All the front-page news stories in today’s South China Morning Post are pretty very bad.
Cathay Pacific has cut 6,000 8,500 jobs, including 5:000 5,300 here in Hong Kong, and has axed its Dragon Air brand entirely. [Link]. Note: the revised figures are update from print to online versions.*
Next to that is a story on our jobless rate which has hit a 16-year high. That’s bad enough, but I wonder it’s not even worse, like the highest rate ever. Maybe that’s coming, for the third headline is “City warned of a ‘cataclysmic recession’ as private sector debt soars”. Goodness me. Hold on tight …
While, amazingly, the mainland economy powers back.
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*Personal note: I really feel for those who have lost a job. It happened to me twice, that I got laid off by companies restructuring, so I know that feeling of devastation. Especially bad in your fifties, because the likelihood of another job then is minuscule.
It’s close to us now as well, as a tenant of ours is a senior Cathay pilot who’s been on tenterhooks for months. Now he knows he’s out of a job, at a time when it’s going to be tough, maybe impossible, for him to find another. He has to leave by the end of this month. Another two weeks then. And we’ll be looking for a new tenant. In a weakening market. Our troubles are nothing compared to the tens, the hundreds of millions who face truly bleak futures. Oh “these interesting times”…
ADDED: Then again, we’re fine in our little Discovery Bay bubble. I hardly ever go to town. I have to ask J what’s it like? when she returns from a jaunts to Central. And the answer is, just normal, except everyone is wearing masks. Other than that, as busy as ever. Here on our island, in DB, down at the pool every day, temp 28 C and perfect, kids swimming, gambolling, shops, bars and restaurants all open, life appears as normal. Except it’s not. There’s a stickiness to the economy. No one doing anything. Property not changing hands. People sitting on their hands. Going to work if they’ve got it.
And in China, they’ve got it. They’ve got the itch. Sex toy sales up, up, up. Tumescent, one might say.
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