Time to bring out the spending big guns
- Piecemeal handouts and economic reliefs are in the past. The government must overhaul its conservative fiscal policy and boost social safety nets across the board
Hong Kong is facing a perfect storm, a social-economic-political crisis the likes of which we have never seen. If the old cliché about crisis and opportunity holds, now is a chance for the government to spend big, overhaul its conservative fiscal policy and boost social safety nets across the board.
As Western central bankers and treasury officials liked to say during the global financial crisis, “bring out the bazooka”; “do whatever it takes”. No, they didn’t mean blowing away the protesters, but bringing in full financial resources that could be committed to restore public confidence.
The time for piecemeal handouts and economic reliefs is past. They look like scattershot rather than a planned, concentrated shot at recovery. The government must hammer home with every message that it will do whatever it takes to restore the economy and bring back calm to the streets. That’s elementary, but officials haven’t been doing it. Go figure.
My own pet projects: legislate minimum living space in private rentals and the waiting time for public housing.
At the end of March 2019, fiscal reserves stood at HK$1.17 trillion. That doesn’t include the Exchange Fund of HK$4.16 trillion, as at the end of August, used to support the US dollar peg.
The wealth that the government sits on contributes to the impoverishing of locals. Spend more of it, and there will be fewer poor people. Bring out the bazooka.