Finance Asia said:

The market was shocked on Friday when Morgan Stanley announced that its Asia economist, Andy Xie, had resigned. The announcement was brief and mysterious, giving no explanation of why he was going or where he was going. With Morgan Stanley’s bonus period only two months away, it looked like a very strange time for the Shanghai-born Xie to leave the firm.

The Hong Kong rumour mill quickly began speculating as to why Xie had left. Attentions have focused on an email that Xie penned on September 18. Many copies of the email – which was about Singapore – have since been passed around by the region’s fund management and banking community.
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“I tried to find out why Singapore was chosen to host the conference,” wrote Xie. “Nobody knew. Some said that probably no one else wanted it. Some guessed that Singapore did a good selling job. I thought that it was a strange choice because Singapore was so far from any action or the hot topic of China and India. Mumbai or Shanghai would have been a lot more appropriate. ASEAN has been a failure. Its GDP in nominal dollar terms has not changed for 10 years. Singapore’s per capita income has not changed either at $25,000. China’s GDP in dollar terms has tripled during the same period.”

Xie then continued that he thought some “were competing with each other to praise Singapore as the success story of globalisation. Actually, Singapore’s success came mainly from being the money laundering centre for corrupt Indonesian businessmen and government officials. Indonesia has no money. So Singapore isn’t doing well. To sustain its economy, Singapore is building casinos to attract corrupt money from China.”

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