we deposit there, the stranger gives us 100 coins.  Since then our buy and sell activities are better managed.

In case you haven't figured out yet,

the stone is called Gold today

and the stranger's house is called Bank

Our Stones

The Stranger's House