{"id":20750,"date":"2016-05-19T19:46:08","date_gmt":"2016-05-20T00:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20750"},"modified":"2016-05-19T19:46:08","modified_gmt":"2016-05-20T00:46:08","slug":"red-ponzi-update-gambling-like-never-before","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20750","title":{"rendered":"Red Ponzi Update\u2014\u2014-Gambling Like Never Before"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Red Ponzi Update\u2014\u2014-Gambling Like Never Before<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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In the heyday of its incredible credit and construction boom, China was building two world-scale utility\u00a0plants each\u00a0week and opening up a new airport every day. Economic fiction writers like Goldman\u2019s Jim O\u2019Neill,\u00a0chief propagator\u00a0of the\u00a0BRICs myth, declared\u00a0the Red Ponzi to be the\u00a0very\u00a0second coming of capitalism.<\/p>\n

Now, by contrast,\u00a0a Chinese billionaire goes missing practically every day, as a recent\u00a0Washington Post<\/strong>\u00a0article explained:<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what happened last year when China\u2019s richest man \u2014 at least on paper \u2014 lost half of his wealth in less than half an hour<\/strong>. It turned out that his company Hanergy may well\u00a0just 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\u2019t.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The gentleman\u00a0in question, Li Hejun, has had quite\u00a0the financial\u00a0spill. Exactly\u00a0400 days ago in April 2015, according to Forbes, he was worth\u00a0$32.7 billion<\/strong>. Then on May 20 last year, when the stock of Hanergy Thin Film Power (HTF), in which he had a 81% stake, plunged by\u00a047%, $14 billion<\/strong>\u00a0of that disappeared in minutes. And since then, all the rest of it has vaporized, as well.<\/p>\n

Our purpose here is not to\u00a0jitterbug on the corpse of another riches-to-rags story from the\u00a0Red Ponzi. The fact is, Li Hejun and his Hanergy capers is China writ large.<\/p>\n

The latter\u00a0is 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,\u00a0Tokyo and the rest down with it.<\/p>\n

\"china\"<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

e:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Red Ponzi Update\u2014\u2014-Gambling Like Never Before In the heyday of its incredible credit and construction boom, China was building two world-scale utility\u00a0plants each\u00a0week and opening up a new airport every day. Economic fiction writers like Goldman\u2019s Jim O\u2019Neill,\u00a0chief propagator\u00a0of the\u00a0BRICs myth, declared\u00a0the Red Ponzi to be the\u00a0very\u00a0second coming of capitalism. Now, by contrast,\u00a0a Chinese billionaire […]<\/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":[5979,2120,3264,11368],"class_list":["post-20750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-contracorner","tag-david-stockman","tag-gambling","tag-red-ponzi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20750","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=20750"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20751,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20750\/revisions\/20751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}