The Chief Executive Of Hong Kong Keeps Having Her Credit Cards Declined [Roundup]

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About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. I have no sympathy for the repressive policies of the Chinese government and its Hong Kong minions, but I wonder if the eventual result of the use of sanctions to forbid access to US financial services or, as in the case of Huawei, will be to speed up the development of competitiors outside the US. Surely, the Chinese will do everything they can to develop the know how to circumvent the Huawei sanctions and they are already trying (with very limited success so far) to supplant the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. There may be a long term set of very unpleasant unintended consequences developing. Not a certainty, but a much greater possibility than it was four years ago.

  2. I know this is a travel blog and hopefully my response to Jerry can be classified as “somehow related” to travel. While IMO, your analysis is absolutely correct that “there may be a long term set of very unpleasant unintended consequences developing”, I will still place my faith and trust in this country. While the US has its fair share of problems, which currency will/can we trust? The euro was designed to compete with the dollar; look at the mess Europe is currently in. The pound has been sliding since the sun began setting on that empire. The world knows the yuan is being manipulated. It’s no wonder that Microsoft, Telsa, Facebook and Apple are US founded companies (despite the fact that Elon Musk was born in South Africa). Try developing the four mentioned companies in Russia, China or elsewhere in the world and see what the governments will do to claim full credit for those innovations. The freedom of thought and expression is also unfortunately causing the US to lead in the number of deaths in this pandemic. As with everything, there is a balance of power.

  3. The share of USD payments has gone up in recent years! The yuan will never work as a global reserve currency unless their system of governance changes. You need trust…

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