{"id":11689,"date":"2015-09-01T06:58:08","date_gmt":"2015-09-01T11:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11689"},"modified":"2015-09-01T06:58:08","modified_gmt":"2015-09-01T11:58:08","slug":"macaus-economy-blows-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11689","title":{"rendered":"Macau\u2019s Economy Blows Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Macau\u2019s Economy Blows Up<\/a><\/h3>\n

China\u2019s crackdown on corruption, or at least the ostentatious display of the spoils of corruption, and its selective hunt for corrupt officials, which to some observers resembles a political purge, may or may not tamp down on actual corruption, which is what greases the wheels in the Chinese economy. But it\u2019s certainly doing a number on Macau.<\/p>\n

Macau is the only place in China where Chinese can legally gamble away their wealth without having to resort to the stock market or other schemes. It\u2019s also a convenient place where they can circumvent China\u2019s currency controls to siphon money out of China and send it to \u201csafe havens,\u201d such as over-priced homes in the most expensive trophy cities in the US near the peak of US Housing Bubble 2.<\/p>\n

Until February 2014, Macau was on an awesome ride that had kicked off in 2001, when it permitted foreign casino operators to build gambling palaces. In 2002, Macau became the number one gambling destination in the world. Even during the Financial-Crisis, Macau\u2019s gaming revenues rose nearly 10%. These endlessly soaring revenues were a thermometer into China\u2019s economic boom.<\/p>\n

So in its crackdown on corruption, China is hitting Macau in both departments: scaring high-rollers away and monkey-wrenching its capital-controls evasion machinery. And this year, Macau has taken a third blow: the deteriorating economy in mainland China.<\/p>\n

As a result, Macau\u2019s real GDP plunged 24.5% in the first quarter year-over-year and then went ahead and plunged an even more terrible 26.4% in the second quarter, to 77.5 billion Macau patacas ($9.7 billion), the lowest level since early 2011.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Statistics and Census Service<\/u><\/a>\u00a0(DSEC) in its report today blamed \u201cexports of gaming services,\u201d as it calls gambling revenues that had plunged 40.5% year over year, and \u201cexports of other tourism services,\u201d which had plunged 21.5%. \u201cTotal exports of services\u201d crashed by 35.9%.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Macau\u2019s Economy Blows Up China\u2019s crackdown on corruption, or at least the ostentatious display of the spoils of corruption, and its selective hunt for corrupt officials, which to some observers resembles a political purge, may or may not tamp down on actual corruption, which is what greases the wheels in the Chinese economy. But it\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[130,1769,8600,353,406,2373,2345,4254,6118],"class_list":["post-11689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-china","tag-corruption","tag-currency-controls","tag-gdp","tag-housing-bubble","tag-macau","tag-tourism","tag-wolf-richter","tag-wolf-street"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11689"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11690,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11689\/revisions\/11690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}