As reported in the Telegraph,
HSBC accused of persecuting dissident Hong Kongers who flee territory
The bank allegedly prohibited residents of the city state from making pension withdrawals
Before it decided it would be trendier to be known only by its initials, HSBC was the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, reflecting its historical origins. Despite its name and its subservience to a foreign government, it is a British bank. (British banks are meant to be subservient to the British government, dammit.)
HSBC has been accused by UK and US politicians of persecuting dissident Hong Kongers who leave the country over pension rights.
Alicia Kearns, a Conservative MP and chairman of the foreign affairs committee, and Mike Gallagher, the US Republican representative, wrote to bosses at the FTSE 100 lender expressing “deep concern” about HSBC prohibiting some Hong Kong residents from making pension withdrawals.
In the letter to chief executive Noel Quinn, which was first reported by the Financial Times, Ms Kearns and Mr Gallagher wrote: “We are concerned that HSBC – in support of the Hong Kong National Security Law – is withholding pension funds from BNO [British National Overseas] passport holders and thus contributing to the oppression of people in Hong Kong.”
The rebuke comes as HSBC faces growing scrutiny of its activities in China and Hong Kong, where it has been accused by British MPs of complicity in human rights abuses.
HSBC supported a Beijing-backed law introduced in 2020 that banned anti-government activity in the former British colony. At the time, the bank said it “respects and supports all laws that stabilise Hong Kong’s social order”.
Since the law was introduced, HSBC has frozen the bank accounts of a raft of activists, including pro-democracy politician Ted Hui, on orders from Hong Kong police.
As Patrick Crozier posted about yesterday, several UK banks and building societies have looked upon what their HSBC colleagues did in Hong Kong and found it worthy of imitation in their home country. And not just to famous people like Farage: the Daily Mail reports that when the Yorkshire Building Society sent an Anglican vicar an email asking for feedback and he responded criticising the presence of material on their website that talked about LGBT and gender issues, the YBS closed his account. The fact that the Rev. Richard Fothergill did not initiate the correspondence but merely gave his opinion having been asked for it is somehow particularly galling.
Tim Worstall sarcastically commented on the Hong Kong story:
Of course, such a thing would never happen here.
And in a way it never would. It would be insinuation, something that is never directly said, therefore not obvious nor arguable against.
Mr Worstall is undoubtedly right about the insidiousness of the banks’ strategy, but I have some hope that he will be proved wrong about it staying undetected. The Yorkshire Building Society sounds thoroughly defensive in this tweet, which has been viewed three quarters of a million times:
https://twitter.com/Yorkshire_BS/status/1674832536550227977
I think there’s an opening for someone here: if only there were a billionaire out there who (allegedly) prizes free speech, someone with the wherewithal to start a bank. And someone who is used to working the government ropes. I wonder if there is such a person? There just musk be!
We can’t afford to be putting all of our eggs in one messianic basket. Much better – much more sustainable – to actually win some elections and then legislatively make life less fun for HSBC and their ilk.
There is probably a huge customer base awaiting the first bank to break ranks and publicly commit to being a bank rather than the thought police.
I’m sure HSBC is contemptible, and they certainly managed to annoy me enough to switch my own account, but there is, Shirley, a bit of a difference between closing someone’s account out of your own malign prejudices, and doing the same under compulsion of local law.
The Rev. Richard Fothergill did not initiate the correspondence.
Rather than seeing the state copy the best ideas of the private sector, we are seeing the (faux) private sector copying the worst ideas of the state.
At the present time, our political system is crying out for a party that offers an alternative to the ones that are on offer at present. It would be rather convenient for the existing parties if no new party could ever get off the ground due to being unable to use banking or indeed any other services that the existing parties can keep from them. Getting a new political party started is difficult enough as it is. But just to be sure, best put some insurmountable obstacles in their way as well. It all seems to be very sinister.
Yes partly this is bad people in the banks and other corporations – people who have been taught, at school and university, that individual liberty either does not matter – or is evil “reactionary”.
But it is also the basic economic structure itself – no one in these banks and vast corporations actually owns the enterprise, they are bureaucrats with most shares being owned by institutions (in Britain that has been true since 1965 – due to tax law and other factors, but it has got a lot worse since then), and each corporate bureaucrat knows that if he-or-she is not a swine – they will forced out by other corporate bureaucrats who are. “You today, me tomorrow” – the unofficial motto of the camps in the Soviet Union. That is the totalitarian reality – and it is light years away from the Milton Friedman idea of the apolitical corporation (some sort of artificial person) which has no political or cultural agenda – and just exists to make money for “Aunt Agatha” type individual shareholders.
In the real world “Aunt Agatha” does not matter – and BlackRock (and other entities) matter a great deal. And what BlackRock and other such entities (in Britain as well as a America – indeed everywhere in the West) care about is their political and cultural agenda. The board of Mastercard (one of the two main payment processors – and the other one, Visa, is getting just about as bad) work hard on pushing Herbert Marcuse style “Diversity” – even if it means destroying nations, indeed especially if it means destroying nations. “But if society collapses – they will lose their comfortable lives” – they either do not know that, or they do not care. Or they feel that if they did not push the agenda – they would be pushed out (and destroyed) by other people who would.
In Hollywood the official rule is that if a film does not follow the rules of Marxist Herbert Marcuse (on race, sex, sexuality…) then it will not be considered at the Oscars (in short Frankfurt School Marxism is now the official “industry standard”). And banks have to consider their “ESG” (Environmental and Social Governance – yes that it is NON Marxist, but still Collectivist Totalitarian) – or they will not be able to function as part of the Credit Money backed banking cartel.
It is not a matter of a few bad apples at a few banks and other corporations – it is a structural problem in the modern Western world – caused not just by bad ideas dominating the education system, but also by tax law and the endless flow of Credit Money (yes the Richard Cantillon point about how this concentrates economic and political power).
And the People’s Republic of China Communist Party Dictatorship gloats at the death agony of the West.
Not mindful that it, the PRC, has problems (“fundamental contradictions”) of its own.
As for those libertarians and conservatives who think “Mr Putin will save us” – you are quite wrong, indeed Mr Putin gets on very well with the Communist Party Dictatorship of the People’s Republic of China.
No one is coming to save us – we must, somehow, save ourselves.
The Bank of England is a public body in the UK, nationalised in 1948. It is therefore bound to operate in a manner compatible with the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights.
Doubtless the Governor of the Bank will take advice on how best to achieve that goal, and on that advice, presuming it being that he would breach the principles of Human Rights if he were to allow the Bank to support in any way HSBC and be complicit after the fact in any such breaches of human rights, he would inform the Chancellor of the Exchequer that he has no option but to withdraw all support from that bank lest he indirectly aid violations of human rights (freedom of expression, association and to protest) and let the Chancellor announce that in the House of Commons to the assembly of pigs that had just landed in the chamber.
And the Financial Conduct Authority would deem any individual involved not a fit and proper person to work in the financial sector and would ban them from working for any financial institution by their lawful edict.
Ed, funniest thing I’m going to read all year.
Mr Ed – an interesting idea.
Although I am sure that the People’s Republic of China would state that it is very much in support of these human rights.
And the European Convention and the Human Rights Act are drafted in such a way as to make it easy for collectivist judges to argue that tyranny is freedom and freedom is tyranny.
The United States Constitution is not quite so vague – which is why Senator Kennedy (Louisiana) is able to ask nominees for the position of judges on various Federal Courts simple questions about the United States Constitution, thus showing that the Biden nominees have never read the Constitution of the United States. After all it is an evil “reactionary” document – so it would “harm” them (as “women of color” – or whatever) to read it.
Progressives would suffer no such “harm” reading the European Convention on Human Rights.
Although the ECHR is not as absurd as the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights.
Including to this document (drafted by cretins, and worse, some of them British) there are no rights that are a real limitation on government power (there are sections of the document that SEEM to be – till one reads closer, and finds little killer terms such as “subject to law”) – but there is a right to “Paid Holidays”.
I believe that “right” came not from the Soviet representatives – but from Jacques Maritain, friend of Saul Alinsky and adviser to Pope Paul VI.
Senator Kennedy (Louisiana) also asks the Biden nominees simple questions about basic Common Law and legal procedure – and the nominees often get the answers wrong. For example, one nominee (for a position as a judge on a Federal Court) did not know that the Prosecution is supposed to share all evidence with the Defence – that the Prosecution is not allowed to keep secret evidence that would benefit the defendant.
I know that, in practice, the Federal “Justice” system is a sick farce – but it is not supposed to be a sick farce, and a judge should are least know the rules that he or she is violating.
Almost needless to say…. these mindless nominees are normally confirmed by the Senate anyway.
Frank H: Yup.
@bobby for whom should they vote? Remember Britain currently has an, allegedly, conservative government fully in charge of the government with nothing like the constitution to get in their way. And it is under this tenure that such a thing happens. And TBH, I’m not sure MORE regulation is ever the answer.
@frankh starting a bank is not at all easy, and requires quite a bit of bowing to the government bureaucrats, so I’m not sure how practical that is. However, what is practical is for people like Farage and this Vicar to loudly proclaim who has done this to them, publish all correspondence, and as they continue to apply for new accounts make sure everybody knows who turns them down and why.
They need to be budweisered. Again I don’t drink Budweiser out of some sense of boycott. I just personally don’t want to do business with people who are so insulting of my values. Never will. And there is literally nothing they can do to ever get me back.
A bit of that in the banking industry, which is, despite all the levels of regulation, very competitive, and minds will start to change at the top.
Maybe the crazy left will boycott them, but that is why it is better for them to simply say nothing. Which is what they should be doing in the first place. YBS could very easily have ignored the Vicar’s letter — hell the bank usually ignore anything I have to say.
Fraser Orr.
Such government ministers as Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch say publicly the sort of thing I say here – they know we are up against Frankfurt School “Critical Theory” Marxism and say so.
Your mistake is to assume that elected people are “in charge of the government”- that is quite wrong, as they are not in charge of the govenrment.
An elected minister (or an elected local councillor – if, if, they are on the Executive) may have some influence – but to say that they are “in charge of” the government is quite wrong.
The bureaucracy (including independent agencies) has vast power – ministers are clearly not “in charge of” it. Indeed even speaking to such officials in a way that implies that an elected politician is in charge will get you a charge of “bullying” and you will be forced to resign.
Ask the former Deputy Prime Minister – Dominic Raab.
As for going against establishment economic policy – as former Prime Minister Liz Truss what happens to people to people who go against the government and corporate (including banking) bureaucracy.
“the banking industry which is, in spite of all the layers of bureaucracy, very competitive”.
That is like saying the Kray twins and the Richardson gang were “very competitive”. “If you do not like Ronnie and Reggie – then go to nice Mr Richardson or Mad Frankie Fraser”.
The banks are engaged in a con game – they are Credit Bubble blowers (not, in the main, dealing with Real Savings – the actual sacrifice of consumption) – they depend on the drip feed of funny money from the Bank of England and other Central Banks.
So do the other vast corporations.
That is one of the reasons they go along with the ESG – Environmental and Social Governance, system.
ESG means persecution – a corporation improves its ESG score (and thus gets more funny money – from the Hedge Funds and so on) by engaging in censorship and persecution.
The system is systematically wrong.
It is not a few bad apples at one or two bad banks.
People who think that Wall Street or the City of London are “capitalist” are wrong.
There is relatively little real Capital (actual Real Savings) – it is dwarfed by the (government backed) Credit Bubble.
People sometimes ask when the Economist magazine first became the Big Government magazine it is today – endlessly pushing more government spending, more regulations, higher taxes (it was pushing higher taxes only a few weeks ago) and-so-on.
But on banking the Economist magazine always was a Big Government magazine – the third editor (Walter Bagehot – who also said, as early as 1868 “The English Constitution” that policy should “concede whatever is safe to concede” in relation to more government services and benefits) was famous (or infamous) for his defence of bank bailouts – but it did not start with him.
Even the founder of the Economist magazine (back in 1843) was pro Credit Bubble banking (although on a TINY scale compared to today) – and being pro Credit Bubble banking means that you are, in the end, in support of “Suspension of Cash Payments” (Prime Minister Russell allowed the Bank of England to engage in that dishonesty in the late 1840s – without even the excuse of a war) and Bailouts – either open Bailouts, or hidden Bailouts. If you are lending out more “money” than really exists in Cash Real Savings (the actual sacrifice of consumption) then you engaged in blowing a Credit Bubble – and it will burst.
Whatever may have been true in the past – certainly today, it is a con game (a scam – a Ponzi scheme) not an “industry”.
And it has a stranglehold over the economy – both in the United Kingdom and in other nations.
That is why the political and cultural agenda of censorship and control is possible (indeed inevitable) – because the economy is corrupted. The economy was never perfect – but the corruption used to be a tiny scale compared to today.
Now the corruption is systematic – the corruption (the Credit Bubble) dominates everything.
@Paul Marks.
Your mistake is to assume that elected people are “in charge of the government”- that is quite wrong, as they are not in charge of the govenrment.
I assure you, I never make that mistake. Nonetheless I think it is useful for you to point it out in this context.
The important point, to address @BobbyB is that elections do not fix things, or won’t any more. When I became a US citizen one of the questions I was asked on the citizenship test was “What is the most important right an American has.” I think this is an interesting question and one that we could not doubt debate, though I think most libertarians would bounce between the first and second amendment. Me? I’d say “free speech.” Nonetheless, that was not the “correct” answer. The “correct” answer is “the right to vote.” I think this is an interesting position. Politics is so captured that politics never advances the causes of individuals (witness the fact that in the next presidential election we will most likely see a run off between the two men that Americans LEAST want to run for President). Consequently, the right to vote is not a right to demand the government do what the people want, but rather a right to give the imprimatur of legitimacy to what they are going to do anyway. In some respects it is a demand that you support them, almost a demand for worship. To not vote is unamerican, we are told. So the only patriotic option is to polish their halo.
I think this notion that “the right to vote” is the most important right is very revealing.
I’ll have to disagree with you on this one. The right to vote is paramount. Not because of what it gets us at the margins – but because, with the right overwhelming numbers, you can in fact make huge change.
Look at Minnesota after the last set of elections. For the first time in a long time, Minnesota’s Dem voters won both legislative houses, and the governorship.
As a consequence, we now have a new set of laws that are a progressive’s dream. We’ll be Detroit in a decade.
But it takes a large win to effect any change. No, winning one US senator seat doesn’t alter things. Winning twenty, and the presidency, and the House, does change things.
We don’t have a failure of the voting power. We have a failure of our own persuasion. When we win, we barely win. When we lose, we lose big.
It’s like complaining that someone else’s fast 100-yard-dash time doesn’t define “speed”, because we’re slow. It has an element of sour grapes.
Much of our problem stems from the fact that “the right” is a coalition of many groups, some of which I wouldn’t allow into my own house. We need their numbers, but we lose credibility with many voters because of our association with them. We can’t persuade wavering voters to buy into our agenda because they are too easily frightened and disgusted by some of the people who are in our coalition.
And so we fail to persuade, and we fail to win elections. That doesn’t mean that elections aren’t important. It means that we suck at the process.
And, finally, having the highest and most devoted “negatives” – people who absolutely despise you – isn’t the same as being “the two men that Americans LEAST want to run for President”, so long as the other half is rabidly on your side.
They are the most polarizing set of candidates, certainly. But, having wandered around at the fringes of two Trump rallies, I’ll attest that he is certainly rabidly supported by many.
@bobby I certainly accept your example of the negative in MN. But can you offer any examples where elections made a lasting improvement to liberty? 1860 perhaps? Maybe 1980, but I think the results there are mixed at best. And we live in a very different constitutional environment than those years.
Your viewpoint seems to see this as a pendulum where force from one side is equal to force from the other side, but that isn’t true. The left (as it is constituted today anyway) want to increase government, and fundamentally all the structures of government are set up to do exactly that. The right (some have argued, perhaps unsuccessfully) want to decrease government, which goes against every system set up in government and elections. So it is not a pendulum, it is a rock rolling downhill. Occasionally we can slow it down, sometimes even push it uphill a little, but longer term the rock’s gonna roll.
One cannot, for example, think of a situation where a pandemic is used to increase liberty rather than, for example, changing all the voting laws almost without any review at all to offer massive favoritism to one side other the other. When did such a thing ever favor the cause of liberty? Maybe a few gerrymandering decisions, but that is at very best a wash (especially so with regards to recent decisions from the USSC.)
The founders were effective at trying to counter that by pitting the ambition of one man against another in the multi part, multi level government they gave us. It has taken 200 years but that has largely been eroded away to irrelevance. I think this is most rightly seen in Schumer’s recent comment on the USSC affirmative action decision which Schumer rages against and demands the President does something about. It didn’t seem to occur to him that the body he is head of is EXACTLY the body who’s job it is to pass such legislation — the lack of which brought about the USSC’s decision. The irony is entirely lost of most people. It reminds me of this scene in “The Big Bang Theory” where Sheldon is oblivious to Penny’s suggestion on how to alleviate his girlfriend’s horniness.
BTW, regarding your comment on the right being a coalition, that is also true of the left. Joe Manchin and Cortez should not be in the same party. Joe, being a vacuous, value free politician, can easily slide from one side to the other depending on where the wind blows (he really is an incredibly indecent man.) They are this weird mix of extreme nutty positions on things like transgenerism, race activism and climate change, along with the left over neocons from the republicans that felt a D after their name would be better, to the big union lobby. These three groups could not be more different or have different goals. It is the poison of the left-right terminology that we use to describe politics – something that is vastly more dimensional than two.
Fraser Orr – elections could roll the state back, if elected people had the power they once did. For example, Margaret Thatcher was far from perfect (no one is perfect) – but the United Kingdom was not the dreadful mess in 1990 that it had been in 1979.
As for elections not being the answer – fair enough Sir where is your army?
So far the only armed “anti government” groups I have seen are obvious “False Flag” operations by the FBI, which these days takes the old Soviet NKVD as an inspiration.
“This Covid lockdown is an outrage! Lets abduct the Governor as a protest!”.
Fed, Fed, Fed.
As soon as someone suggests a crime as an anti government protest – they have revealed themselves as a Fed.
“But I have known this person for years” – in which case the Feds are blackmailing them, possibly by threatening to put a family member in prison (where they will be raped and abused).
“They would not do that!”.
They would – and they have, repeatedly. It is now a standard tactic for organisations such as the FBI to make such threats in order to get people to do what they want them to do.
Conservatives such as Rudy Giuliani are PARTLY to blame.
In their zeal to hunt down Mafia types and Wall Street cheats – prosecutors bent, indeed broke, the rules of the Common Law. Thus allowing the evil to, later, take the power of the government for their own vile purposes.
“But I am hunting evil people” – they should have watched the old film “A Man For All Seasons”.
One does NOT “bend the rules” even to hunt the Devil – for, if one does, it is the Devil who will end up in charge – and it is honest people who will suffer.
@Paul Marks.
Fraser Orr – elections could roll the state back, if elected people had the power they once did. For example, Margaret Thatcher was far from perfect (no one is perfect) – but the United Kingdom was not the dreadful mess in 1990 that it had been in 1979.
Yes, Thatcher is a good example of an isolated success, and in many ways she got lucky — had it not been for the Argies I imagine her tenure would have been very short indeed. However, the fact you have to go back to 1979 should tell us all we want to know. And, FWIW, I think these changes are perhaps easier in Britain because the Westminster system is much more centralized. That is definitely a major downside and risk (as you guys are about to find out at the next election), but the differences in the USA are quite significant.
As for elections not being the answer – fair enough Sir where is your army?
Who said anything about an army? I have never advocated an armed revolt against the government both because they usually make things worse (as I have said many times French Revolutions are far more common than American ones) and it would assume that the people on average are on my side. This is not true, in fact it is why even if voting worked we’d be in worse state. Why? One need only look at the 2022 election where Biden’s total failures could not be exaggerated — FFS people couldn’t buy food for their babies — but still to all intents and purposes Biden’s party won that election. Which is to say the people seem to have lost the ability to vote in their own self interest. So, no, no armies, that would go very badly indeed.
Plus, of course the fact that I don’t want to see people dead to advance my political agenda — that is horrifying.
Instead I have advocated on many occasions finding a bubble of sanity for yourself and your loved ones where you can isolate yourself as much as possible from the effects. Although out of date these days, Harry Browne’s excellent book “How I found Freedom in an Unfree World” is a good starting point. And again I think what we see here is the classic paradox of the libertarian politician. A person who advocates that “government isn’t the solution” demanding political action to advance his cause. To suggest that voting is the way to solve our problems seems rather counterintuitive for a libertarian like me.
Fraser Orr, it seems to me that your argument is that the majority of the people vote stupidly.
I won’t argue with that.
But that is different from arguing that the selection of a government by democratic means – by voting – is wrong, or bad.
Voting has worked quite well for progressives. That fact alone tells me that we don’t have a systemic problem – a problem with the idea of votes determining direction – but that we have instead a problem to do with our side’s mastery of the persuasive arts, and a problem with our population lacking the intelligence to agree with us instead of with “them.”
We can’t make the people smarter, but we can do a better job of opening their minds to something other than their tribal view.
If libertarian-leaning conservatives suddenly started sweeping all local and national elections, I doubt we’d be discussing how messed up voting qua voting is – which tells me there’s a results issue, not a process issue.
If a process generally gives bad results, and rarely good ones, doesn’t that indicate a problem with the process?
While I was at college, my school broke the all-time college football record for games lost in a row. (A friend said to me “how do I explain to the parents that I made Sports Illustrated THAT way?”)
There was nothing wrong with the process of football. We just sucked at it. The process worked: the better teams won.
(The process of voting has certainly produced good results for progressives, and they’re using the same process that we use.)
@bobby b
There was nothing wrong with the process of football. We just sucked at it. The process worked: the better teams won.
I live in Chicago, and so by nature I recognize that the Bears are a vastly superior team to the Packers. So if I changed the rules of football so that the Bears got 14 points for a converted touchdown and the Packers just 3 points, would your statement still hold true? (Under this system there is a good chance the Packers would still win, but that is a subject for another day.)
If the system is designed to favor institutional candidates, that is to say swampy people, is it any wonder we keep getting more swamp than dry ground? If liberty lovers keep losing in such a system is that sour grapes, “sucking at the process”, or just a broken, biased system?
Nonetheless, even were the system fair we would still get swampy results since that seems to be what the people want. You say we need to be better at changing people’s mind, and FWIW, I find you a very persuasive guy. For a silver tongued guy like you, how many people have you converted from leftie to libertarian in your lifetime? You too are fighting against the vast resources of the swamp, so I’m not sure how you expect to win in such circumstances. I’m pretty persuasive too, but even those closest to me think I am a bit of a loon. Don’t get me wrong — go ahead and do your bit. But I think realistic expectations are in order, and a plan B seems like a very good idea under the circumstances.
Ditto, with maybe even a less generous term than “loon”, which is at least a happy laughing clown of a bird. I’m in Minnesota, and being a non-lefty here is similar to what it must be like to be a Jew in Mecca.
But I don’t argue with the True Believers of Minnesota. Waste of air. I stick to the margin people, people who sometimes aren’t even sure who they’ll vote for. (Their vote counts just as much as mine.) And I’ve had some successes. I bet I’ve switched more Mennonite and Hutterite votes somewhat to the right than anyone else here!
(And, illegal Mexicans. Surprisingly, by the time they settle here, no one has really outlined for them what the sides fight for. Most of them turn out to be naturals as conservatives if you can get to them before the social prog media sweeps over in, so if Biden and Co. want to find a way to harvest their votes, great.)
But I think you give away the game with “ . . . even were the system fair we would still get swampy results since that seems to be what the people want.” That right there is the essence of our problem.
We could win – we could even beat the cheat – if we convinced 7% of the voters to switch from D to R. (And then we could also fix the voting systems.) We who all pride ourselves on the rationality and logic of our approaches – if we can’t get that 7% increase, we’re being kinda lame on the drive-the-vote front.
All of which brings me back to my thesis: our political beliefs ARE the rational and fair ones, and so we’re not failing from a lack of good material OR from a bad system – we’re just not as good at marketing, or exploiting the voting process, as are the libs. We ought to be able to beat them at their own games, but we’ve been too busy being polite gentlemen while allowing them to loot the balloting processes without us calling out “thief!”