Whistling pontiffs
SOME of Mammon's most eminent ser- vants have been called in to placate him. Hong Kong is (naturally) run by a chief executive, who has set up a non-executive board of business grandees to advise him: the chairmen of Siemens, of American International Group, of the Bank of Tokyo- Mitsubishi: Paul Volcker, for so long the giant of the US Federal Reserve: all these and Rupert Murdoch, too. This week sees their first board meeting and they have all come to stay in comfort at the Mandarin. Last week brought the central bankers: 17 of them, including Alan Greenspan, Mr Volcker's successor at the Fed and in all but name Mammon's Pontifex Maximus. After five and a half hours of impetration they duly pronounced themselves positive. Asia, they believed, had seen the worst of its troubles and would probably recover from now on. Of a less reverend group, it might be suspected that they were whistling to keep everybody else's spirits up.
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