If a country is in need of foreign capital, about the worst thing it can possibly do is attempt to prevent it getting out. Mahathir and others in the regional are living in the financial equivalent of psychological denial. It’s always so much easier to blame the nasty foreign speculator than acknowledge your own failings.Mr Mahathir’s strictures are naturally very much directed at his own domestic audience, but when phrased in such intemperate and backward looking language, he shouldn’t be surprised if he is taken seriously by the financial markets as well Mr Soros is right Mahathir is a menace to his own country. Now to turn round and try and impose capital controls in an attempt to stop what the speculators are doing is merely going to make a bad position worse.

But there is little doubt that the punishment capital markets are inflicting on the region is thoroughly deserved.By attempting to fight it, Mahathir and others are just exacerbating the situation The region’s growth has been fed by foreign capital. The IMF has been warning for several years that the Pacific Rim economies were floating on a dangerous mixture of unchecked credit expansion and speculative froth.The only real puzzle is that it has taken the likes of George Soros so long to move in on the region and exploit it. What he and other speculators have done is certainly accelerate the pace of crisis, and possibly by over correcting in the way markets always do, deepened it a bit. George Soros and Mahathir Mohamad were involved in a spectacular exchange of insults at the IMF meeting in Hong Kong over the weekend They perhaps thoroughly deserve each other. But there’s equally little doubt about who is in the right on all this Like him or loathe him, it is George Soros.

There’s nothing particularly new in the Malaysian premier’s complaint. From George Brown’s famous fingering of the “G-nomes of Zurich”, politicians the world over have tended to blame their economic ills, given the chance, on the antics of international speculators.
In recent years, however, the speculator has come to be seen in a rather more favourable light, even a force for good if the end result of his activities is what turns out to be a necessary economic adjustment.That is what has occurred in the Far East. However the White City development alone could add up to 100p to that figure.
Property stocks have enjoyed a good run on the back of a long-awaited upturn in the property cycle. There is more to come, but investors are best advised to stick with quality stocks in the event that the market begins to falter. Mr Bernerd’s abilities means Chelsfield looks a better bet than most With the shares well off their high, they look attractive.. Tinpot speculator meets tinpot dictator. Chelsfield’s latest pre-tax profits, up from pounds 6m to pounds 10m in the six months to June, owned much to a good performance from the recent Westbury Hotels acquisition from Granada.