We think ING Financial Markets has got it backwards. In its new report, on 'Beating Deflation in 2003', ING takes a banker's perspective. The bank says it believes Hong Kong is the worst market in Asia in terms of credit quality - the desire and ability of credit-card holders to pay their debts. But look at it from the financially stretched consumer's perspective and Hong Kong appears the best place to be a defaulting credit-card holder! For a start, it seems very easy to sign up for a new card in Hong Kong without telling the bank concerned about any existing credit-card debt. Overall, there are more cards than people and many individuals run up big debts on several cards. Then there are the bankruptcy laws, which impose a relatively light burden on the bankrupt. As a result, while credit-card defaults are rising around Asia, they are particularly strong in the SAR. We had a robust 17,427 bankruptcies in the first nine months of the year, up from an already healthy 9,151 cases last year. Alarmingly, there was a sharp fall in the number of people filing for bankruptcy in September, a possible signal of a levelling off. But what is good for financially challenged customers is bad for the banks: they wrote off 47 per cent more bad credit-card debts in the second quarter, a whopping HK$2.06 billion. See? It just depends on your point of view! A matter of degree: Unit trust marketers have wasted no time in exploiting Hong Kong's almost-zero bank savings rates. We received an e-mail from an international mutual fund outfit - we won't name the company because of local licensing concerns, but spot the clever return comparison: The message begins: 'Following the Fed's 50 basis point cut last Wednesday, local banks have cut interest rates even further. For example, bank savings at HSBC will return just one hundredth of a per cent in interest. This means that a customer with HK$100,000 in a saving account will earn just HK$10 over a full year.' The unit trust marketer then presents one of its more conservative funds, which it estimates could return, say, 8 per cent over the next five years. 'If your client invests HK$100,000 in our XXX Fund today they will, according to the calculations in the attached quotation, outperform the HSBC deposit return by about 800 per cent!' Mmm, well let's see: even a one per cent return is 100 times greater (10,000 per cent bigger) than one hundredth of a per cent. We think the marketer means the product will outperform the savings rate by about 800 times! That looks even better. Let's see, it's an 80,000 per cent improvement! If the deposit rates hit zero, then the fun could really start. A fund offering a single per cent return could claim to be infinitely greater than the bank rate! In happier times: Tycoons Sir Gordon Wu Ying-sheung and Li Ka-shing have aired their differences over plans for a privately funded bridge to the Western Pearl River Delta, but a reader has found a 15-year-old picture that tells quite a different story. It's a shot of Sir Gordon and Mr Li from the South China Morning Post of November 27, 1987. The reader who showed us said: 'They are grinning like a couple of conspirators as they discuss some joint land project. A bit different from their present feud.' Booked ahead: The Lai See copy of our chain-book, The Shipping News, by E. Annie Proulx was delivered last night to Adrien Ellul, general manager of Pizza Express. We already know its next reader: marketing man and part time mariner Malcolm Brocklebank. Malcolm, who knows a great offer when he reads about one, writes: 'As I live on my boat, Trilogy, in Causeway Bay Typhoon shelter, you had best send it to my office. As if you sent it to the Yacht Club it might disappear before I get to it.' Graphic: whee13gbz