Hi Raymond, I followed the discussion started between Oblomov and yourself with interest, and do not have much to add to the flavor, except to add an offshore perspective to same, and to possibly irk CB, get Maurice going, wind up the Baldur or, simply to have some fun:0)
<<Stanley Works to Bermuda in an utterly phony paper transaction? … How in the heck do you measure their "productivity"? >>
I know, with varying intimacy, of many HK-based companies that offer companies from all around the world, of all sizes, the following corporate business services:
(a) offshore corporate
(b) secretarial
(c) re-invoicing
(d) treasury
(e) accounting
These companies are highly productive, generally of very low overhead cost, profitable in creating, seemingly out of thin air, or out of regulatory gap, enormous value for their clients, entirely through the signing of papers, and stuffing of envelops.
I sympathize with feelings that what they help to do, or enable what can be done, as bordering on the a-legal, not entirely proper, or perhaps nearly unfair.
I recognize that what these services enable what I call ‘global investor electorate’ enforced democracy. The enforcement actions made possible by these services are important, on the same order as gold in monetary affairs of man and empires.
Hong Kong is a place full of weird creatures and constructs. The strangest example of such construct was one set of three companies featured in Hong Kong newspaper a few years ago, when a corporate service company got done with its work, the companies, two domiciled in two different Caribbean island and one in Mauritius, ended up owning each other in a loop-the-loop fashion, with not an organic person in sight, shrouded in mystery. The three companies were, in the aggregate, to take part in a gambling venture somewhere between S.Korea, China and Russia. Needless to say, even the ever-understanding HK government bulked at the monster creation. There was much Enron could have learned from Hong Kong:0)
So, onward to irking:0)
Democracy is about people having a choice. There are those that support independence movements everywhere except at home. Well, the shareholders of Stanley have chosen and they want to opt out.
It is now up to the still broader US population to choose to oppose the shareholders by changing the laws and regulations, possibly in the name of War Against Financial Terror. If and when this revisionism should take place, it will be up to the still broader global investor electorates to vote, thumbs up or done, on this and similar retrograde momentum in the free-market place.
In the end, at the interim conclusion of the script, Stanley may relocate by default … bankruptcy, and its business inherited by new and genuinely offshore-based company. This is the process of dying of the old and birthing of the new.
I view Money Rock HK ultimate and Freedom Mountain Kowloon as the penultimate in capitalism, freedom, and genuine democracy (by feet and by money, as opposed to by fiat law adjusted as needed, bough if necessary). The spit of territory, termed by Time and Fortune as lost outposts is a place that practices ‘each according to own ability’ to the cross in “t”, and ‘none according to need’ to the dot in “i”
Heritage Foundation of the USA view Hong Kong as Numeral Uno, full stop and period.
Hong Kong does not have any capital control, and really refuses to monitor capital movement. HK does not tax interest, dividend, capital gains and offshore sourced income. Offshore sourced income is defined very broadly, as in an offshore-based subsidiary of a Hong Kong company providing goods and services from one world-ex HK location to another planet ex-Kowloon location.
Hong Kong also has the fewest controls on free movement of labour, made easier still by specialists that help to circumvent what rules there are in exchange for incentives. Money speaks loudly around the world, but loudest in Hong Kong. We have foreign nationals working as judges and policeman, call girls and financial professionals, domestic helpers and medical doctors.
Should the HK government want to pay more to China for the HK garrison of the People’s Liberation Army, the money will leave HK.
Should the HK government do what the HK people do not want them to do, the people will leave HK.
Should the HK intervene in the free market place to save HK financial system, the people will support the government regardless of the WSJ and CNBC rants.
Hong Kong is not going China’s way. China is coming to where Hong Kong is. I say this by the volume and growth of business being done by the aforementioned corporate services firms on the mainland. Democracy is happening, not by fiat, but by enforcement of the free market place, along with manufacturing deflation, amidst the birthing cry.
This is optimism, or I have the wrong understanding of freedom, choice and democracy.
Irking, tweaking, pulling of whiskers is done, and the fun of swim soon to begin.
Chugs, Jay |
