If there is one characteristic that is common to politicians and government officials the world over, it is their inability - except in the most desperate circumstances - to admit having made a mistake.
The most prominent example is US President Bill Clinton, who arrogantly refused to apologise for his affair with Monica Lewinsky, until the threat of impeachment forced him to begin doing so with almost embarrassing frequency.
Senior officials in Hong Kong are far from immune from the same trait with one example having already arisen this week, when Hong Kong Monetary Authority chief executive Joseph Yam Chi-kwong sparked a brief run on the Hong Kong dollar with a single, unwise remark.
Mr Yam made the mistake of telling a Chinese-language newspaper he would 'shortly' and 'suddenly' reduce the rate at which the authority undertakes to buy US dollars from local banks to $7.75 from $7.80. This may seem a marginal adjustment. But it still amounts to 500 basis points: enough to generate large profits on the huge sums traded in the money markets.
Despite a year spent battling speculators, Mr Yam inexplicably failed to recognise that by saying, in effect, he was about to devalue the Hong Kong dollar by this small amount, he was handing them a golden opportunity to make a one-way bet against the local currency.
Instead he denied there was any danger, arrogantly daring his critics to try to make a profit out of this adjustment.
'See whether you have the skills to earn this 500-basis-point spread,' he told the Hong Kong Economic Journal. Mr Yam must now be bitterly regretting laying down a challenge that the market proved more than capable of meeting during Monday's selling spree.