|
Hedging his bets
Carlos Cordeiro, vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs (Asia), tops a long list of
Hong Kong residents who've made large US political donations over the past two
years. Federal Election Commission records show many John Kerry and George W
Bush supporters, the odd Ralph Nader backer and patrons of Democratic hopefuls
like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. But the biggest recipient appears to be
the political action committee of the Skadden Arps law firm. Cordeiro tops the
list of largest single gifts for his US$25,000 (HK$195,000) donation to the
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee last summer. But he isn't much of a
partisan. He gave US$20,000 to the committee's Republican counterpart in 2001
and has donated to presidential candidates from both parties in the same race.
Asia's flying zoo
Planned Macau startup airline Wow Macau is Wow no more. The Wow Web site
now automatically redirects visitors to the Web site for Macau Eagle Aviation
Services, the airline's parent company. In a bit of historical revisionism, the
site last week included an altered version of Wow Macau's launch announcement
of last spring, with the Macau Eagle name taking the place of every Wow
reference. Director of Customer Experience Joseph Lo, who until recently wrote
about such things for another English-language newspaper in Hong Kong, demurred
on an official explanation. ``Macau Eagle'' would place the carrier in the same
aerial zoo as fellow Macau startup Golden Dragon and mainland startup United
Eagle, and such Asian creatures as Dragonair, Tiger Airways, Lion Air, Nok Air
and Kingfisher Airlines.
Rivers of milk
The Chinese Communist Party propaganda machine once taught that
overproduction was a capitalist evil, citing as an example the milk poured into
the Hudson River during the Great Depression of the 1930s in the US as tens of
thousands of starving people stood in soup lines. Fast forward to China today.
The mainland's fast-expanding dairy industry has overproduced, and wholesalers
are up to here in milk. In the northwestern province of Shaanxi, dairy farmers
can't sell their milk and they don't have the equipment to store it or turn it
into nonperishable foodstuffs. Their choice is to drink it themselves, feed it
to the pigs - and pour the rest into the rivers, which they have been doing.
|
|
Copyright 2005, The Standard, Sing Tao Newspaper
Group and Global China Group. All rights reserved. No content may be
redistributed or republished, either electronically or in print, without
express written consent of The Standard.
|
