Author Archives: Lloyds_admin

Hong Kong Independence | Why Not?

I was never a proponent of Hong Kong independence. I think being part of China offers greater stability to Hong Kong.

However, with all of the recent political developments; with the abduction of Lee Bo the bookseller on Hong Kong soil and the abduction of the billionaire Xiao Jianhua at the Four Seasons Hotel I think we should reconsider whether the benefits outweight the drawbacks. The Communist Party stole the land from land owners in 1949 so their legitimacy to governing China is tenuous; the party is riddled with corruption and openly promotes inequality.

Hong Kong has declined with every passing year since the handover; socially mobility completely wiped out, wealth gap at an all time high, rule of law is getting eroded, the economic significance of the special administrative region ever declining. Freedom of speech is being eroded.

So, with independence, there are several issues to iron out before we tread down this path:-

1) Water supply – at the moment supplied by China at a commercially expensive rate; we should tender out this contract and re-visit whether we should buy water from other countries and have the water shipped? Desalination is another option. We should also continue to build reservoirs like the we had up until 1964.
2) Armed Forces – this could be outsourced like most things; tender out the requirements and engage the country/company that provides the best service with the lowest cost
3) Electricity – some of our power is being provided by China at the moment; we can increase production and not buy from China

The above form the problems, the below will be the fun part:-

1) Control immigration so that we do not allow 150 new immigrants from the mainland China to gain citizenship
2) Depeg from the US dollar and peg to a basket of currencies so that we can float the Hong Kong dollar freely
3) Change the political structure so that the chief executive is not being elected by an Election Committee of 1,400 cronies instead we implement universal suffrage and allow one man one vote
4) We can increase the powers of the Hong Kong Monetary Authorities to adjust interest rates based on how the economy is doing

Wouldn’t the above be great? No longer would we have to suffer the general bad manners of mainlanders; no longer would we be unable to protect our citizens; no longer would we have to waste vast sums of money building useless infrastructure projects to China that benefit only a few cadres.

Undersecretary for Education Christine Choi Yuk-lin’s Son Commits Suicide

Karma, for those who believe it, is a simple equation that explains how the universe functions – where there is cause there is effect. Each and one of us are governed by the laws of Karma.

For a mishap to happen to somebody, that person would have done something in the past to deserve it. If I dedicate my life to helping others, sharing and spreading positivity to the world good things will come back to me and the same works in reverse. When something extraordinarily good happens to a person and you attribute their success or good fortunes to the great work that they have done it is socially acceptable. However when something extraordinarily bad happens to a person and you attribute their misfortunes to bad deeds that they have must committed it is socially a taboo.

The students at Chinese University Hong Kong have expressed publicly the social taboo that should have been kept to themselves; even though what they were saying effectively implied that for such a misfortune to be bestowed upon somebody – that somebody must have committed some grievious deed to deserve such a retribution – i.e. losing a son. Regardless of what happened – only she will know what she did and it is not for outsiders to speculate.

Watch out for Silver + Gold to Shoot up | U$30/oz by end of 2017

M1 has expanded by 400% since 2008. The federal reserve along with the American bankers have effectively caused all the grief around the world; what surprises me is that not a single banker has been jailed. Such is the injustice of the world.

99% of the money that the Fed printed went to banks like JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and the usual suspects… All the fines that the federal reserve imposed on the banks over the last few years were all just a big show because the banks paid them with the very printed money that the Fed had just given them…. In order for this cosy setup to continue working, an allocation of the printed money went into the manipulation of the rate of inflation. Why? Because under normal circumstances if you print money inflation goes up. So how did the Fed manipulate the rate of inflation?

The posted inflation rate in the US for 2016 was 2.1%; so how could inflation be at 2.1% when money supply had expanded by 400% over the last 9 years. Simple. The calculation for the rate of inflation is inherently flawed because it is based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) which measures the price changes of a number of goods and services bought by consumers. Unfortuatenly, this figure can be manipulated by artificially lowering the price of certain commodities so as to give people the illusion that inflation was under control.

Keeping oil and commodities like gold and silver artificially low has allowed the Fed and its cronies to continue their cosy arrangement of printing money and screwing everyone over whilst polarising the world’s wealth. In 2009, JP Morgan shorted the silver market with US$ 20 billion and suddenly a massive drop in the silver price was evidenced even though the consumption of silver remained constant throughout the period.

The recent hoolaballoo with North Korea has added a twist to the Fed’s grand plan because suddenly people are flocking to gold and silver and this is our chance (“us” the people) to take a swipe at the establishment by buying physical silver and gold so that suddenly the shorts will be caught with their pants down by precipitating a massive shortage of physical silver and gold.

If every person in China just bought 1 oz of silver; the federal reserve and the US monetary system would blow up. That is all it takes.

I will start by buying 100oz tomorrow as I see silver finising the year at US$30/oz.

Hong Kong’s 20th year anniversary – What do the locals think?

I am writing this to give an account of how things have changed over the last 20 years since Hong Kong became part of China.

In short, from the perspective of a local, I have seen a steady decline year on year since the handover so there is nothing for me to celebrate.

Job Opportunities are scarcer
Wealth gap at an all time high
Zero upward-mobility socially
Property prices so unaffordable that first-time buyers can forget it
Mainlanders are taking resource from here including university places, hospital beds, etc
A meltdown of the rule of law with mainland agents coming to Hong Kong to abduct people (Lee Bo and the billionaire recently)
Erosion of our culture and values
Erosion of freedom of speech

The Communist Party has no experience governing an International city and they are running Hong Kong into the ground.

So for me, we should look back at how great things were 20 years ago rather than celebrate how bad things have become 20 years on.

Mid-Levels (Robinson Road + Conduit Road) – What’s it like?

Having lived on Robinson Road for the last 15 years which has served me well; I have to say it is no longer the place to be.

There is so much construction there right now; it is almost impossible to get a good night’s sleep.

The Hong Kong Government issues licenses for the developers to start construction at 7a.m. every morning except Sunday and you can be guaranteed at least 4-5 construction sites on the go at any given time. At the premium rate that you pay for rent; you are probably better off in some other location like Sai Ying Pun, Kennedy Town or Pok Fu Lam.

The noise from any one construction site is usually so loud that any building within a 500m radius will be affected.

What I can’t understand is why the government is allowed to issue licenses for construction at 7a.m.

Hong Kong will NEVER be a technology hub!

The main reasons why Hong Kong will NEVER be a technology hub is because:-

The government has no idea what innovation and technology is
The government penalises entrepreneurs with the high-admin cost and low return scheme called MPF
The government technology fund http://www.itc.gov.hk/ is a complete waste of time

I just spoke to two people at the Innovation and Technology Fund and asked what they could do for a Hong Kong company who has built a cutting-edge App and Internet platform in 11 languages and is looking for funding to push the product globally. Both said that the government could not help. They were both typical bureaucrats working in government departments answering the telephone and were just dying to get me to hang up and call another department. They tried to sound helpful but didn’t know what they were talking about. The woman on +852 3655 5847 (The enterprise support scheme) even hung up on me when I asked her to name just one successful project that they had funded – I guess 5:20p.m. on a Monday afternoon was biting into her personal time.

You will also notice from their website that there are some people who get funding for about 10-20 projects, such as Henry Chun-bun CHAN wh0 have obviously worked out how to work the system. HK$ 11 billion has been spent and what results can we see? When will Hong Kong develop a global brand like Facebook or whats app or Air B’n’B.

For a city who’s collective mindset is measured in HK$ / sq ft. return – only a disaster in Hong Kong could precipitate innovation; in the absence of that, the property-based mindset will prevail.

South China Morning Post – The new Communist Party Mouthpiece

Since Jack Ma bought South China Morning Post (SCMP), the newspaper has become a communist party mouthpiece.

In response to the article:-

“Beijing official sets anti-independence limits for Hong Kong as thousands march against government push to disqualify lawmakers”

And the comment got censored immediately.

China has absolutely no idea how to run Hong Kong, they screw the chief executive by stabbing him in the back by overriding the city’s law enforcement and abducting a bookseller and then expects the chief executive to stay silent after the fact. Did you see how CY Leung’s popularity plummet after that? And then they fire him because he was not able to garner popular support.

The communist party is like a cancer on this earth. It is only a matter of time before they will deposed.

JIJIS.ORG.HK – New site is always down

The jijis.org.hk’s new website which is for students to look for jobs and for employers to find candidates. Recently, we put up 2 ads on this platform and we have not received a single enquiry, in previous years we would receive around 30 – 40 applications per job ad.

Each time I visit the student portal www.jijis.org.hk I find that the website is offline and when I do a screenshot for their support they ask me to check my internet connection a day later.

jijis.org.hk screenshot

So, we have decided that after having written to them 3-4 times to them and received a standard reply, we would stop wasting our time with this portal as it is obviously dysfunctional.

We have also setup a website monitoring service on it so that we can see when it is online and when it is not.

We will post up this information later so stay tuned!

Silver Price Manipulation | 2016 Sep | Everyone should take delivery whilst they still can

The US government has been printing money willy nilly since 2008 and have expanded their balance sheet by about 4 fold; they have been getting away with this because they have been able to manipulate inflation data by artificially suppressing the price of commodities that are used to calculate inflation. Gold and Silver prices amongst a myriad of commodities are used to calculate the rate of inflation, so if the US government can suppress the prices of these commodities they can continue to print money without the supposed rate of inflation getting out of hand.

The manipulation has been carried out JP Morgan which uses the printed money to short the silver and gold markets; this has been working for the last few years but the demand for physical silver has surpassed supply that this manipulation will eventually ‘come home to roost’ and we will see a dramatic spike in Gold & Silver prices. For silver, net production a year is about 800 million ounces and net demand is about 915 million ounces for 2015 so there is a shortfall of ~115 million ounces. Every single smart phone, tablet, computer, server, etc contains some silver and gold; and Apple alone sold about 220 million phones in the last 12 months; just consider other smartphones, devices, android phones that all contain silver and gold – the demand is very real and because of this there is not much physical silver knocking about right now.

On 2 September, 2016 when Xetra-Gold service demanded to take delivery on Gold, Deutsche Bank essentially announced that they were unable to satisfy the delivery because they don’t have the stock and as we see more investors taking delivery on physical gold & silver, we will discover that many of these institutions supposedly storing gold & silver for us having been leasing them out and they don’t have any physical stock.

For all those who own paper silver or gold, take delivery NOW before it is too late; none of these banks have any stock. JP Morgan who has bee purportedly hoarding silver has nothing in their vaults, all of it is propaganda to try to give the illusion that there is an abundance of physical stock.

Silver Prices will likely hit US$ 60 / oz by Q1 of 2017.

HSBC – Customer Service going from Bad to Worse

HSBC’s customer service in Hong Kong is going from Bad to Worse.

They call me and ask me to go for an interview because we made some instructions in the change signatories for the account; in the telecon, it was agreed that they would send me an email to confirm the location, the person whom I would meet and an exact time. After the telecon, no email was received.

I then call up their hotline the following week, I managed to speak to a customer representative after navigating through the telephone labyrinth involving the keying in of a specific sequence of numbers; this time I was smarter and asked for the person’s name and extension before talking further so that I cannot trace back to this person should they fail to deliver again.

They ask me two security questions which I could not answer off the top of my head – one was the year in which the bank account was setup. I’m sorry – I have 7 businesses with over 20 bank accounts; this particular company was incorporated in 1966 by my grandfather so how on earth am I supposed to memorise the year in which the bank account was setup.

He then promised to get his supervisor to call me and a week later I still have not heard from them.

I think instead of your “Your local bank” as a slogan a more apt slogan would be “Your worst bank”.

I am posting this up here because there is no way you can complain to HSBC and why is HKMA not doing anything about this?