團結

With the tsunami our senior officials have been running like chickens with no head.

One said, "Hong Kong citizens must come together and do not lose our unity in order to tackle the worst financial crisis in our history." (Come together for what ? Jewish people did so in the Nazi concentration camp - it just made them easier to be exterminated.)

The other said, "Hong Kong has a small and open economic system; we are prone to hiccups of financial tyrants overseas." (Translation to modern layman English: It all depends on the others; we could do nothing about it.)

And the third commented, "What's going on is just a prodrome - the worst is yet to come." (Do you mean the Hang Seng Index is going to touch the floor, and we're heading level B18 ?)

But, on a second thought, I shouldn't really be too harsh to them. At least they are honest. What they are trying to tell us are:

1. The stock market will continue to fall,
2. and we can do nothing about it.
3. You guys should stay where you are and meet your fate.

I'm sure if anyone says a similar thing north to the Shenzhen river, he will be at once arrested for spreading rumour - with a possibly malicious intention to disturb the order of our financial system. (By the time the case comes up to the court, of course, they will instead be found guilty for leaking national secret. That's another story.)