China's "pawn shops" have loaned $43B, mostly secured by real-estate

[doctorow]

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/03/17/usd9t-shadow-finance.html

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[TobinL]

Well I guess I look forward to the cheap real estate when it collapses.

[anon81034786]

Late stage CommuCapitalism?

[Mangochin]

So loan sharks

[evilkolbot]

2% month is 26.8% compounded, or do they insist on paying off the interest in full?

[evilkolbot]

That’s just credit card rates, not really sharking.

[Neovison.vison]

I wonder if the apartments securing many of these loans are real, inhabited apartments or ghost apartments? Cause if ghost apartments get repossessed I don’t really see the problem.

[FGD135]

[Fang]

“They lent the equivalent of of $43 bn” != “They have $43 bn in outstanding loans”

Also the original report said the entire pawn industry made a pre-tax profit of only 1.7 bn yuan ($255million) so the implication is that most of these loans are for very short periods.