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Real estate giant China Evergrande will be liquidated

nytimes.com

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Re: Real estate giant China Evergrande will be liquidated

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you didn’t like my Wikipedia link, here’s a Wiktionary link: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/compound_word It’s okay to be wrong. I’m just not wrong on this point, and if I were, I’d be okay with that. Are you okay?

That link doesn't refute my claim. I have acknowledged that there are, indeed, compound words.

If you think so, I guess we’re at an impasse, then.

Re: Real estate giant China Evergrande will be liquidated

#332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Residential is the way forward. Many projects and formerly commercial buildings are getting the apartment conversion treatment, complete with bullshit interior dead spaces to meet regulatory requirements. It's not a lie, it's commercial real estate! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbTR3lDuYqk&list=PLkH0kJMHYO...

> complete with bullshit interior dead spaces to meet regulatory requirements. At least in NYC, the requirement is that bedrooms need to have a window. Are there more requirements than that? I've had kitchens w/out windows in NYC. Bedrooms needing windows doesn't seem very BS to me.

Many more requirements. I said commercial conversions in some areas need to permanently render useless a portion of floor area for statute compliance.

https://youtu.be/s2ZUQWojevo

Re: Real estate giant China Evergrande will be liquidated

#333

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The defaults changed, at least in the West. When I was little it was still married-with-children by default, probably at relatively young age, and people had to decide not to have children. That was in part helped by the lack of widespread use of contraceptives. The norm in my primary school was two or three kids per family. I remember only one classmate with no brothers or sisters. Of course zero children families w…

While I agree with that shrink part, you must be living in a bubble for the family part. Literally all my colleagues in past 5 jobs (that few hundreds guys) have kids if they are over say 35. All colleagues of my wife. All of our friends. I cover western (Switzerland) and eastern Europe here. Same for Swiss colleagues and foreigners. Folks with nannies or family close but also raising their kids just by themselves, l…

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Re: Real estate giant China Evergrande will be liquidated

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of the unfinished buildings will be completed in 2-5 years. Many things wrong with that statement. Chinese local governments are overloaded with debt - 12.6 TRILLION https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/china-orders-local-gove... . National government has refused to supply local governments with more money, in fact it has limited some local governments to what they can build. Local Governments have zero incent…

> overloaded with debt As I understand, most of the debt issued by local gov'ts is RMB-denominated. The PBoC can easily assume (large) parts of this debt without large negative economic impacts. Other countries have done similar in the past by creating "bad banks" that are financed by the central gov't or central bank.

> without large negative economic impacts

How could central bank finance such a debt without igniting the inflation? Especially in a country with already expensive money and pretty large interest rates.

Re: Real estate giant China Evergrande will be liquidated

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of the world's growth is squeezed by these kinds of inefficiencies. Property speculation keeps prices high, and people paying off mortgages in dead-end jobs. Education costs force parents into difficult decisions to move out of HCOL areas where they likely have higher-value jobs. Energy and Water costs spike while providing no societal benefit. The West is obsessed with keeping these in place, the r…

How is the East better positioned when this article is about a massive failure due to property speculation? It just took a different and exaggerated form in China due to the rightly perceived shakiness of Chinese stocks and the limitations on land and property ownership. If this development cements in the minds of the Chinese populace that buying an extra apartment as an investment is no longer a safe place to store…

I don't think that the Chinese are forced to buy property because of the perceived shakiness of the stock market. Rather it's a cultural norm that's embedded itself in their psyche.

Also, I disagree that using houses as your store of wealth to fund healthcare is a sane policy. People should be paid for work.

Re: Real estate giant China Evergrande will be liquidated

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of the world's growth is squeezed by these kinds of inefficiencies. Property speculation keeps prices high, and people paying off mortgages in dead-end jobs. Education costs force parents into difficult decisions to move out of HCOL areas where they likely have higher-value jobs. Energy and Water costs spike while providing no societal benefit. The West is obsessed with keeping these in place, the r…

> the rising East seems better placed to change economic inefficiencies lol wut? china changing ineffeiciencies? this must be winnie the poo propaganda. china is corrupt as all hell and much of their building material is of dubious and shady quality. japan and korea are stagnating, and much of SEA is still struggling to modernize and combat their own structural inefficiencies. PE is a cancer, but I'd be curious to kn…

You've got to admit, it'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Eastern countries with more direct government intervention, strong-arm leaders like Modi, Winnie the poo vs waning Western powers.

China didn't bail out its property gamblers, the West bailed out its banking gamblers. The West excels at high-level corruption. It's not bribing an official down a back alley, it's done Manhattan high rises and Mayfair team rooms.

Both are indefensible but as bad as each other.

Re: Real estate giant China Evergrande will be liquidated

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada allows medically assisted suicide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_in_Canada

Thank you. I have responded to you, since you were one minute earlier. I won't repeat the whole comment that I had written and lost due to my phone running out of battery, but still wanted to at least add part of it with thanks for the information. This kind of euthanasia (voluntary, with a review board, like in Switzerland) is something I feel should be a human right, though I'm not sure about the intricacies of the…

Not saying some people shouldn't have the right, but the way the Canadian system works can be horrific. Especially when it comes to people who should be receiving support, aren't receiving support, so end up being encouraged to die instead.

Re: Real estate giant China Evergrande will be liquidated

#338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the rising East seems better placed to change economic inefficiencies lol wut? china changing ineffeiciencies? this must be winnie the poo propaganda. china is corrupt as all hell and much of their building material is of dubious and shady quality. japan and korea are stagnating, and much of SEA is still struggling to modernize and combat their own structural inefficiencies. PE is a cancer, but I'd be curious to kn…

You've got to admit, it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. Eastern countries with more direct government intervention, strong-arm leaders like Modi, Winnie the poo vs waning Western powers. China didn't bail out its property gamblers, the West bailed out its banking gamblers. The West excels at high-level corruption. It's not bribing an official down a back alley, it's done Manhattan high rises and Mayfair…

Depends if you think bailing out the banks was the wrong choice overall. The last time the Great Depression happened we got a world war out of it.

It's true that perverse incentives were created out of that, but I would ask if the financial industry is still making these mistakes like NINJA loans. Considering how we just got out of inflation without a recession, the US economy seems pretty structurally sound today.

Re: Real estate giant China Evergrande will be liquidated

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got to admit, it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. Eastern countries with more direct government intervention, strong-arm leaders like Modi, Winnie the poo vs waning Western powers. China didn't bail out its property gamblers, the West bailed out its banking gamblers. The West excels at high-level corruption. It's not bribing an official down a back alley, it's done Manhattan high rises and Mayfair…

Depends if you think bailing out the banks was the wrong choice overall. The last time the Great Depression happened we got a world war out of it. It's true that perverse incentives were created out of that, but I would ask if the financial industry is still making these mistakes like NINJA loans. Considering how we just got out of inflation without a recession, the US economy seems pretty structurally sound today.

Might be true, might not. Checkout out this podcast if you get a chance: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-23/brevan-ho...

Not sure we can draw a line under anything yet and there is still lots of potential for economic instability out there.

Re: Real estate giant China Evergrande will be liquidated

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "west" and china have _very_ different demographic pressures. For example china famously had(has?) the one child rule. This meant a deliberate shift in how children were raised (all your eggs in one basket) > Now the default is single-no-children and you have to make an explicit choice to marry (you used to be nudged into it by society) and to have kids, by stopping to use contraceptives and to do all the things…

If you look at the historical birth rate through the 20th century (hard to find data before 1950, but not impossible), the birth rate hovered around 5 children/woman or 35 children/1000 population. These numbers drop immediately and precipitously starting in 1960, the year "the pill" became publicly available. Lots of people, young and old, take pills every day. People forget and unwanted pregnancies still happen, bu…

> Birth control (of all types) is responsible the bulk of the reduction in birth rate.

Birth control is a tool, which requires conscious thought. If you look at the UK: https://www.statista.com/statistics/281981/live-births-in-th...

You can clearly see two peaks in the last 40 years. Given that the last peak comes after liberalisation of the morning after pill, it breaks the correlation between availability and birth rate.

> end the lives of 73 million unborn per year

I'm assuming your joining 48hr contraceptive with <28 week abortion, otherwise those numbers would mean that (I'm assuming the USA) every woman in the USA alive would be having an abortion at least every two years. Given the number of clinics capable of carrying that out, I find that number difficult to prove.

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