 |
 |
| Reference Material |
| Speculative ogre still roams Asia By Tom Plate, Los Angeles Times October 4, 1999, Today On the surface, it�s hard to understand why Donald Tsang, Hong Kong�s respected financial secretary is not smiling��But the Harvard-educated Tsang, in the United States for a round of talks with investors and some image-polishing for Hong Kong, is still raising red flags about the dangers of rapacious Western speculative funds on smaller, vulnerable economies. He is among the most prominent Asian leaders to argue that there is an untamed monster loose on the world stage in the form of speculative dollars looking to make a score against a less-than-perfect currency or stock market. Tsang believes the potency of that monster is under-appreciated by the most powerful nations (the only ones, as fate would have it, with the global clout to deflect speculative excesses)��.. Last (1999) summer, Tsang helped orchestrate a sneak counter-attack against speculative fund groups that were sucking huge profits out of Hong Kong�s economy. He essentially used Hong Kong�s monetary reserves to buy stocks on the Hong Kong market, shoring it up to discourage speculative raiders from betting on a continued slide in stock prices and the Hong Kong currency. Tsang believes that large speculative funds are a great contemporary Leviathan still out there gathering new force and threatening to reduce economic life to a Hobbesian state � solitary, nasty, brutish. �What�s worrying to me is the free flow of capital occurring in the dark,� he says. Tsang and other globalization revisionists would require the same degree of public disclosure for so-called hedge funds as is required of public mutual funds. �Flow�s important, that�s a lifeblood. But flow�s totally in the dark, not knowing what they�re carrying � viruses or carcinogens into the national economic system, we have no idea � that�s what�s worrying.����. He insists that speculative attacks can cripple any economy except those as huge as Japan�s, the United States� or the European Union�s���. �Yes, the markets will smooth things out, but in the process they will smother some markets and overturn countries. It will change your politics overnight � good governments, bad governments alike. Is this the kind of world we want? There is no perfect economy on earth. No economy reaches a state of totally balanced equilibrium��� **** |