The release of a LegCo report on the Lehman Brothers "minibond" debacle has drawn criticism from the usual "anything goes" business leaders.

The responses have ranged from "we would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddlesome kids" of former HKMA head Joseph Yam to the "you bought them, so it's your fault you believed us" of Philip "one-finger" Wong.

Joseph Yam said it was the financial disaster that was to blame not him. What caused the financial meltdown? A misrepresentation of risky investments (CDOs aka minibonds in HK) backed by farcical unregulated "insurance" with insufficient financial backing (credit default swaps). So what was Joseph Yam's job? To insure the financial market in HK was providing risk information to investors. What's the circular argument provided by Joseph Yam? If the financial disaster hadn't happened due to improper representations of risk to investors, people wouldn't be unhappy with me for not ensuring proper representations of risk to investors. Idiot!

As for folks like David Li and Philip Wong, criminals never want the police to arrest them for their crimes. The only difference is when little people try to rob David Li's bank, they will go jail. But when David Li's bank is robbing little people via deception, they will never see jail and get to keep 30% of the loot for being the right sort of people. Institutionalised corruption is the norm and those that want to root out corruption are "vaguely liberal" and are the "idealist faction". This is the true meaning of the "anti-regulation" crowd. Don't read their lips, watch their hands as they steal your money and your health with impunity.