Tundra,
that was exactly the article I read before, thanks for bringing it back up. It seems like anything coming out of Japan is of the same smell of the stuff from the White House. May be eight articles later, the public would finally get close to something that resembles the truth.
In the mean time, a friend of mine from HK got this to say:
Greenspan has epxressed a negative opinion but Donald Tsang and Joseph
Yam still think they are right. Donald Tsang maintains, for example,
that HK is adjusting superbly, the evidence being how fast property
prices have fallen. What hopes for things turning better can one have
when the top people firmly believe black is white? The continuing fall
in property prices, now passing the 50% mark, is precisely a reflection
of their failure to do things that help improve HK's fundamentals /
competitiveness (or to stop doing things that hurt those fundamentals)!
Yet Tung/Tsang/Yam believe it is all the fault of external factors and
speculators.
The latest worry is that rising unemployment - now at 5% and perhaps
heading higher to who knows where - will finally make bad loans become a
serious problem. Right now negative equity of mortgages and negative
net worth of individuals are common - seeing that property prices have
fallen over 50%, but defaults are still a low percentage. If
unemployment goes up further substantially that might change.
The Government has done some things right, though there are probably not
enough of them. Let us hope Tung's annual policy address - I think on
October 7, will produce more +ve news. |
