Nowhere to Hide

Dr. Michael Lim Mah-Hui, an internationally-known expert and speaker on international finance, has recently come to the Philippines to talk about his latest book, "Nowhere to Hide: The Great Financial Crisis and Challenges for Asia" which combines the disciplines of economics, finance, sociology and politics to analyze the consequences and challenges of the crisis and propose that its causes be understood at three inter-related levels - the level of theory and ideology, the level of financial  industry practices and malpractices; and finally the level of  structural imbalances in the international economy.

I met and conversed with Dr. Lim during the “Understanding the Financial Markets” forum by Jubilee South - Asia Pacific Movement on Debt and Development (JS-APMDD) in cooperation with South Asia Alliance for Poverty Eradication (SAAPE) and hosted by Monitoring Sustainability of Globalization (MSN) Malaysia. This was held from April 14 to 17, 2009 at the NUBE Training Centre, Port Dickson, Malaysia. We later corresponded through email on statistical distributions and that how financial analysts and statisticians in the US blindly follow the normal (or the Gaussian) distribution curve in the computation of financial risk when they actually can test - using "goodness of fit" tests such as the Pearson's chi-square test or the Kolmogorov-Smirnov non-parametric test- the probability distribution curves of historical data.

I highly recommend that you buy this book. The financial crisis is still as relevant as ever with the collapse of Greece and possible fallout for Asian markets.

The book was launched in the Philippines during an event at the Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU) last June 1, 2010 organized by the Action for Economic Reforms, Ateneo Economics  Department, Ateneo Center for Asian Studies (ACAS), Ateneo Confucius Institute, and Social Watch Philippines.