Originally published at: China is having some money trouble | Boing Boing
…
3 Likes
One thing you have to give the greedpigs in the sucky U.S. system, at least those crony capitalists aren’t pretending to be Communists. I feel for the older depositors who still believed in the CCP’s lies.
10 Likes
China has always had two economies: the economy of the gilded Tier 1 cities and the economy of the more rural areas, where things haven’t been quite so rosy. The gaps between the two are enormous and the financial systems of the latter have never been anything but rickety.
11 Likes
Even the “i” in China is gone on this video title…
1 Like
Not clear how that’s any better than crony capitalists in the West pretending to be (small d) democrats?
And this is why China has been so enthusiastic about Bitcoin. They have never trusted their government’s financial system, for good reason apparently.
This is a pretty amazing situation. You would think that China’s highly educated, intelligent leadership would see that such shenanigans are a risk to their entire system. This situation sounds like a much bigger scale of the 1983 Israeli shekel collapse which was also based on bank stocks always going up in value.
This whole thing has some negative implications for the USA also, as the scammers flee here and bring money with them. These are not the kind of people we need here. We will catch some and ship them back, but plenty of corrupt officials stay below the radar and park their money here.
1 Like
Nothing smells right. How does a scammy Chinese banker get U.S.A citizenship so fast? There really is no real regulation on banking/money in the world.
All the corrupt officials the world over already park their money in US dollars. Higher-ups in sketchy economies always know they are in a sketchy economy so they all have nest eggs in US dollars. Roughly 70% of US currency is held outside the US. They don’t need to “come over here” to do it. You can hold US dollars anywhere you like, while living like a robber baron in your cheap home country. It’s why the officials and oligarchs always come away clean and still wealthy when economies collapse.
10 Likes
.
When I shared that “tank” video that is excerpted here on FB last week it was removed as “false news”. Not saying it is or isn’t, just a data point
2 Likes
uh that’s cause a lot of this video might be questionable if it begins with footage of a tank training exercise video in shandong province with subtitles claiming that a tiananmen-like massacre is about to unfold in henan province. Quite pathetic.
Russian saying from the mid-1990’s:
“Everything they taught us about communism was wrong, but everything they warned us about capitalism was correct.”
11 Likes
The currencies are multiple and held in multiple jurisdictions. But usually some sort of physical safe haven is set up in advance of the wheels coming off.
Nonetheless, they still aren’t safe, but maybe it buys them time to negotiate a return.
Also - multiple results for “involuntary return to China” referring to the success of Sky Net and Operation Fox Hunt.
It’s certainly not the first time a bunch of technocrats who really should have known better decided to close their eyes and let the soothing bubbles wash over them; but it probably doesn’t help that a lot of the really good shenanigans have involved provincial governments trying to pull too-good-to-be-true results out by riding real estate and banking bubbles, which clicks neatly into the ‘thermocline of truth’ problem that exists to some degree in more or less any organization that lets its culture swing too far in the direction of demanding that the underlings Get It Done rather than rewarding them for honest reporting: if irrational exuberance is the only way you are going to make HQ’s numbers you aren’t going to go out of your way to provide candid warnings of systemic risk.
It will be interesting to see how they end up resolving the situation: it’s fairly clear from the cracking down that has already happened that organic protests will not be permitted; but (unlike the US case) that’s more of a reflection of organic organization being seen with deep suspicion regardless of subject and target than necessarily an indication that the authorities are going to step in to save the bankers at any cost; rather than at least seriously considering making an example of some of the unlikeable ones if it’s the easiest way to tamp down popular discontent.
I get that, of course, but that’s not all that’s going on here. There’s a whole thing called luo guon (naked official) in China, people who move their entire family, finance, everything but their physical selves, to the US. By allowing that to happen, we make corruption worse in China, and we end up picking up wealthy sleaze from China who have enough money to pick up businesses and real estate here. It’s a lose-lose.
2 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
