---------- 轉寄的郵件 ----------
寄件者： George Luk
日期： 2015年8月7日 下午9:10
主旨： 給特區的信（１７３）－全世界都盯著中國人的錢包
收件者： "Mr. Li Wei" <drc@drc.gov.cn>, "Mr. C Y Leung" <ceo@ceo.gov.hk>
副本： "hd@1823.gov.hk" <hd@1823.gov.hk>, "Mr. Anthony Cheung" <sthoffice@thb.gov.hk>, "Mr. CHEUNG Wan Ching" <scsoffice@csb.gov.hk>, "Mr. LAU Kong Wah" <sha@hab.gov.hk>, "Ms. TENG Yu Yan" <doe@had.gov.hk>
The writer is an independent mathematical scientist and a former Morgan Stanley trader
日期： 2015年8月7日 下午9:10
主旨： 給特區的信（１７３）－全世界都盯著中國人的錢包
收件者： "Mr. Li Wei" <drc@drc.gov.cn>, "Mr. C Y Leung" <ceo@ceo.gov.hk>
副本： "hd@1823.gov.hk" <hd@1823.gov.hk>, "Mr. Anthony Cheung" <sthoffice@thb.gov.hk>, "Mr. CHEUNG Wan Ching" <scsoffice@csb.gov.hk>, "Mr. LAU Kong Wah" <sha@hab.gov.hk>, "Ms. TENG Yu Yan" <doe@had.gov.hk>
李偉先生／梁振英先生：
1. 以下網上文章及附件，可以隠約看到近兩個月中、
21萬億美元！全世界都盯著中國人的錢包
未來15年，
隨著中國逐步降低投資在國內經濟中的重要地位，其總共約21萬億
2. 彭博新聞社文章稱，這一結果可以與2001年中國加入WTO後積
文章稱，與中國加入WTO以後清除了許多貿易障礙一樣，
3. 港交所行政總裁李小加本月在博客中寫道，中國已經由一個“渴求資
中國為推動人民幣國際化，已經設立了五個離岸人民幣交易中心，
4. 中金公司表示，中國儲蓄率一直很高，但人均收入較低，
5. 此外，中國銀行業也正在走出去。中國第五大行——交通銀行，
6. 本周，中美戰略與經濟對話在華盛頓舉行，
7. 研究機構Peterson Institute for International Economics資深中國問題專家Nicholas Lardy表示，你很難找到第二個如此重要的經濟體，
8. 附件是一些先前的舊資料。
Regards,
George Luk
---------- 轉寄的郵件 ----------
寄件者： <ceo@ceo.gov.hk>
日期： 2015年8月6日 下午6:12
主旨： Re: 給特區的信（１６９）－後QE大時代，多角度思考
收件者： George Luk
George:
7月27日的電郵收悉，謝謝你的意見。
收件者： George Luk
George:
7月27日的電郵收悉，謝謝你的意見。
行政長官私人秘書
(麥佩儀 代行)
(麥佩儀 代行)
附件１＆２：
1.
網上有關操控Libor的小小資料，連結：
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/dc5f49c2-d67b-11e1-ba60-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz3enmW7nZk （From Financial Times）
July 26, 2012 7:30 pm
July 26, 2012 7:30 pm
My thwarted attempt to tell of Libor
shenanigans
By Douglas Keenan
I
was unaware of Libor misreporting. My naivety humoured my colleagues, writes
Douglas Keenan
In 1991, I began trading for Morgan
Stanley, the investment bank, in London. I was trading bonds, derivatives and
related securities. One of those securities was based on the three-month Libor
rate: the interest rate at which banks can borrow money for three months from
each other. Morgan Stanley does not trade on the interbank market so I could
not directly borrow or loan money at Libor rates. What I could do, however, was
trade a futures contract on the three-month Libor rate.
As an example of how a futures contract
works, consider the following. Suppose that we are concerned about three-month
Libor rates increasing in the future; in particular, we are concerned about
what the three-month rate will be in September. If that rate is, say, 1 per
cent, we can agree today to effectively lock it in. If, come September, the
actual three-month rate is 2 per cent, then our contract will ensure we can
still borrow at 1 per cent. Futures contracts on three-month Libor were – and
are – traded on the London International Financial Futures Exchange (Liffe, now
part of NYSE Euronext). There was a standard contract for the month of
September. That contract had its rate settled on the third Wednesday of the
month, at 11am.
In 1991, I had live trading screens that
showed the Libor rates. In September of that year, on the third Wednesday, at
11am, I watched those screens to see where the futures contract should settle.
Shortly afterwards, Liffe announced the contract settlement rate. Its rate was
different from what had been shown on my screens, by a few hundredths of a per
cent.
As a result, I lost money. The amount was
insignificant for me, but I believed that I had been defrauded and I complained
to Liffe. Liffe explained that the settlement rate was not determined by what
rates were actually in the market. Instead, the British Banker’s Association
polled some banks, asking them what the rates were. The highest and lowest
reported rates were discarded and the rest averaged, giving the settlement
rate. Liffe explained that, in doing this, they were adhering to the terms of
the contract.
I talked to some of my more experienced
colleagues about this. They told me banks misreported the Libor rates in a way
that would generally bring them profits. I had been unaware of that, as I was
relatively new to financial trading.
My naivety seemed to be humorous to my
colleagues.
Simply put, then, it seems the misreporting
of Libor rates may have been common practice since at least 1991. Although the
difference between the reported rate and the actual rate might seem small, the
total amount of money involved is material, given that Libor rates affect
contracts worth hundreds of trillions. Also important is what such misreporting
says about the culture.
During 1991, at the London office of Morgan
Stanley, the head of interest rate trading was a person who has been at the
centre of the current scandal: Bob Diamond. I do not recall discussing Libor
misreporting with Mr Diamond but since the misreporting was common knowledge
among traders, I presume he was aware. (That, however, is not a criticism of Mr
Diamond: what could he have done about this?)
There have been two distinct motivations
for banks to misreport Libor rates. One motivation is discussed above: to
directly increase profits. The other motivation arose during the 2008 financial
crisis: to mask liquidity problems.
Libor misreporting has been going on for
decades. Why have investigations only recently begun? It seems highly
implausible that all the investigating agencies could have been unaware for
decades. Indeed, those agencies have a reputation among traders of being like
Potemkin villages. I suspect what has happened is that, after the financial
crises of 2008, the agencies decided they ought to perform more of their stated
duties. That would also explain why the investigations appear to be ignoring
any misreporting in years before 2005: to cover up the illusoriness of their
earlier work.
One of the investigations is being
undertaken by the House of Commons Treasury committee. I telephoned the
committee on July 3 and spoke with a committee specialist. I told the
specialist about the foregoing and said that I was willing to testify under
oath. The specialist seemed extremely interested. They said they were to have a
meeting about the Libor scandal and would call me back afterwards. I did not
hear back, however, so I phoned to ask what was happening. My testimony was not
wanted, the specialist told me, because it “contradicts the narrative”.
The writer is an independent mathematical scientist and a former Morgan Stanley trader
2.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: George Luk
Date: 2009-07-23 14:49 GMT+08:00
Subject: Major Points to bring to the attention of the Lehman's mini bond holders
To: FSO <fso@fso.gov.hk>, Joseph Yam <hkma@hkma.gov.hk>, "Mr. Donald Tsang" <ceo@ceo.gov.hk>
Cc: "Mr. Zhang-yutai" <drc@drc.gov.cn>
Dear all,
From: George Luk
Date: 2009-07-23 14:49 GMT+08:00
Subject: Major Points to bring to the attention of the Lehman's mini bond holders
To: FSO <fso@fso.gov.hk>, Joseph Yam <hkma@hkma.gov.hk>, "Mr. Donald Tsang" <ceo@ceo.gov.hk>
Cc: "Mr. Zhang-yutai" <drc@drc.gov.cn>
Dear all,
Mr. Zhang -- would appreciate very much
your advice on the following to relevant central govt. ministries/commissions.
Just to simplify
things & bring to your attention some of the more important points
of my previous email dated 17/07/2009 titled : Frank Partnoy and others
have pointed out the catastrophic damages from structured financial instruments
many years ago.
Have to show that I'm pretty much appreciate
the pain and damages of the bond-holders. Pls refer to the below-attached links
again.
By David Evans and Caroline Salas,
April 29 (Bloomberg) --
1. Ron Grassi says he thought he had
retired five years ago after a 35-year career as a trial lawyer.
Now Grassi, 68, has set up a war room in
his Tahoe City, California, home to single-handedly take on Standard &
Poor’s, Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings. He’s sued the three credit
rating firms for negligence, fraud and deceit.
Grassi says the
companies’ faulty debt analyses have been at the core of the global
financial meltdown and the firms should be held accountable. Exhibit
One is his own investment. He and his wife, Sally, held $40,000 in Lehman
Brothers Holdings Inc. bonds because all three credit raters gave them at
least an A rating -- meaning they were a safe investment -- right until Sept.
15, the day Lehman filed for bankruptcy.
“They’re supposed to spot time bombs,”
Grassi says. “The bombs exploded before the credit companies acted.”
2. As
the U.S. and other economic powers devise ways to overhaul financial
regulations, they have yet to come up with plans to address one issue at
the heart of the crisis: the role of the rating firms.
That’s
partly because the reach of the three big credit raters extends into virtually
every corner of the financial system. Everyone from banks to the agencies that
regulate them is hooked on ratings.
***Debt grades are
baked into hundreds of rules, laws and private contracts that affect banking,
insurance, mutual funds and pension funds. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission guidelines,
for example, require money market fund managers to rely on ratings in deciding
what to buy with $3.9 trillion of investors’ money.
3.‘Stop Our Reliance’
State regulators depend on credit grades to
monitor the safety of $450 billion of bonds held by U.S. insurance
companies. Even the plans crafted by Federal
Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury
Secretary Timothy Geithner to stimulate the economy
count on rating firms to determine how the money will be spent.
“The key to policy going forward has to be
to stop our reliance on these credit ratings,” says Frank Partnoy, a professor at the San Diego School of Law
and a former derivatives trader who has written four books on modern finance,
including Infectious Greed: How Deceit and Risk Corrupted the Financial Markets
(Times Books, 2003).
4. AIG Downgrade
Just how critical a role ratings firms play in the health
and stability of the financial system became clear in the case of American
International Group Inc., the New York-based insurer that’s now a ward of the
U.S. government.
On Sept. 16, one day after the three credit rating firms downgraded AIG’s
double-A score by two to three grades, private contract provisions that AIG had
with banks around the world based on credit rating changes forced the insurer
to hand over billions of dollars of collateral to its customers. The company
didn’t have the cash.
Trying to avert a global
financial cataclysm, the Federal Reserve rescued AIG with an $85
billion loan -- the first of four U.S. bailouts of the insurer.
Investors, traders and
regulators have been questioning whether credit rating companies serve a good
purpose ever since Enron Corp. imploded in 2001. Until four days before the
Houston-based energy company filed for what was then the largest-ever U.S.
bankruptcy, its debt had investment-grade stamps of approval from S&P,
Moody’s and Fitch.
5. Moody’s was the first credit rating firm
in the U.S. It started grading railroad bonds in 1909. Standard Statistics, a
precursor of S&P, began rating securities seven years later.
After the 1929 stock
market crash, the government decided it wasn’t able to determine the quality of
the assets held by banks on its own, Partnoy says. In 1931, the U.S. Treasury
started using bond ratings to analyze banks’ holdings.
James O’Connor, then
comptroller of the currency, issued a regulation in 1936 restricting banks to
buying only securities that were deemed high quality by at least two credit
raters.
6. “One of the major responses was to try to find a way -- just as we
are now with the stress tests and the examination of the banks -- to figure out
how to get the bad assets off the banks’ books,” Partnoy says.
Since then, regulators have
increasingly leaned on ratings to police debt investing. In 1991, the SEC ruled
that money market mutual fund managers must put 95 percent of their investments
into highly rated commercial paper.
7. Rating firms Avoiding Liability
Like auditors, lawyers and investment bankers, rating firms serve as
gatekeepers to the financial markets. They provide assurances to bond
investors. Unlike the others, ratings companies have generally avoided
liability for errors.
Grassi, the retired California lawyer,
wants to change that. He filed his lawsuit against the rating companies on Jan.
26 in state superior court in Placer County.
The white-haired lawyer discusses his case
seated at a tiny wooden desk in his small guest bedroom, with files spread over
both levels of a bunk bed. Grassi says in his complaint that the raters were
negligent for failing to downgrade Lehman Brothers debt as the bank’s finances
were deteriorating.
8. The day Lehman filed
for bankruptcy, S&P rated the investment bank’s debt as A, which according
to S&P’s definition means a “strong” capacity to meet financial
commitments. Moody’s rated Lehman A2 that day, which Moody’s defines as a “low
credit risk.” Fitch gave Lehman a grade of A+, which it describes as “high
credit quality.”
9. .‘Without Merit’
“We’d like to have a jury hear this,” Grassi
says. “This wouldn’t be six economists, just six normal people. That would
scare the rating agencies to death.”
The rating companies haven’t yet filed
responses. They’ve asked the federal court in Sacramento to take jurisdiction
from the state court.
S&P and Fitch say they dispute Grassi’s
allegations. “We believe the complaint is without merit and intend to defend
against it vigorously,” S&P’s Atkins says.
Fitch’s Weinfurter says, “The lawsuit is
fully without merit and we will vigorously defend it.”
Mirenda at Moody’s declined to comment.
10. S&P included a standard disclaimer
with Lehman’s ratings: “Any user of the information contained herein should not
rely on any credit rating or other opinion contained herein in making any
investment decision.”
11.‘Like
a Cancer’
The federal government created the rating
cartel, and the U.S. is as dependent on it as everyone else. So far, the
legislative branch hasn’t cleaned up the ratings mess.
“This problem really is like a cancer that has spread
throughout the entire investment system,” Partnoy says. “You’ve got a body
filled with little tumors, and you’ve got to go through and find them and cut
them out.”
12. As the U.S. has
spent, lent or pledged about $12.8 trillion in efforts to revive the slumping
economy, and as President Barack Obama and Congress have worked overtime to
find a way out of the deepest recession in 70 years, no one has taken steps
that would substantially fix a broken ratings system.
If the government doesn’t head in
that direction, all of its efforts at financial reform may be put in jeopardy
by the one piece of this puzzle that nobody has yet figured out how
to solve.
13. Moody's Sued by
Shareholders Claiming False Ratings (Update2)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aNDSPwtlQqUk
By Joel Rosenblatt
By Joel Rosenblatt
Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Moody's Corp. directors
and officers were sued by shareholders and accused of deliberately overrating
asset-backed securities at the world's second-largest credit- rating company.
The Louisiana Municipal
Police Employees Retirement System filed the so-called derivative suit today
in New York on behalf of the company, naming Moody's as a nominal defendant. The pension system claimed that, as a result of
misconduct, ``trillions of dollars of
highly risky securities were sold to investors that should never have seen the
light of day.''
14. Credit-Rating
Companies `Sold Soul,' Employees Said
Oct. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Employees at Moody's
Investors Service told executives that issuing dubious creditworthy ratings to
mortgage-backed securities made it appear they were incompetent or ``sold our
soul to the devil for revenue,'' according to e-mails obtained by U.S. House
investigators.
The e-mail was one of several documents made
public today at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee in Washington, which is reviewing the role played by Moody's,
Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings in the global credit freeze.
Best regards,
George Luk
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