Hong Kong A ‘Used To Be’ City
Hong Kong is a ‘used to be’ city. It used to be a great place to live now the mainland cities are great places to live. It used to be the gateway to China now there are many gateways. It used to be the port of China now there are many ports. It used to the financial center of Asia now Shanghai will soon be the main financial center.
China is now the place to be and the Chinese Renminbi Yuan is the currency to put your money in. With the HK$ pegged to the US$ you are in a losing currency. When you put your money in Chinese Yuan on the mainland you get over 4% interest plus the exchange rate which is running about 5% a year. So you can get around 9% while in HK the interest rate is about 1%. Also in HK deposits are only guaranteed to 500,000HK$ and I think that is only cash. I don’t think gold is covered and I don’t know if foreign currencies are covered.
I don’t know what happens in China but you could nearly guarantee the Chinese government is not going to let the banks fail. Also HK is the ‘city of mislead’ so if you come here you will probably get screwed and banks are pretty good at screwing. Right now we have the Lehman Bros minibond screw up. Just before Lehman Bros went belly up the banks here in HK were selling minibonds and lots of people including pensioners lost lots of money.
I think the government set the payout at over 90%, which is pretty good, but they had to do something as some people lost all their savings. If the govn didn’t do something I think a lot of money would have gone over the border into Chinese banks in China and I still think a lot of money will go that way.
For pensioners I
think the Postal Saving Bank is the bank to go to. Even the good old Hang Seng
Bank where you buy the cheap gold is actually the Hang Seng Bank and Insurance
Company and they could try and sell you some high priced insurance you don’t
need. To be safe just stick to the mainland China banks and hopefully you wont
get misled. Also you can buy gold bars there too.
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The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information
purposes only and is not intended as investment or insurance advice. Information and
analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed
to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you
may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with
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Copyright (c)Peter Legrove MMXI