Serious take on a light-hearted poke at credit crisis

Many readers mistake me for a serious columnist; actually Lodown IS my serious column. I wrote something funny on the global credit crisis in the op-ed section the other day and, gratifyingly, instantly received an erudite letter from a reader on The Peak denouncing it.

Actually, it wasn't sent to me but to the letters section, but the editorial people won't be running it. However, I thought I should do him justice.

'Mr Lo's piece has to be one of the most glaring lessons of journalistic malpractice to come along in some time,' he writes. 'From his ridiculous association of Christianity to social upheavals and the current mortgage crisis to his assertion that President Bush is responsible for this, his logic borders on the absurd.

'The people who created this debacle, Gore Vidal's spiritual friends, the leaders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are now Senator Barack Obama's most senior advisers - these are the very same people Mr Lo would have 'lead us out of the wilderness'. How one who lives in Hong Kong, one of the freest places economically and otherwise that exists on the planet, can miss this is astounding. Mr Lo, if you so love anti-Christian socialism, you may head north about 40km, you will find it there in droves - just do not drink the milk!'

Actually I never do because I think doing so causes suffering to cows, destroys the Earth and perpetuates the global dairy-industrial complex.