Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Hong Kong Baffles Market Fundamentalists

In a key policy address following the global financial crisis, Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang states that "the government's role is increasingly important and needs to be redefined ... We should be ready to take decisive action to help stabilize the economy and rebuild people's confidence to ride out the difficulties."

Quite logically, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), the territory's central bank, and the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) would look for ways to strengthen the city's financial regulatory regime. Among other measures, guess what, Hong kong, one of the champions of global capitalism, is about to establish an advisory Minimum Wage Commission.

Hong Kong has not evolved on the same planned track as Singapore, but they both share the same ideology-free approach to make their vulnerable open economies as lean and nimble as possible.

7 comments:

Sanjay Jagatsingh said...

The important concept to take away in this post is "ideology-free". Mauritians by and large want problems fixed. They don't want dumb speeches from incompetent politicians.

akagugo said...

Ideology-free and also free from drom-vid slogans like "deuxième phase de l'industrialisation", "knowledge/seafood/LBOI/sipaki hub", and the infamous "Mauritius, c'est un plaisir"...

SR said...

Bang on Akakugo! Here's what I wrote recently: The star features of post-"miracle" governance are self-indulgence and babble.

Once again, Sir, I submit that it is criminal for an insightful, witty and sophism-free mind like yours to shy away from mainstream exposure...

Sanjay Jagatsingh said...

15+ banane pe babble mem? Tu sa letan sa bann la pe servi chuk? Labus vinn traver r sa. Fer tensyon...

akagugo said...

@ SR:
Yep. Add to "self-indulgence and babble", self-congratulation (moi, mo tousel, mo'nn faire ça), excessive idolisation of parents and constant reference to "ancestral values" (the "mo papa" argument in every public speech Navin makes in front of all vié-nani/dadi audience that he gets to grace with his presence...)

"... to shy away from mainstream exposure"
Oh no... I've made many errors of judgement / appreciation, and will make many more before being able to write razor-sharp prose like some here (SJ and SR yourself). Actually, "Insightful" and "witty" are probably the last things that come to the mind of those whom I talk to on a day-to-day basis... :-) But in any case, I will continue to follow your way of analysing things, starting from the saying that goes like: 'airplanes take off against the wind and dead fish swim with the current...'

By the way, I've heard that the motto of Guy ollivry's, now-defunct party, UDM was: "l'élite d'où qu'elle vient"? It seemed open/inclusive enough to attract talent irrespective of its origins: I'm too young to have known what caused its demise? Why are our youth attracted to the deg-wielding traditional parties?

Sanjay Jagatsingh said...

Government can't be decisive with a flat tax. For sure. And we've seen this quite a few times over the last 10 years.

akagugo said...

The day you hear someone shouting the ugly truth to our big corporates, then we know we're on the right track. Because for the time being, this minimum wage is as discriminatory as some may wish it to be.