tim's experiment

Who are they? Who is this “Concerned group of financial professionals” who can afford to rent acres of local newsprint to beg victims of the minibond scam to let by-gones be by-gones? After all if you are going to pose as a friend of all the world, defender of humble shopkeepers and timid tourists, we are entitled to know whether this is a sincere piece of public-spirited peace-making, or a hypocritical attempt to dress financial interests in the garb of concern for public order. There are times, we all know, when honest man may wish to express an opinion pseudonymously. But the Financial Professionals are not seeking to criticise the PRC, call for independence in Tibet or seek the liberation of the latest jailed “subversive”.  The pursuit of peace and quiet on Central pavements is not controversial. So why are we left to ponder the possibility that the people now calling for peace are the same sorry crew who caused the problem in the first place?

Personally I do not go to Central that often, but I must say that I have never been intimidated or otherwise distressed by the protests going on there. It is a cherished right of the ripped off to demonstrate outside the premises of the bandit concerned, and I am quite willing to make whatever small sacrifices may be involved for the rest of us if people exercise that right.

The financial professionals are, it seems, a pretentious lot. I am not sure that anyone in the finanncial business is a professional in anything but the broadest sense. Mostly they sell things. On the whole the suiting is better than in brush sales but the principles involved are the same. Professionals in the more restricted sense are people with ethical obligations which over-ride their personal interests. Can you say “ethical banker” without giggling?

Certainly our financial professionals are not hampered by any old-fashioned notions about truth. The interesting thing about their advertisement is the way it starts with something we can all agree with and gradually escalates the rhetoric. Of course there are protesters in Central, sometimes dressed in funeral garb, sometimes carrying coffins, sometimes talking through bull-horns and usually just sitting on the pavement. This, the financial professionals believe, is making Hong Kong a laughing stock the world over. Well really? Everywhere from Belize to Beijing morning coffee is interrupted by raucous laughter at the spectacle of Hong Kong minibond protests? Pull the other one.

A couple of paragraphs later the amusing crowds have turned into “howling mobs”.  Through the howling mobs “sophisticated international customers” have to push. This is making them so uncomfortable that they are taking their business elsewhere. Rubbish! International business is driven by the same greed that motivates the local variety. Your sophisticated international customer is not going to go home to his sophisticated international boss and say he missed a good deal in Central because he was too intimidated by a mock funeral on the pavement.

The verbal escalation then continues. We are now dealing with “violent uncivil protests”. Two examples of the boodcurdling violence involved are provided. People have resorted to “lying down or sprawling across the roadways” and “camping out at the Cheung Kong Centre”. On the basis of this threatening behaviour “visitors are right to question whether Hong Kong is still a safe and friendly tourist city.” Are they indeed?

Others may find it more interesting to ponder what is going on here. Do the banks think that it is bad for their business to have a grzphic reminder on their doorsteps of the facts that investments may go down as well as up, and that this is a point on which your salesman’s advice is unreliable?  Or is there some deeper significance in the fact that the only detailed complaint is about the Cheung Kong Centre?