Economy

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Wednesday said that it would pursue negotiations to strengthen trade and technology ties with Taiwan, a move that is aimed at countering China’s influence in the Asia-Pacific region and one that is likely to rankle Beijing.The announcement follows the Biden administration’s efforts to build an Asia-Pacific economic bloc, known as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, that includes 13 countries and excludes Taiwan.China claims the island, a self-governing democracy that is critical to global technology supply chains, as an incontestable part of its territory.While Taiwan expressed interest in becoming a full member of the Indo-Pacific framework, that prospect was deemed too controversial by many participating countries.The talks with Taiwan will cover many of the same issues as the framework, from digital trade to reducing red tape for importers and exporters. U.S. officials said the talks, the first of which will be held in Washington at the end of June, would focus on a variety of issues, including opening up trade in agriculture and aligning technological standards.Several topics of the discussion are clearly aimed at addressing mutual complaints over Chinese trade practices. U.S. officials said they would work with Taiwan to eliminate forced labor in global supply chains and develop provisions to compete with nonmarket practices from state-owned enterprises.Negotiations will happen along two tracks, with the United States trade representative handling trade issues and the Commerce Department in charge of technology and investment, including coordination on export controls and measures to secure semiconductor supply chains.“Taiwan is an incredibly important partner to us, especially as it relates to semiconductors,” Gina Raimondo, the commerce secretary, said in a briefing Tuesday, adding, “We look forward to continuing to deepen our economic ties with Taiwan.”Taiwan has long pushed for deeper trade ties with the United States. In 2020, it eased restrictions on imports of U.S. beef and pork in an effort to entice the United States into formal negotiations. The following year, the United States and Taiwan resumed some trade talks despite Beijing’s opposition.Since then, a global shortage of semiconductors, among Taiwan’s most valuable exports, has further increased the island’s strategic importance.Because the Biden administration’s negotiations with Taiwan would not include so-called market access provisions that require changes in U.S. law, the administration does not anticipate needing congressional approval for any agreement, senior officials said, though they added that they would continue to consult with Congress on the process.Given Taiwan’s contested status, the two sides will also meet unofficially and under the auspices of the American Institute in Taiwan, which is the de facto U.S. embassy in Taipei, and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, which represents Taiwan in the United States in the absence of diplomatic recognition.Senior U.S. officials said in a call with reporters Tuesday that while they didn’t include Taiwan among the initial members negotiating the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, going forward they intended to take a flexible approach to participation. More

“If inflation is permanently at four percent, rents will also have to rise accordingly each year in the future,” Rolf Buch, overseeing a portfolio of some 565,000 apartments, told business daily Handelsblatt in an interview published on Wednesday. “We cannot pretend that inflation will not affect rents.” Vonovia rival LEG, owner of about 166,000 flats, also said inflation would be reflected in rental fees if it persists. “The rental market will not decouple itself from the general price development,” an LEG spokesperson told Reuters. As in other European countries, prices in Germany have risen sharply in recent months, pushed higher first by supply chain problems after the pandemic and then by the war in Ukraine. Consumer prices increased to 8.7% in May, a level not seen since the winter of 1973/1974 during the first oil crisis. Average rental prices at Vonovia increased 3.1% in the first quarter, Buch said. He expects rising energy prices to cost tenants up to two months’ rental fees per year. LEG increased rents by an average of 2.7% in the first quarter, according to the spokesperson.It is a particularly sensitive issue in Germany, where rents have traditionally been relatively stable over many decades, leading to a culture where middle-class families live in rented homes throughout their lives.Inflation has become a concern for large parts of the population with 94% of Germans not expecting prices to fall any time soon and 56% expecting prices to continue to rise, a Forsa poll showed on Wednesday. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday called on the government, trade unions and employers to discuss joint measures against high inflation. “We need a targeted effort in a very unusual situation,” Scholz said. Credit-financed subsidies were not a solution, he said, in particular as Germany plans to return to a constitutionally enshrined debt brake next year. More

Apple is moving some iPad production out of China to Vietnam. The shift will protect the device maker against political interference and supply chain disruption. Both risks are currently elevated in China. Vietnamese companies will not benefit greatly, however. Apple products, from iPhones to MacBooks, are mostly assembled in China. The tech giant has stuck to this despite years of tensions between the US and China as well as threats of blacklists and punitive tariffs. AirPods have been the exception to the rule. Apple moved mass production of these earbuds to Vietnam in 2020. Shifting the production of pricier iPads, which account for a third of the global tablet market, would be a much more decisive change. Most parts suppliers are currently in China, close to assembly plants. Politically the timing is right to diversify. US commerce secretary Gina Raimondo has warned that the Biden administration is actively considering adding new Chinese companies to economic blacklists. The US is investigating alleged sanctions evasion by China.Shanghai is moving towards ending the strict two-month lockdown that has badly disrupted global manufacturing. The effects of factory closures are expected to be long-lasting because of a backlog of orders.Chips remain in short supply. The Shanghai lockdowns mean supplies are equally stretched for low-tech parts, such as printed circuit boards. These are used in all forms of electronics. Local supplies of copper foil — a key material — have been severely disrupted too.Hopes of a windfall for Vietnamese component makers are misplaced. Companies that have a head start in building factories to Apple requirements in China will claim the biggest rewards. Apple’s existing suppliers are guaranteed a place at the front of the line. These include BYD of China, Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision, South Korea’s LG Display and Murata Manufacturing of Japan. The relocations will benefit the Vietnam economy through the creation of manufacturing jobs. These should be relatively well-paid for a country where the average annual income was $2,800 in 2020. Chinese workers were making $10,400, World Bank data show. China’s loss will be Vietnam’s gain. More

LONDON (Reuters) – In 1918, Soviet revolutionary Leon Trotsky told Western creditors aghast at the Bolsheviks’ repudiation of Russia’s external debt: “Gentlemen, you were warned.” He reminded them that dismissal of Tsarist-era debt had been a key manifesto of the failed uprising in 1905. More than a century later, Russia stands on the brink of another default but this time there was no warning. Few expected the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine to elicit such a ferocious response from the West, which has all but severed Russia from global financial and payment systems.These are Russia’s major debt events over the past century:1918: REPUDIATIONJust before the 1917 revolution, Russia was the world’s largest net international debtor, having borrowed heavily to finance industrialisation and railways. But seeing the Tsarist industrialisation drive as failing the working class, the Bolsheviks repudiated all foreign debt.”They said ‘we are not paying and even if we could, we wouldn’t pay.’ And that was a political statement,” said Hassan Malik, senior sovereign analyst at Loomis Sayles and the author of the book “Bankers and Bolsheviks: International Finance and the Russian Revolution”.Despite Trotsky’s reminder, the default shocked the world, especially France, whose banks and citizens suffered massive losses.”Investors didn’t take it seriously because they thought it would be so self-harmful,” Malik said, estimating the debt to be worth at least $500 billion at 2020 prices and possibly more. It took until the mid-1980s for Moscow to recognise some of that debt.1991: USSR TO RUSSIA Following the break-up of the USSR in 1991, Russia stopped servicing part of the overseas debt it inherited from former Soviet states. Andrey Vavilov, Russia’s deputy finance minister between 1994 and 1997, said the Russian Federation held around $105 billion in Soviet-era debt at the end of 1992, with its own debt amounting to $2.8 billion. For accepting the inherited debt, the Paris Club recognised Russia as a creditor nation, Vavilov wrote in his book “The Russian Public Debt and Financial Meltdowns”. And as Russia agreed with the group of nations to restructure $28 billion in debt in 1996, it was allowed to shift major Soviet-era debt payments to the next decade.But with a financial crisis around the corner, it would take until 2017 to clear the Communist-era arrears.1998: ROUBLE DEBT DEFAULT By 1997, crashing oil prices slashed Russian export revenues. External debt, which stood near 50% of GDP in 1995, had swelled by 1998 to 77%, according to Vavilov, who blamed hefty IMF/World Bank loans for contributing to the pile.Russia raised very little tax revenue and relied on short-term Treasury bills known as GKO to cover expenditure. But it found it harder and harder to roll these over and was soon spending ever-increasing amounts to defend the rouble. “The more the government insisted that it would stand by the currency and repay its debts, the more investors concluded it was time to sell,” said Chris Miller in his book “Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia”.A month before the default, the IMF put together a $22.6 billion aid package, but “the market was expecting the announcement of an additional $20 billion,” Martin Gilman, the IMF representative in Moscow at the time, wrote in his book “No Precedent, No Plan: Inside Russia’s 1998 Default”. On Aug. 17, 1998, Russia threw in the towel, devaluing the rouble, announcing it could no longer pay rouble debt and introducing a three-month moratorium on some external debt.Russian banks that had invested heavily in T-bills and had extensive foreign currency exposure soon went under.2022: A FORCED DEFAULTThrough dire financial straits in 1998, Moscow made sure to continue Eurobond payments. Now it has plenty of cash but may not dodge default. To sidestep sanctions, the Kremlin is suggesting foreign creditors open Russian bank accounts to receive payments in alternative currencies to the dollar. Non-U.S. investors can in theory agree, but U.S. bondholders cannot, after a U.S. Treasury licence allowing them to accept Russian payments expired in May.Miller, author of “Putinomics”, said Russia would fight tooth and nail to dodge a Eurobond default.”The officials on the central bank and the finance ministry have built their careers on restabilising Russia as a creditor that can be trusted in international markets,” he said. “It’s built into their identity to make sure a default doesn’t happen again.” More

The Biden administration is to provide Ukraine with long-range rocket systems and precision ammunition as part of a $40bn assistance package as the invaded country fights a resurgent Russian army.The formal announcement will come later today and include $700mn worth of new military assistance including the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (Himars) and ammunition with a range of up to 80km. The package will also include sophisticated radars, Javelin missiles and anti-armour weapons, senior administration officials said.The new aid is part of a broader package of military, economic and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine that was approved by the Senate earlier this month. Moscow assessed the new US aid package “extremely negatively,” Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov told state news agency RIA Novosti.But as the conflict nears its 100th day, President Joe Biden argues in a New York Times op-ed that Ukraine needs more advanced weaponry to “more precisely strike key targets” on the battlefield.Ukraine has been calling on its allies to supply it with longer-range missiles to halt the advance of Russian troops in the east of the country where Moscow has made gains in recent days, especially around the city of Sievierodonetsk.The Zelensky government has grown increasingly alarmed at delays to weapon deliveries, particularly from the US and Germany and questioned the resolve of its western allies in the face of Russian aggression.Kyiv has pressed Washington to send weapons with an even longer range than the ones announced today.More news on UkraineThe UK and EU have agreed a co-ordinated ban on insuring ships carrying Russian oil, shutting Moscow out of the vital Lloyd’s of London insurance market. It comes a day after the EU agreed a partial ban on Russian oil imports. Here’s an explainer on how that ban will affect global markets.Citigroup, the US lender with the largest business in Russia, may retain a banking licence and some operations in the country, chief executive Jane Fraser said yesterday. In Russia, shuttered shops and disrupted supply chains illustrate how western sanctions are beginning to filter into the economy.Thanks for reading and here is the rest of the day’s news — GordonFive more stories in the news1. Police raid German asset manager over greenwashing claims The chief executive of Germany’s top asset manager, DWS Group, has resigned hours after the company’s offices in Frankfurt were raided by police over allegations of greenwashing. BaFin launched an investigation into DWS last year, following a similar probe by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.2. Shanghai reopens after two-month lockdown Commuters, traffic and joggers returned to the streets of Shanghai today after a strict 65-day Covid-19 lockdown in China’s financial capital began to ease. The restrictions were imposed on March 28 and were supposed to last for eight days but were extended and included the whole city of 25m people.

Commuters return to Shanghai’s subway after a strict two-month lockdown that prevented most residents from leaving their homes © Bloomberg

3. US Supreme Court blocks Texas social media ‘censorship’ law The Supreme Court yesterday froze a censorship law in Texas known as HB20 that would have prohibited platforms such as Facebook and Twitter from taking down content including misinformation and extremism.4. EY’s US boss quits after clashing with global chief Kelly Grier, the first woman to lead EY in the US, has quit the Big Four accounting firm after a power struggle with its global boss. Her departure highlights tensions between the group’s competing fiefdoms as it considers a radical plan to break itself up.5. Elliott to sell AC Milan to RedBird for €1.2bn Elliott Management has agreed to sell AC Milan to the US investment group led by former Goldman Sachs banker Gerry Cardinale, according to people close to the club. The deal caps a turnaround at the Italian football club, which won Italy’s top league this season, and ends Elliott’s four-year foray into the business of sport. For more on business sports news sign up to Scoreboard. The day aheadJoe Biden to hold baby formula roundtable The president will hold a virtual meeting with the leading manufacturers of baby formula amid nationwide shortages. He will be joined by health and human services secretary Xavier Becerra and surgeon-general Vivek Murthy as well as the leaders of manufacturers including ByHeart, Bubs Australia, Reckitt, Perrigo and Gerber.Denmark holds EU security referendum Danes will vote on whether to axe the country’s 30-year-old opt-out from the EU’s security and defence policies, in the latest potential huge policy change in northern Europe following Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. Separately, US secretary of state Antony Blinken will meet Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg, who is on a multiday visit to the US.Fed Beige Book The Federal Reserve publishes its report on economic conditions, a day after President Joe Biden said he would respect the “independence” of the US central bank after a meeting with Fed chair Jay Powell. US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen, meanwhile, conceded she was “wrong” last year about the threat posed by rising inflation.Monetary policy Bank of Canada policymakers are expected to increase the country’s benchmark borrowing rate 0.5 percentage points to 1.5 per cent in an attempt to rein-in inflation. The bank in April raised interest rates by half a percentage point, the first time in more than two decades it tightened monetary policy with an increase of that magnitude.Economic data Job openings are expected to have dipped to 11.4mn in April, based on economists’ prediction for the US Department of Labor’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (Jolts) report. Private payroll figures from data processor ADP are also due this morning ahead of the monthly non-farm payrolls report on Friday.US earnings GameStop, the video game store that rose to prominence during the meme stock rally last year, reports earnings after the bell. Pet products company Chewy, Calvin Klein-owner PVH Corporation and Hewlett Packard Enterprise also deliver quarterly results this afternoon.Annual meetings Alphabet, parent company of Google, hosts its annual meeting and shareholders will vote on 10 proposals covering pay equity, sustainability and human rights.US removes UK metals tariffs Washington will scrap Trump-era tariffs of 25 per cent on steel and aluminium exports, replacing them with quotas. In return, London will suspend extra taxes on US products such as bourbon and Levi’s jeans.What else we’re readingTwelve propositions on the state of the world How do we make sense of the world? Time spent in Davos last week crystallised Martin Wolf’s answers in the form of 12 projections covering the top economic, geopolitical, social and technological issues facing society.

Martin Wolf: ‘We in the west have to manage profound changes and lethal conflicts at a time of division and disillusionment’ © James Ferguson

Tech experts urge Washington to resist crypto industry’s influence Harvard lecturer Bruce Schneier, former Microsoft engineer Miguel de Icaza and principal engineer at Google Cloud Kelsey Hightower, are among 26 leading computer scientists and academics who are urging US lawmakers to crack down on the burgeoning cryptocurrencies industry.Sifting through the stock market wreckage How should investors navigate the equities market wreckage? The answer is as simple as it is complex, writes Maike Currie: stock by stock. Some argue that the real story playing out in markets is not about value versus growth, but rather between cyclicals and defensives.Can Africa grow without fossil fuels? Not every country in the continent is endowed with renewable energy reserves. As the developed world demands emissions cuts, African leaders are asking whether poor countries can achieve high living standards without intensive use of fossil fuels.NSO’s cash dilemma Faced with a cash crunch so severe that the Israeli manufacturer of cyberweapon Pegasus could miss its payroll, Shalev Hulio had a startling suggestion. The foul-mouthed chief executive asked: why not start selling again to risky clients? To his audience, the idea was alarming, but that wasn’t all. Read the inside story here.FashionThe newly named HTSI rounds up the best of summer style for men, modelled naturally on the beach. More

Interest-rate swaps are wagering on almost three quarter-point rate hikes across the next three policy decisions as the ECB struggles to get a grip on inflation running at more than four times the bank’s 2% target. This is set to be be followed by a similar scale of tightening over the ensuing three ECB meetings running from October to January, according to swaps pricing, which RBC Europe strategists, including Peter Schaffrik, said may be too much.“The path forward for the second half of the year regarding central bank policy tightening does not seem to be set in stone, giving markets room for interpretation for the time being,” according to the RBC note.While President Christine Lagarde suggested last week that negative interest rates would likely end in the third quarter, clues on official guidance beyond that have been few and far between.    RCB recommends using interest-rate futures tied to three-month Euribor — a benchmark based on the average rate that banks can borrow in the money-market and a proxy for central bank policy — to bet on a slower path of rate hikes by selling the contract expiring in September and buying its March 2023 peer. Strategists at Citi target a similar reduction in premiums, but prefer selling March 2023 Euribor and buying the March 2024 contract as European business sentiment succumbs to weaker economic performance in the US and UK. Forward swaps are betting on more than a quarter-point rate cut by the Federal Reserve and Bank of England as soon as in 2024, as policy tightening is expected to act as a brake on growth. Similar metrics barely register a drop in ECB rates.©2022 Bloomberg L.P. More

Investing.com — The Fed’s Quantitative Tightening begins. In Europe, manufacturing slows to its most sluggish in a year and a half as the Ukraine war grinds on. President Joe Biden is to send long-range artillery to Kyiv to help it staunch Russian advances in the east of the country. OPEC’s solidarity with Russia is starting to fray, while stocks are set to drift ahead of the ISM manufacturing survey. Salesforce and HP keep the mood upbeat with their quarterly reports. Here’s what you need to know in financial markets on Wednesday, 1st June1. QT begins as Yellen admits misjudging inflationThe Federal Reserve’s balance sheet reduction policy comes into force today, although the effects are unlikely to be felt until June 15, when the first bonds held by the Fed will be allowed to mature.That process will take up to $47.5 billion a month out of the financial system, doubling to $95 billion a month in September, further tightening financial conditions as official and market interest rates rise.New York Fed President John Williams and St. Louis’ James Bullard are due to speak later, a day after President Joe Biden met with Chair Jerome Powell to let him know exactly who was to blame for the current situation. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was arguably more honest in acknowledging to CNN that she had underestimated the strength of the inflation dynamic created by pandemic stimulus programs.Outside the U.S., the Bank of Canada is expected to raise its key rate by 50 basis points to 2%.2. OPEC+ solidarity starts to fray The solidarity of the ‘OPEC+’ alliance is fraying in the wake of the European Union’s adoption of measures that will make it all but impossible for Russia to comply with the group’s production agreements.The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that some OPEC members are considering ‘exempting’ Russia from the deal, which would be a likely prelude to the rest of OPEC increasing output more. Long-term oil exporters such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE – both of which have spare capacity – are uncomfortable with a level of prices that will cause demand destruction and accelerate the shift away from oil.The last few days have seen some high-profile diplomacy, with Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov visiting Saudi Arabia to lobby for continued solidarity. China’s Xi Jinping meanwhile held a call with his counterpart in the UAE, and France’s government talked to Iraq’s about the possibility of raising output.The American Petroleum Institute’s data on U.S. stockpiles are due at 4:30 PM ET, a day later than usual due to the Memorial Day holiday.U.S. crude futures fell as much as $5 a barrel before recovering nearly half their losses by 6:30 AM ET.3. Stocks set to drift; Salesforce, HP upbeat; ISM eyedU.S. stock markets are set to open higher but within their recent ranges later, as the ebbing of the first-quarter earnings season leaves the market more exposed to trading on economic data.The Institute of Supply Management will provide the most important data point on Wednesday at 10 AM ET with its purchasing managers index, along with the Labor Department’s monthly Job Openings Survey.Stocks likely to be in focus later include Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) and HP (NYSE:HPQ), both of which released upbeat earnings and guidance after the bell on Tuesday. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE:HPE) reports later.4. European manufacturing hurt; ECB rate hike debate bubblesEuropean manufacturing expanded at its slowest rate in around a year and a half in May, hit by the familiar factors of surging energy prices, supply chain problems originating in China, and the blow to confidence from the war in Ukraine.The Eurozone manufacturing PMI compiled by S&P Global fell to its lowest since December 2020, while the U.K. analog fell to its lowest since March 2021. The U.K.’s problems were compounded by Brexit difficulties: export orders fell for the eighth month in nine.The data follow a big overshoot in May inflation for the Eurozone, which has prompted two European Central Bank officials to break with the guidance given by the ECB’s top management on how quickly to raise interest rates. Austria’s Robert Holzmann and Slovakia’s Peter Kazimir both signaled their openness to a half-point hike in the deposit rate as early as July.5. Biden to send rocket artillery to UkraineU.S. President Joe Biden confirmed the U.S. will send rocket artillery to Ukraine, hoping to tilt the balance of the war back in Kyiv’s favor after Russian forces ground out steady battlefield gains in the Donbas region in recent days.The U.S. will send its wheeled High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, which has a range of 48 miles. However, it backed off sending longer-range systems due to fears that Ukraine would use them to strike targets in Russia. That’s something that the Kremlin has said it would see as a major escalation of the conflict it started in February.In an interview with Newsmax aired on Monday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky rebuffed suggestions that the country should trade land for peace with Russia. More

SINGAPORE/KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Singapore is bracing for a shortage of its de-facto national dish, chicken rice, as major supplier Malaysia halts all chicken exports from Wednesday.Restaurants and street stalls in the city-state are faced with hiking prices of the staple food or shutting down altogether as their supplies dwindle from neighbouring Malaysia, where production has been disrupted by a global feed shortage.Malaysia’s export ban is the latest sign of growing global food shortages as countries, reeling from the effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, extreme weather, and pandemic-related supply disruptions, scramble to shore up domestic supplies and tame food inflation. (For an interactive graphic, click here: https://tmsnrt.rs/3wZqRBV)Rising prices for basic food items have already fuelled protests in countries like Argentina, Indonesia, Greece and Iran. [L5N2XA3U7]Daniel Tan, owner of a chain of seven stalls called OK Chicken Rice, said Malaysia’s ban will be “catastrophic” for vendors like him.”The ban would mean we are no longer able to sell. It’s like McDonald’s (NYSE:MCD) with no burgers,” he said.He added his stalls usually source live birds from Malaysia but will have to switch to using frozen chicken within the week and are expecting a “strong hit to sales” as customers react to the change in quality of the dish.Singapore, although among the wealthiest countries in Asia, has a heavily urbanised land area of just 730 square km (280 square miles) and relies largely on imported food, energy and other goods. Nearly all of its chicken is imported: 34% from Malaysia, 49% from Brazil and 12% from the United States, according to data from Singapore Food Agency (SFA). A plate of simple poached chicken and white rice cooked in broth served with a side of greens is a dish beloved by the country’s 5.5 million people, and is usually widely available for about S$4 ($2.92) at eateries known as hawker centres.The SFA has said the shortfall can be offset by frozen chicken from Brazil, and has urged consumers to opt for other protein sources like fish.Malaysia, itself facing soaring prices, has decided to halt chicken exports until local production and costs stabilise.Prices have been capped since February at 8.90 ringgit ($2.03) per bird and a subsidy of 729.43 million ringgit ($166 million) has been set aside for poultry farmers.Chicken feed typically consists of grain and soybean, which Malaysia imports. But the government is having to consider alternatives amid a global feed shortage.Lower quality feed means the birds are not growing as fast as usual, slowing down the entire supply chain, said poultry farmer Syaizul Abdullah Syamil Zulkaffly.Previously, Syaizul’s farm of broiler chicken was able to harvest as many as seven times a year, with 45,000 birds harvested per cycle. This year he expects only five harvest cycles. Syaizul, who started feeling the pinch of higher operating costs during the pandemic, says the export ban will only make things worse for poultry farmers. “I don’t know if this industry can sustain me … for the next five or 10 years,” he said, adding that he’s had to go into debt to keep up with costs. “Maybe I should go work at a petrol station or something is even better, less headache than actually managing a chicken farm.” ($1 = 1.3713 Singapore dollars)($1 = 4.3770 ringgit) More