As events relentlessly remind us, we live in unpredictable times.
The new movie A Complete Unknown about American legend Bob Dylan (who in 2016 at the age of 76 became the only songwriter to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature) brought back youthful memories of his famous songs like Blowin’ in the Wind and The Times They Are a-Changin’, with the lyrics: “The battle outside ragin’/Will soon shake your windows/And rattle your windows/For the times they are a-changin.”
Even Hong Kong, with its famed ability to bounce back from economic hard times, has struggled to regain its crown.
Our property market, which had dominated the prosperity of citizens, businesses and the administration for 50 years, continues to languish in the windless doldrums.
It’s not gratifying when home buyers walk away from deposits but 449 hopeful buyers did so last year, a 75 percent increase.
The defaults were not large (usually about HK$100,000 each) but the fact they happened at all indicates falling prices and heralds a lack of confidence.
Confidence – that magical yet elusive ingredient! Without it, the property market can, I fear, only weaken and leave us to pray a downward spiral doesn’t take hold.
Developers and agents talk about perilous “structural changes” that shake the market’s foundations and depress values.
Office rentals slowly slide downhill, leaving people to ask “when will it end, when will things bounce back?”
Even governments are struggling, not just here but almost everywhere.
The US government’s debts have grown stratospherically as have those of many other nations.
Even Hong Kong’s once replete coffers of cash reserves have dwindled in recent years. Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po doggedly fights back as robustly as he can, doing his sterling best as he pulls out all the stops of the economic organ that he is the master of.
Projects have been put on hold, further cost cutting is on its way, bonds have been issued, and multiple overseas promotions of Hong Kong are afoot. But the crucial big cash cow of Hong Kong’s golden days, land sales and property, refuses to budge meaningfully.
As for the revenue “earned” from bond sales, as shareholder activist David Webb nimbly pointed out, such revenue is in reality merely a loan that must be repaid with interest. I don’t envy Chan’s herculean task. He’s a brave man and we should all wish him well.
Nor can we take comfort in how so many other countries are grappling with economies that are also ailing.
Voters in Argentina, Italy, France, Austria, the Netherlands, United States, perhaps Canada and elsewhere are electing right-wing populists in the hopeful belief that their policies will reverse the drift toward poverty. The biggest populist of all, Donald Trump, has now regained the American presidency despite all his many faults.
His shock-and-awe philosophy seems to value money over morality. He may be slightly bonkers but as a New Yorker has said : “When you hire a plumber, you don’t care if he’s an adulterer. You just want him to fix the toilet.”
I suppose America is a special case.
Instead of the totally predictable Joe Biden, it now has the very unpredictable Trump. His return is certainly blunt proof of rude democracy in action. Anyone, even a lone ranger like Trump, who is at heart a businessman, can become America’s president. The preamble to the constitution states “We the people” and the people have spoken. But don’t worry, because the Constitution is there to restrain him.
As for the mainland, everyone awaits that long expected bounce back. Yet Hong Kong, it is agreed, cannot bounce back unless the mainland does so first.
A break in the economic clouds and a slim hint of sunlight is that the big three US banks, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, now all agree that recent economic measures taken by Beijing do amount to fundamental change.
Investment in domestic consumption is being prioritized. Yet I fear mainland consumers, just like their brethren here, will spend cautiously and it will be many years, if ever, before they spend-spend-spend with the carefree abandon of Americans.
Confidence, of course, is what we so badly need. Without confidence nobody wants to spend or invest. Restoring confidence is always a slow and tortuous experience. I fear our nervousness in a changing world is here to stay for some years yet.
Trump has told the world that America is back and intends to be once again disruptive, restless and all-powerful within its own hemisphere. Yes, the times are a-changin’ but not for the better as was the case in Dylan’s 1960s America.
Which leaves a final thought: I don’t like snakes but a belated Happy Lunar New Year to you all!
Cheng Huan is an author and a senior counsel who practices in Hong Kong
