Walter Hutchens’ Blog

In his role as Morgan Stanley’s chief economist for Asia, Andy Xie got quoted by the media all the time. He must have been quick to return journalists’ phone calls and spent a good bit of time doing it. He commented liberally (and sometimes incisively) on all sorts of PRC economic developments.

Xie doesn’t work for Morgan Stanley any more. He resigned after some of his comments on Singapore appeared in the media. The comments in question were from emails Xie sent friends; clearly they were not intended for broad public consumption.

In the emails Xie reportedly griped that a forum on India and China was being held in Singapore. He opined that, “Singapore’s success came mostly from being the money laundering center
for corrupt Indonesian businessmen and government officials.”

He further observed, “To sustain its economy, Singapore is building casinos to attract corruption money from China.”

Here we should mention that 1) the Singapore government is a major international investor through Temasek Holdings and 2) Morgan Stanley would like to continue helping Temasek on many lucrative deals. Goodbye, Andy.

I haven’t always agreed with Xie’s analysis, but I feel sorry that he apparently got fired had to resign due to public disclosure of email he intended to be personal. It’s chilling to think you can never type an email that you don’t want to be “TO: WORLD.”

It sort of makes the distinction between emailing and blogging superfluous. I may not use enough restraint when blogging, but sometimes I let my guard down even more when writing emails to friends.

Besides being fun, being hyperbolic can actually help one test out an idea. It’s appropriate for a non-public forum where you won’t be taken too seriously or literally.

Or so Andy might have thought.

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