Belt-Tightening for 2006?

I noticed yesterday that the New Strait Times (NST) carried a front-page article written by Lee Siew Lian and June Ramli titled Coping with rising prices and the editorial Prudent spending.

Then today we have another NST editorial that says Working on inflation which pontificates on inflation and the inherent dangers of employees making incorrect knee-jerk reactions to the perceived inflation by demanding for wage rises to cope with blah blah blah.

We all know that the NST is the unofficial mouthpiece for the UMNO-government, so I suspiciously sense inflationary and economic problems for us Malaysians in 2006. The series of NST articles and editorials seem to be preparing us for a belt-tightening-don’t-panic economic outcome.

Mind you, I am no economic expert and thus speak as a layperson of the general public – I just have a natural wariness of the NST drive these last few days.

Any economic experts to lend us the benefit of their expertise?