Unsafe, unsteady
STORES of value in Asia continue to leak. The latest is Peregrine, Hong Kong's investment bank, which has been run over by an Indonesian taxi company called Steady Safe. There will be any number of bankers and investors and exporters and trade creditors who will find what they thought was money in store is without value. You might care to arrange these claims in order of merit: a brown envelope full of rupiah notes, a lien on an airliner bought by an Asian state airline on the instalment plan, a Korean bond which started life as a bank loan, a mortgage on a flat in the mid-levels in Hong Kong, the next progress payment on a Thai construc- tion contract, a deposit in a second-tier Japanese bank, a joint venture with an aunt of the Suharto family, an appeal to the International Monetary Fund's better nature, a nice solid portable ingot. Quite.
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