BiscottiGelato

原帖由 快樂牛郎 於 2009-2-15 00:55 發表


我覺得Lehman Brothers單野幾好wor
如果救埋更加令到D人肆無忌憚
而家起碼教識香港班師奶醒目D
下次唔好亂信人
唔見幾百萬咪當發場夢

Auto就更加唔應該Bailout
Detroit班人一早就應該kick out
我最期待就係班汽車 ...

If Paulson didn't needlessly spend money on useless companies, the recession yes, will plunge in deeper on the short term, but also on the flip side will recover sooner.

With the current rate of money printing and borrowing by the government, and plenty of crappy companies being artifically aided to remain afloat, it just seems to be closer and closer to what Japan looked like 15ish years ago...

I personally think government should reduce their role in manipulating the free market. Free market is usually the most efficient, any external input will only make things worse... The government can however increase infrastrucutre spending when raw material and labor costs is coming down, which also aids in job creation and increase future productivity.

In terms of cutting salary, if anyone here will come and tell me that they will start donating additional amount of money from their salary on a regualr basis to any charity organization, then you might have a point. Otherwise why ask someone else to reduce their salary to contribute to society when none of us are willing to do so? Government executives are still employees. I'd be happy enough if the governemnt go through a salary freeze, which is inline with action taken by the prvivate sector. I'd also rather they figure out something useful to do instead of doing a big show in terms of cutting salary, etc, which in the end doesn't really contriubte much to the bottom line at all...

BiscottiGelato

原帖由 快樂牛郎 於 2009-2-16 10:39 發表


free market本身就冇話破唔破產既
破產既只係D人對free market既一廂情願

Good point.

Besides, what got us in the current state is not 'free market', it's actually bad monetary policy, with the Fed setting their interest rate artificially too low.

As has been said millions of times. What got us to where we are now it's the low interest rate and easy credit. And what is the governments doing now? Lowering interest rate even more and encourage banks to go back to their relaxed lending policy again. If that ain't bad enough, we are even pumping more money via stimulus package, and bailing out failing companies that is crippling investor confidence.

Double check what happened to Japan. It is the government who kept on bailing out crappy companies, that destroyed investor confidence and private banks' confidence. Nobody can tell which company is worth lending to/investing in, as crappy companies can operate just as well as non-crappy companies, because the government vows to keep almost any companies from bankrupcy by getting their very own government's treasury bankrupt. What happens instead is all investors and banks rather put their money off shore instead of reinvesting in the domestic economy... Japan still have not recovered some 15 years later (now). If the US do not stop falling down this failing path, it does seem that it'll end up in this familiar situation in history...

[ 本帖最後由 BiscottiGelato 於 2009-2-16 12:14 編輯 ]

BiscottiGelato

原帖由 soli 於 2009-2-16 13:36 發表
上面既咪就係對自由巿場既一廂情願~
自由巿場破產已經唔係第一次﹐狡辯無用~
相反﹐Keynes個套既失敗就真係人為因素(中東班友唔賣油﹐無計)﹐死得冤枉﹐其實係work 既.
睇返香港﹐金融風暴/SARS 之後﹐董伯伯減社會福利﹐減開 ...

Free market do not equal up market. It's just efficient in terms of global economy. If any local competitive advantage is fundamentally eroded, then it is going to go down, just a fact of life.

We know HK's competitive advantage was eroded due to the opening up of China. Mainland shoving money and business op to artificially allow HK to stay afloat is what's inefficient. When a lot of the same work can slowly be done out of Shanghai, etc at lower cost/better efficiency, we know HK's position will relatively go down slowly. There's no denying that. And as a whole for China, I am sure things got more expensive when many of the opportunity is done out of HK instead. We are sacrificing the big picture when we choose a non-free market approach to support local growth. That's what I mean free market is always the most efficient.

Putting US back in perspective, we are sacrificing US as a whole when we bail out individual companies, etc. One might argue there'll be lot more bankruptcy, executive suicides, etc happening all over America if the Fed don't shove money up people's hand. But many of these companies, which would otherwise go bankrupt etc were simply badly ran, managed or positioned in the market. Getting rid of these burdens allows the country to reposition itself for better efficiency and productivity. Government intervention only prevents this natural adjustment from happening. Allowing bad comapnies to leech off successes of others, if not prevent others from succeeding.

Government intervention always prevent efficient economic growth as a whole. The only reason I see for the government is as Lik have said, for humanitarian reasons. People that cannot compete will perish in free market, and the government is there to allow these people to maintain a minimum quality of life. But when government intervention go overboard, ie:

- Give money from productive tax payers and well ran company to uncompetitive companies which will drag the country down, aka. GM/Chrysler in the US, etc
- Hand out anything stimulus for short term pain relief
- Unrealistically relaxed monetary policy to allow artificial economic bubbles to proliferate, etc.

Then we are not just aiding the poor, but we are taxing the public for aiding a small group of people who have failed to perform. This, is what's inefficient and will cause even greater pain in the long run.

BiscottiGelato

原帖由 soli 於 2009-2-17 06:13 發表
經濟efficient有屁用?  社會和諧先係最重要。
巿場越自由, 貧富懸殊只會越嚴重﹐  個個窮人由朝做到晚都兩餐不繼﹐  已擁有財富既既得利益者只要不斷剝削工人﹐ 就可以富貴萬代﹐  80% +財富集中于1%人手裡, 仲衰過以前D皇朝 ...

Society overall usually advance as a whole much more rapidly under capitalism than socialism... go figure.... The rich gets a lot richer, but the poor also get a better living standard because society moved as a whole. Yes rich poor disparity widens, but why should the poor care when they are getting a better standard of living quicker?

This is just like the argument against two-tier health care. The poor don't want the rich to receive health care quicker by spending their own money. Heck, but two-tier also allows the poor to have better access to health-care services. So two-tier widens the gap in service quality between the rich and poor, but both the rich and the poor got better service level in the end. Two tier, which is more of the capitalistic approach, allows a win-win situation, what's the wrong in that? Relating back, free-market capitalism essentially is a win-win, while heavy socialistic intervention is lose lose. Stop the envy and start the productivity!

Also, that's why I say the government's only role should be to protect the poor to have a min living standard. Any more than that, like the stupid bail out which is actually bailing out the rich, or stimulus packages which is expensive and doesn't really help the poor anyways, is over-intervention, which interrupts the efficiency of society's progress as a whole.

[ 本帖最後由 BiscottiGelato 於 2009-2-17 11:17 編輯 ]

BiscottiGelato

原帖由 soli 於 2009-2-17 12:51 發表

孔子曰: 有國家者﹐不患寡(貧)而患不均。其實道理好簡單﹐但係都打個例子啦~
假設兩個國家A國同B國,   A 國平居民收入1千﹐有份一千五蚊人工叫你去做去當地永久生活。 B國居民平均收入3千﹐有份兩千蚊既工要你去做永久生活 ...

I am not talking about monimal income, I am talking about quality of living. Your example thus won't apply.

BiscottiGelato

Albeit from 2 years ago...
http://www.american.com/archive/ ... ents/still-the-one/

It's the law and the lack of economic intervention that allowed HK to remain prosperous. Do we really want the gov't to muck around with the economy so much? What do we want HK to become? Canada? or US? (I mean the debt of course LOL).

BiscottiGelato

原帖由 Lik 於 2009-2-20 10:10 發表

Peter,

You are entirely correct that the HK SAR government has a lot of $$ on hand (stashed away in the reserves), and example after example have shown how incredibly reluctant the SAR government is ...

Because spending away doesn't get you out of a recession. You can see how people react whenever Bush and Obama is successful in passing stimulus package... People just freak the heck out and run from the US market.

If HK is just like the US and start spending away... HK won't be HK no more and you won't have a HK in 20 years time....

I think soli n such hinted at that the so called reserve, is not an actual gov't reserve, but a reserved used to stablize the exchange rate between the USD and HKD...?