SO YOU THOUGHT finance and religion were quite different from each other, did you? Let me tell you that in our very own city we have a modern pantheon of self-appointed gods pronouncing on the affairs of us mortals from its Olympian heights above Central.
Zeus, with his thunderbolt in hand, is an outfit that goes by the name of Standard & Poor's (S&P) but his position is not entirely unchallenged. Occasionally, one of the other gods by the name of Moody's Investors Service has a go at how our affairs should be ordered.
This week, Zeus decided to launch one of his thunderbolts at us. Hong Kong had better watch it because it faces a downgrade in its credit rating unless the Government raises taxes to plug its budget deficit.
Cringe and cower, ye mortals. Beyond these Olympian heights in Hong Kong towers the true Olympus in New York, where Zeus and his occasional rival are really based, and from that lofty perch the view of the world is all-knowing, all-seeing.
Allow me to play the role of atheist here. We tend to take these observances from ratings agencies as God-given truth because they come with an aura of intensive mathematical application of the rules of science to the science of investment.
The difficulty here is that investment is actually more of an art than a science. What you get when you set up a rigorous system of investment analysis is a staff of analysts who park their brains under their desks when they open computer spreadsheets on top of those desks.
It is all set out for them. Why apply thought? Just apply data and the computer will do the thinking.