Cowperthwaite was brilliant, well-trained in economics, suffered no fools, and was highly principled. He wouldn't last five minutes in a similar post in Britan, since he was no predisposed to compromise any of his principles - only the constitutional structre of Hong Kong allowed him that power.
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Value for Money, the Hong Kong Budgetary Process by Alvin Rabushka (1976), page 57.John James Cowperthwaite
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The life expectancy in Hong Kong is among the highest in the world ... you can come to only one conclusion: we have the most environmentally friendly place for people, for executives, for Hong Kong people to live
Donald Tsang
I was 25 years old and pursuing my doctorate in economics when I was allowed to spend six months of post-graduate studies in Naples, Italy. I read the Western economic textbooks and also the more general work of people like Hayek. By the time I returned to Czechoslovakia, I had an understanding of the principles of the market. In 1968, I was glad at the political liberalism of the Dubcek Prague Spring, but was very critical of the Third Way they pursued in economics.
Friedrich Hayek
I will not be proposing a course which has been under some public discussion recently — deficit financing. It is wholly inappropriate to our economic situation. In its least extreme form it is based on the theory that additional money generated by a Government deficit (and given currency, as necessary, by use of the printing press) will stimulate consumption and thereby production, in time to match the excess money with goods before real inflationary harm is done. Unfortunately we don't, and can't, produce more than a small fraction of what we consume, and increased consumption would merely mean increased imports without matching exports; and a severe balance of payment crisis, which would destroy Hong Kong's credit and confidence in the Hong Kong dollar; and which we could not cure without coming close to ruining ourselves. Keynes was not writing with our situation in mind. In this hard world we have to earn before we spend.
John James Cowperthwaite
In Hong Kong
They strike a gong
And fire off a noonday gun
To reprimand
Each inmate
Who's in late.Noel Coward
It's the story of a very unfortunate colored man
Who got arrested down in Old Hong Kong
He got twenty years' privilege taken away from him
When he kicked old Buddha's gong.Hoagy Carmichael
Cowperthwaite, John James
Cox, Alan
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