Churches are not the only thing to have been going up in flames in Malaysia. Take a look at the nation's foreign exchange reserves. They fell by close to 25 percent during 2009 according to investment bank UBS, even though the country continued to run a huge surplus on the current account of its balance of payments.

Says UBS: "Question: which Asian country had the biggest FX (foreign exchange) losses in 2009?" The answer is Malaysia and by a very large margin; we estimate that official reserves fell by well more than one quarter on a valuation-adjusted basis".

It describes the situation as "bizarre" and contrasts Malaysia with other countries with large current account surpluses – Thailand, China, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong – which

have seen their reserves increase – as should be expected.