Right idea on bubble busting
Updated on Dec 05, 2009
I agree with Tom Holland ("Bubble muddle ", December 4): keep the government out of bubble busting.
The International Monetary Fund has cast its fierce eye on our equity and property markets and determined they are developing bubble-like tendencies.
It then proposes "remedies". Quite why the IMF should have any credibility after the fiascos of its interventions in South America in the 1980s, and the Asian Financial crisis of the 1990s, is beyond me.
Countries that did best were the ones that did the opposite of the IMF credit-tightening prescriptions in those crises.
In the Hong Kong property market, counter-cyclical attempts at control by the government have been shown time and again to lag behind so badly that they exacerbate downturns and magnify upturns.
Memo to Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen: listen to the wise advice of Holland, not that of the pointy-heads at the IMF!
