Peanuts.
China’s property giant Evergrande files for bankruptcy protection in Manhattan
361–370 of 395 posts
Re: China’s property giant Evergrande files for bankruptcy protection in Manhattan
#362Peanuts.
Some popcorn, then?
Re: China’s property giant Evergrande files for bankruptcy protection in Manhattan
#363Earlier quoted context omitted.
The lenders in the Chinese housing market are mostly Chinese citizens. In modern China, rather than buying a house, you buy a promise of a house, then the house builder builds it for you. The house builders though have these huge debts, and they've been using money from new purchases to construct their backlog of homes. The $90bn outstanding is $90bn in outstanding housing construction, not just abstract debts to ban…
This sounds ponzi schemic.
That’s because it is.
China lacks a safe financial system that the ordinary person can invest in, the way that an American can park funds in an index fund and expect a reasonable rate of return. (The Shanghai and Hong Kong indices are not as healthy as the general economy.) It also lacks generous pension schemes like those in Europe. So part of the reason this is so bad is because most Chinese citizens put their nest eggs in real estate, and now the bubble has popped.
Re: China’s property giant Evergrande files for bankruptcy protection in Manhattan
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are sharing the official written policy, but the reality on the ground is very different in China. Most business happens under the table. Corruption and bribes are commonplace in every transaction. Books are all fudged to a high degree. Millions of people who put up large deposits and made monthly payments for under construction houses to developers like Evergrande are never getting anything back, and laws aren't…
I don't mean to burst your bubble, but... this picture of a "house of cards"-economy, with "swindles all the way down", riddled Swiss-cheese-style with corruption, while indeed a Western populist idyll visage of China these days (a sort of Western-denialists wet dream of impending Chinese doom), is inaccurate, and I think, dangerous for folks in the West to believe, if they truly hope to compete with "their biggest s…
> The simple truth is China would not have been able to achieve the scale of productivity and growth that it has
In plan economy, controlled corruption is a feature not a bug
Re: China’s property giant Evergrande files for bankruptcy protection in Manhattan
#365Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The US is still nominally governed by and accountable to the rule of law. You mean the rule of law that it imposes upon others that they didn't agree on? And they'll bring it up only when it's convenient. I'll say it again: Big countries will be big countries.
Name a law passed by a foreign government against its own will at the behest of the US.
Plenty of laws touched by government takeovers that involve the USA, trade deals with Japan against Japan's own interests, and even more. Go look it up.
Now that I've answered your question, do you believe the US hasn't had abuses of it's power in the decades it's been at the top? And if not, can you name an instance of it?
Re: China’s property giant Evergrande files for bankruptcy protection in Manhattan
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The US is still nominally governed by and accountable to the rule of law. You mean the rule of law that it imposes upon others that they didn't agree on? And they'll bring it up only when it's convenient. I'll say it again: Big countries will be big countries.
Law is imposed on others that don’t agree with it, that’s kind of the definition.
And what is a law selectively enforced and conveniently brought up in times of contention?
Re: China’s property giant Evergrande files for bankruptcy protection in Manhattan
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
>"real estate assets everywhere but China now look better in the long term." They do not look better. They look inflated and unaffordable. If not fixed this will have social consequences at some point and it won't be pretty.
Housing can't be inflated and unaffordable at the same time. Someone is buying properties, driving prices higher. Those someone can definitely afford housing.
Inflated by investors buying to turn them into rentals that are unaffordable.
Re: China’s property giant Evergrande files for bankruptcy protection in Manhattan
#368Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't mean to burst your bubble, but... this picture of a "house of cards"-economy, with "swindles all the way down", riddled Swiss-cheese-style with corruption, while indeed a Western populist idyll visage of China these days (a sort of Western-denialists wet dream of impending Chinese doom), is inaccurate, and I think, dangerous for folks in the West to believe, if they truly hope to compete with "their biggest s…
> The simple truth is China would not have been able to achieve the scale of productivity and growth that it has In plan economy, controlled corruption is a feature not a bug
Can you explain more? What's the theory or practice behind corruption adding benefit to the extent that you want to work it in?
Re: China’s property giant Evergrande files for bankruptcy protection in Manhattan
#369Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't mean to burst your bubble, but... this picture of a "house of cards"-economy, with "swindles all the way down", riddled Swiss-cheese-style with corruption, while indeed a Western populist idyll visage of China these days (a sort of Western-denialists wet dream of impending Chinese doom), is inaccurate, and I think, dangerous for folks in the West to believe, if they truly hope to compete with "their biggest s…
> Sorry, but truth ain't always easy to hear. It's copeium. The alternative is to admit that there could be another system, authoritarian, non-democratic, where there is no freedom, yet it's successful and have a chance to be the biggest economy in the world in a few decades. At this point, it's all about ideology.
It's completely copium. It's kind of dumb. Already the biggest in the world a few years ago by some metrics, but in GDP terms maybe 10 - 15 years. But the strange thing is that still so much room to grow beyond that. 5 to 6x times as many people as US, to achieve a comparable standard of living to US would produce a truly enormous economy.
I don't think China should be "world ruler" by any means (they're not ready and not international enough, and that Chinese culture is not respecting of other people enough at all, and that's not OK, but we can't expect them to develop themselves too quickly because they have a lot on their plate) but I think people should want China to be successful. To want them to be a giant failure is just dumb.
And smart people will be learning from China right now, not drinking copium while being a pendejo over China-crash-porn. It's all so ridiculous and sad. How can you say you're from "the best/ better" system if that's your reaction to a new contender? It makes you look like a bitter loser. Ugh...
Granted there will be downvotes to espousing this correct view, so part of the problem is people in the West need to work through their anger/fear issues on China before they can see it clearly. We're not there yet. And we can't hope to really compete until we can see it clearly, so...get to work people, do the inner work to have some clear sight!!
Re: China’s property giant Evergrande files for bankruptcy protection in Manhattan
#370Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see China in 2023 where Japan was in 1991. Real Estate is falling apart. But in the end, the are the workbench of the world. They have Billions of people that can potentially work. Some of them are well educated and highly industrious. Japan survived so will China.
Where can I read more about Japan's experience at that time?
This is a pretty good multi-part documentary from 2000: