Scare the claws off profiteering oil vultures
If every person in China chipped in US$30, how much would you get? About US$40 billion. That's the jaw-dropping amount ExxonMobil made in net profits last year. To be exact, the oil giant made US$40.6 billion, or nearly HK$315 billion, the highest profit ever by a public company in the United States. The other oil companies didn't do too badly either. Shell made a record US$31.3 billion, Chevron US$18.7 billion, and BP US$20.8 billion. OK, enough figures. They're too mind-boggling to comprehend anyway. But here's something you do need to understand: the oil industry greed lords are drunk with your dollars. They like the high. That's why they are refusing to pull their hands out of your pocket. When world crude oil prices jumped, they quickly charged you more for fuel. Crude prices have now plunged but they are still charging you more for fuel. Legislators have demanded an end to this profiteering.
Our midget of a government has implored the oil giants to be reasonable. But they've told everyone to get lost. Secretary for the Environment Edward Yau Tang-wah virtually admitted there was profiteering going on but said he wouldn't interfere with the free market. That's bureaucrat-speak for chickening out. He promised to do more imploring instead. But here's the thing, Mr Yau: they're laughing in your face. Talking nice does not work with vultures. You need to scare the claws off them. Start by stealing a page from US president-elect Barack Obama's campaign book. He called ExxonMobil the model for corporate greed. He will reciprocate greed with higher taxes. That is what our government needs to do. Forget about the imploring nonsense. Expose their greed. Say out loud they are profiteering. And if that still doesn't shame them, raise their taxes. If Mr Obama can threaten to do it, why can't Hong Kong? You'll be killing two vultures with one stone: fighting greed and still not interfering with the free market.
Our tax dollars are funding Link's greed
The oil giants are not the only greed gods our bureaucrats are bowing to. They are also begging an outfit called The Link Reit not to suck the life out of the people. But like the oil giants, The Link Reit has told our bureaucrats to get lost. It owns shopping malls, sold to it by the government, in public housing estates for low-income families. Since buying up the malls, its management arm The Link Management, which runs the shopping centres, has relentlessly raised the rents of shopkeepers. One chicken-stall owner saw his rent jump from HK$5,000 a month to HK$23,000. The government, which had ignored advice not to sell the malls, is now begging The Link to be more compassionate during these tough economic times. But The Link prefers to laugh all the way to the bank.
So here's the deal: rents go up, shopkeepers are in turn forced to raise prices, their low-income customers in the housing estates can't afford to pay more for their basic needs especially now that many are being laid off, they seek government handouts, and so do the shopkeepers whose businesses fail. These handouts come from your tax dollars.