In the heyday of its incredible credit and construction boom, China was building two world-scale utility plants each week and opening up a new airport every day. Economic fiction writers like Goldman’s Jim O’Neill, chief propagator of the BRICs myth, declared the Red Ponzi to be the very second coming of capitalism.
Now, by contrast, a Chinese billionaire goes missing practically every day, as a recent Washington Post article explained:
That’s what happened last year when China’s richest man — at least on paper — lost half of his wealth in less than half an hour. It turned out that his company Hanergy may well just be Enron with Chinese characteristics: Its stock could only go up as long as it was borrowing money, and it could only borrow money as long as its stock was going up. Those kind of things work until they don’t.
The gentleman in question, Li Hejun, has had quite the financial spill. Exactly 400 days ago in April 2015, according to Forbes, he was worth $32.7 billion. Then on May 20 last year, when the stock of Hanergy Thin Film Power (HTF), in which he had a 81% stake, plunged by 47%, $14 billion of that disappeared in minutes. And since then, all the rest of it has vaporized, as well.
Our purpose here is not to jitterbug on the corpse of another riches-to-rags story from the Red Ponzi. The fact is, Li Hejun and his Hanergy capers is China writ large.
The latter is a incendiary cauldron of financial madness that is destined to have a spectacular demise. And it will take the global economy and the gambling dens of Wall Street, London, Tokyo and the rest down with it.
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