Lost your job? Maybe that’s a good thing

With unemployment in what’s left of the world’s leading economy rising to its highest level in 25 years today, a lot of people are going to suffer as the tidal wave aftermath of Wall Street’s latest greed bubble washes over the rest of the world.

But losing your job isn’t bad news for everyone.

Take the case of my friend and fellow Canadian Douglas in London. We met in Hong Kong in late 1995 when he was being hired for a new weekly show at the station where I was working. Because they the management twits picked Douglas instead of me to host the new programme, I first saw him as a rival, but after a couple of days on the desk with him I soon got over myself, and we’ve been tight ever since.

Douglas has had a real Hong Kong career. He first worked in radio, then TV, then switched for the big bucks of public relations ’til he – quite understandably – couldn’t stand the stench of all the bullshit any longer, then went back to TV.

About two years ago, he got a job producing for a world-famous provider of television business news in London. I remember how excited he sounded on the phone from Hong Kong about landing the position, how he was finally getting out of this “small town” and hitting the big leagues to work on what’s happening in the heart of old world finance.

But like all expats who’ve already paid the price once for leaving home and establishing another one overseas, in moving to London he had to pay all over again, because in the meantime he’d built up such a good life over a dozen years in Hong Kong.

Douglas had good friends, a loving, long-term partner, a comfortable home, even a rag-top car in a city where driving is a luxury often associated with the very wealthy. And let’s face it: as a successful, white, middle-aged gay man in Hong Kong he was still a hot commodity. In London he’s as common as the man on the platform waiting for the 8:15.

So when Douglas told me yesterday that a show he’d been working on had been cancelled and he’d taken the buy-out they were offering him and his colleagues, I said to him: Fantastic!

Getting bought out is the best news he’s had to deal with in ages. Wu Hu! He can now take the cash, travel a bit, visit family back in Canada for a while before taking up a standing offer to return to the station where we met way back in the mid-nineties.

It’ll be the third time in a decade he’s gone back to them, but that’s OK. It not only demonstrates how highly they value his skills, it shows all of us how important it is never to burn your bridges and to remember who your friends are.

And instead of moaning about another dreary London morning, he’ll once again be able to enjoy breakfast on the terrace in the middle of February amid lush greenery, warm breezes and maybe even the sight of a passing cockatoo before heading out into the sunshine.

Nice life if you can live it.

Don’t panic! A Hong Kong financial tale of greed and fear

Got talking about matters economic and financial this morning on the phone with the brother who speaks my language.  Like millions of others are doing right now, brother Gordon was bemoaning the sudden plunge in the value of his RRSP.   That’s Canadian for 401(k).

He was saying that it looks like he’s shovelling money into a black hole, because every time he checks his balance it has dropped by much more than what he puts in it every month.

“I’m thinking about cashing all the stocks in and simply buying a guaranteed income certificate,” he said.  “That way, at least I’ll stop the bleeding and have  something left when I retire.”

I didn’t have to tell him anything he didn’t know already: that retirement money is for retirement and not for day-trading, that he should just ride it out, and that if the worst happens, we’re all screwed anyway.

Then I told him a little story from my time in Hong Kong.

It was mid-January, 1995.  The Asian financial crisis was still about three years away, but as far as anyone could tell right then, the worst was already happening.  The Hang Seng Index, the leading indicator of shares in Hong Kong, had been falling for months.  A property bubble had burst about a year before, so people who’d bought apartments during the boom years were now being forced to either walk away from deals or face paying out mortgages costing much more than the current value of the flat.  Everyone had stopped buying, apartment prices were crashing, and there was no end to it in sight.

Sound familiar?

Then on January 17, 1995  the Great Hanshin Earthquake struck Kobe, Japan.   As the leading market in the region, Tokyo plunged about 1,000 points.  Other markets including Hong Kong spiraled down with it,  the notorious Nick Leeson‘s desperate and ultimately futile attempts in Singapore to prop the Nikkei up in the following weeks led to the collapse of Barings Bank… but that’s another book, movie and talk-show tale.

I remember thinking as I was watching the numbers wither while cutting those famous pictures of the elevated roadway that fell onto its side that any market reaction to this has got to be overdone.  That feeling was reinforced after a Chinese colleague came back to the studios with a quote in English from a stock analyst who’d said: I think the market is headed for the worst period in its history, and I wouldn’t advise anyone to buy stocks right now.”

So the next day I went down to the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation building in downtown Hong Kong, that breathtaking Norman Foster construction some say looks like the back of a fridge, and headed for the basement where the share trading counters were.  I’d opened a stock account a while before, but had done little trading up to then.

When I got to the counter, an old Chinese lady was at the counter next to me shuffling some papers.  Stealing a glance over her shoulder, I could see they were paper stock certificates in the bank we were standing in: HSBC.   Oh my God, I thought.  Here’s this withered old lady who probably keeps her cash in a shoe box thinking the roof is going to cave in, so she’s selling her stocks in a panic, and I’m down here to buy them.

It wasn’t that long until payday, so I cleaned out my savings account and stuck it all in the bank stock.  I hadn’t been able to save a fortune by then, but I thought what the hell.  Things can’t get much worse than this.

As it turned out, that day was very close to an historical low point for the Hang Seng Index and its leading stock, HSBC.

Ha-hah, I’m such an investment genius, right?  Wrong!

When the market bounced back about 30% only a few month later, I sold the lot, thereby taking in a decent profit but losing out on what has since then turned out to be gains probably 10 times as great.

Moral of the story: you can’t predict the future, but you can make the present one hell of a lot more enjoyable if you quit worrying about it, let go of the greed and fear,  and just go with the flow.  At the end of the day, we’re all dead anyway.

Speaking of withered old ladies in Hong Kong, here’s one with the little red-haired girl, taken on the dock at Lamma Island only days before we left.