Bloomberg in Hong Kong

There’s a funny little profile of New York City’s mayor in the February Esquire, though it’s not online. So, in it, Mike Bloomberg goes to Hong Kong, and he takes along Jon Liu, the comptroller, and Esquire is all like, why did he invite you, and Jon Liu’s all, “I’m sure he has his reasons.” Heh. So over there what they do is, the transit system owns rights to land around the train station, so they build malls around the stations, in conjunction with private developers, and this pays for a good chunk of the excellent transit system. And of course Bloomberg loves this. “In America, the ultimate capitalist system, government is getting in the way of everything,” Bloomberg says over there. Funny stuff!