Though with little doubts the liquidity issue of Dubai World will continue to be the eyesore of the world financial market, widespread haunting speculations of imminent second wave of financial tsunami seem to be over upon the post-Thanksgiving rebound in the Wall Street and European markets. Once again, expert opinion in the public discourse is proven to be a highly depreciable product with validity being reckoned in days --- the loudly alarms rung by numerous editorials and commentaries pertinent to the Dubai World incident and their reminiscence of the finance-savvy Hong Kong were soon out of people’s mind when the Hang Seng Index continued to be fine.

The ‘outdated’ editorials and commentaries with regard to Dubai World, however, could have been, or suddenly to be the most frequently cited references upon contingencies: whether United Arab Emirates (UAE) is willing to get hands dirty for the sake of her luxurious and overspending member-state, or if the non-withdrawal pledge for the assurance of enough lifeblood in the world financial market from state leaders can continue to be firmly upheld. The validity of the social alarm pertained to the upcoming of second-wave financial tsunami resulted from Dubai World incident, ironically, seems to correlate with the persuasiveness of the social alarm itself in an oppositional direction: the more the market believes in the alarm, the more comprehensive and assertive measurements will be taken by both private and public sectors, and the less likely the predication will happen. The social alarm in the public discourse may be indeed the ‘victim of its own validity’.

For sure no one has the crystal ball to see through the trouble water of future, sometimes even for what will happen after minutes. Therefore, we rely on knowledge-building for expectation management and encapsulate future uncertainties by the concept of risk, henceforth translating unpredictability into calculation. Vividly captured by German sociologist Ulrich Beck, the reflexivity of knowledge --- the continuous dialectics between knowledge-building and human expectation, induce unintended consequences which indeed ironically nullify the validity of knowledge itself. Given that human beings and human societies are not constant physical objects, they react upon the ‘discovery of new knowledge’, thus alter the modes of expectation management and behavioural implications, and as a result jeopardize the validity of ‘new knowledge’. The accelerating production of knowledge by human beings to anticipate future uncertainties has further intensify the unpredictability of the knowledge itself and ends up in a more pressing feeling of risk --- that is risk society.

And this is the revealing paradox: when knowledge production becomes a self-defeating rather than self-fulfilling prophecy, the locomotive of modernity i.e. knowledge can possibly be the source of rather than solution to social problems. Multiple and quickly depreciated advices in financial markets, divided and contradictory expert opinions are evidences, and current debates on whether Dubai World’s liquidity problem can be eventually fixed is another example --- the complacency of the world financial market at the moment is vulnerable to further readings and interpretations to news pertinent to Dubai in the public discourse.

Shedding lights from the notion of risk society, knowledge production itself, apart from dealing with social facts, can be a strategic game of expectation manipulation. Swine flu and the American sub-prime crisis used to be the most popular references for analyses of the economic prospect of Hong Kong, but what the relatively stable epidemic and continuous vibrancy of local property market mean? The over-exaggeration of those comments months before, or vice versa --- thanks to those valid social alarms, precautious measures are taken properly and have saved Hong Kong? Personally I do not have an answer, and finally I also have to resort to the knowledge in the opinion market.