PRC Economy - New Reflections : April 20 2015

TSJones · Post by **TSJones** » 13 Jul 2015 21:30

Theo_Fidel wrote:My basic question for China is not dissimilar to the question of Greece.

How do you afford your lifestyle?

You can’t have USA/EU type living while being ~ 1/10 as productive.

the Chinese elites and the oligarchs of the developed world don't worry about that. what they worry about is maintaining their top dawg status.

pankajs · Post by **pankajs** » 18 Jul 2015 13:52

Bloomberg BusinessVerified account ‏@business

China unleashes $483 billion to stem the market rout http://bloom.bg/1RDcfzZ

4:15 PM - 17 Jul 2015

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 18 Jul 2015 15:41

Yesterday on CNN there was this analyst who mentioned that Chinese Stock Performance has nothing to do with its economy.

Chinese Stocks go up because of Greed and Drops Down because of Fear , thats the only two factor that drives the Chinese Stock Market.

ldev · Post by **ldev** » 18 Jul 2015 18:37

Austin wrote:Yesterday on CNN there was this analyst who mentioned that Chinese Stock Performance has nothing to do with its economy.

Neither does the US market at the macro level. At their purest level stock prices are supposed to be a derivative of earnings per share assuming relatively stable money supply. Ever since 2008 the cart has been leading the horse. Things had changed I realized when listening to Alan Greenspan in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis when he said that goosing up the index would lead to the "wealth effect" and increase consumer confidence levels i.e. an abnormal increase in money supply would lead to a simple skew of the demand-supply equations relating to investable assets including the stock market. And so the conventional investment process was turned on its head by a person no less than the Chairman of the US Federal Reserve. He was turning 100 years of investment orthodoxy on its head.

Now the Chinese are nothing but good at copying others. So listening to Greenspan, they must have thought, " What is good for the geese........". And so began the greatest credit bubble the world has ever since. And the repercussions of that are being felt today in the Chinese stock market. Prior to that the Chinese story was one of asset misallocation. Today it is compounded by a credit/financial bubble. Yes in the go go days it helped China become the greatest exporter of capital in the world buying assets all around the world i.e. trade surpluses turbocharged with credit creation. But there is still the capacity to absorb a downturn in China. They have to get over the fetish of trying to beat the US in being the biggest, baddest, loudest by a certain date.

TSJones · Post by **TSJones** » 18 Jul 2015 19:31

^^^^another reason is that China didn't cut back on buying stocks on margin until a few weeks ago. It was way too easy to buy stock on borrowed money. The US learned its lesson concerning this practice during the Great Depression in the '30's. The run up in stocks in the US from 2009 until today was not due to margin buying. It was due to

a: the pumping of money into the economy by the fed purchasing US treasuries and mortgage backed securities on the open market.

-and-

b. the rock bottom prices of stocks in 2009 due to panic selling in reaction to unrestricted derivatives market based on credit default swaps.

when the sub prime mortgages started going south, the credit default swaps came due and wall street had to conduct panic selling in order to meet credit default swap demands.

IOWs, I could have bought Ford for a $1.50, man! Groan......

Ford never received any bailout money. it didn't have to.

Can you imagine, buying the industrial might of Ford plus its sub, Ford Finance, for a stinking dollar and fifty cents!!?

Dear God in Heaven!!!!!

ldev · Post by **ldev** » 18 Jul 2015 22:19

>>>>IOWs, I could have bought Ford for a $1.50, man! Groan......

Dont beat yourself up!!

Only an ultimate insider would have known that US policy was in the process of change to prop up the financial markets e.g. Warren Buffet bought $5 billion preferred shares in Goldman Sachs in September 2008. Only an insider would have had that kind of information. My reading of the situation then was that all US money center banks and all the Wall Street bulge bracket firms would be bankrupt within days. Publicly available information indicated imminent bankruptcies. An investment in Goldman Sachs would have been deemed economic suicide. But policy changed then and ever since then a Government backstop is taken for granted by the market. Buffet has gone on to make a profit (via preferred share dividends and exercise of warrants ) of about $4.5 billion from that $5 billion investment!! Goldman redeemed his $5 billion investment in 2011 and so today he holds Goldman stock worth about $2.75 billion free and clear!!

wig · Post by **wig** » 23 Jul 2015 11:24

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/econ ... epens.html

I rather like this article-excerpts

The Communist Party has helpfully outlawed falling equity prices.

and

Some 300 corporate bosses were strong-armed into buying back their own shares. Police state tactics were used hunt down short sellers.
We know from a vivid account in Caixin magazine that China's top brokers were shut in a room and ordered to hand over money for an orchestrated buying blitz. A target of 4,500 was set for the Shanghai Composite by Communist Party officials.

being law abiding citiZens the Chinese did

Equities have recovered. How could they not do so, since selling was illegal, and not to buy was also illegal?

here is the article in its entirety

Capital exodus from China reaches $800bn as crisis deepens-China is reverting to credit stimulus after attempts to engineer a stock market boom failed horribly. The day of reckoning is delayed again

China is engineering yet another mini-boom. Credit is picking up again. The Communist Party has helpfully outlawed falling equity prices.

Economic growth will almost certainly accelerate over the next few months, giving global commodity markets a brief reprieve.

Yet the underlying picture in China is going from bad to worse. Robin Brooks at Goldman Sachs estimates that capital outflows topped $224bn in the second quarter, a level "beyond anything seen historically".

The Chinese central bank (PBOC) is being forced to run down the country's foreign reserves to defend the yuan. This intervention is becoming chronic. The volume is rising. Mr Brooks calculates that the authorities sold $48bn of bonds between March and June.

Charles Dumas at Lombard Street Research says capital outflows - when will we start calling it capital flight? - have reached $800bn over the past year. These are frighteningly large sums of money.

China's bond sales automatically entail monetary tightening. What we are seeing is the mirror image of the boom years, when the PBOC was accumulating $4 trillion of reserves in order to hold down the yuan, adding extra stimulus to an economy that was already overheating.

The squeeze earlier this year came at the worst moment, just as the country was struggling to emerge from recession. I use the term recession advisedly. Looking back, we may conclude that the world economy came within a whisker of stalling in the first half of 2015.

The Dutch CPB's world trade index shows that shipping volumes contracted by 1.2pc in May, and have been negative in four of the past five months. This is extremely rare. It would usually imply a global recession under the World Bank's definition.

The epicentre of this crunch has clearly been in China, with cascade effects through Russia, Brazil and the commodity nexus.

Chinese industry ground to a halt earlier this year. Electricity use fell. Rail freight dropped at near double-digit rates. What had begun as a deliberate policy by Beijing to rein in excess credit escaped control, escalating into a vicious balance-sheet purge.

The Chinese authorities have tried to counter the slowdown by talking up an irresponsible stock market boom in the state-controlled media. This has been a fiasco of the first order.

The equity surge had no discernable effect on GDP growth, and probably diverted spending away from the real economy. The $4 trillion crash that followed has exposed the true reflexes of President Xi Jinping.

Half the shares traded in Shanghai and Shenzhen were suspended. New floats were halted. Some 300 corporate bosses were strong-armed into buying back their own shares. Police state tactics were used hunt down short sellers.

We know from a vivid account in Caixin magazine that China's top brokers were shut in a room and ordered to hand over money for an orchestrated buying blitz. A target of 4,500 was set for the Shanghai Composite by Communist Party officials.

Caixin says the China Securities Finance Corporation - a branch of the regulator - now owns an estimated $200bn of Chinese stocks and has authority to buy a further $500bn if necessary to prop up the market.

This use of "brute force" - in the words of Peking University professor Michael Pettis - has done the trick. Equities have recovered. How could they not do so, since selling was illegal, and not to buy was also illegal?

Yet it is hard to see what remains of Xi Jinping's pledge at the Communist Party's Third Plenum in 2013 to let market forces play the "decisive role" in the economy. There was always a contradiction in this pledge. Mr Xi was touting free enterprise, even as he tightened control on the internet, academia and political dissent.

His failure to see through his reform strategy is fatal for China's economy. The World Bank and China's Development Research Centre - the brain-trust of premier Li Keqiang - published a long report three years ago calling for a market revolution before the Chinese economy hits a brick wall.

It warned that the country's 30-year growth model is obsolete. The low-hanging fruit of state-driven industrialisation has been picked.

Either China breaks its dependence on export-led growth and imported know-how or it will drift into the "middle income trap" awaiting all catch-up countries that fail to reform in time, and to make this fundamental break it must relinquish political control over the economy and let a hundred flowers bloom.

"The role of the private sector is critical because innovation at the technology frontier is quite different in nature from catching up. It is not something that can be achieved through government planning," it said.

Lombard Street Research says China's true economic growth rate is currently below 4pc, using proxy measures of output. Capital Economics and Oxford Economics have reached a similar verdict with their own tracking systems.

The legacy effect of pervasive excess capacity - the country produced more cement between 2011 and 2013 than the US in the entire 20th century - has been a blanket of deflation. Factory gate prices are falling at a rate of 4.6pc.

Mr Dumas says this has pushed one-year market borrowing costs to 10pc in real terms. "Current monetary conditions are extremely tight," said Mr Dumas.

The Chinese authorities have until now been reluctant to flood the system with fresh stimulus, all too aware that the ratio of private credit to GDP has jumped sixfold to 160pc of GDP since 2007.

This is already far beyond any safe level for a developing economy and has lost its potency, in any case. The extra growth generated by each yuan of new loans has dropped from a ratio of 0.80 in the pre-Lehman era to 0.24pc today. The trade-off has become toxic.

Adam Slater from Oxford Economics says the raft of easing measures since late 2014 have not kept pace with tightening conditions. The real exchange rate has jumped 15pc since mid-2014, chiefly due to China's dollar peg and Japan's yen devaluation.

"If the authorities wanted to quickly and radically ease monetary conditions, exchange rate depreciation would be the obvious way to go," he said.

This relief is blocked - for now - because it would risk other nasty side-effects. Chinese companies have $1.2 trillion of US denominated debt. A yuan devaluation would anger Washington and risk a beggar-thy-neighbour currency war across Asia, with lethal deflationary effects.

Mr Slater says China may instead have to slash interest rates to zero and even resort to "monetary-financed deficit spending" in the end, knowing that this stores up an even greater crisis later.

The early signs are that Mr Xi will now revert to stimulus again - hoping that he can calibrate the dosage, despite the Party's failure to do so on every previous phase of the stop-go cycle - concluding that it is too dangerous to let market forces do their worst after such vast imbalances have accumulated.

The Communist Party still controls the quantity of credit through the state banking system. It is using the power it knows best. New loans jumped to $205bn in June, up from $145bn in May. Local governments - facing new curbs on bank borrowing - issued a further $113bn in bonds. Taken together, they amount to a sugar rush of fresh credit.

Industrial output and electricity use are coming back from the dead. Sales of property floor space are suddenly spiking.

The great scare of early 2015 appears to be over. The hideous denouement has been averted once again. Mr Xi will surely discover that it won't be any easier next time.

Yagnasri · Post by **Yagnasri** » 23 Jul 2015 11:43

This news loans etc are all going to drain as there is no scope for proper investment opportunities in a economy which is already suffering from over capacity and no discipline as none is required.

But China built up huge reserves and can use the despotic tactics when it thinks fit. So it would be a interesting this to watch and see how things progress.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 23 Jul 2015 20:52

Caixin says the China Securities Finance Corporation - a branch of the regulator - now owns an estimated $200bn of Chinese stocks and has authority to buy a further $500bn if necessary to prop up the market.

This use of "brute force" - in the words of Peking University professor Michael Pettis - has done the trick. Equities have recovered. How could they not do so, since selling was illegal, and not to buy was also illegal?

Liu · Post by **Liu** » 24 Jul 2015 22:59

记者从中国铁路总公司获悉，今年上半年国家铁路完成固定资产投资2651.3亿元，同比（比上年同期）增长12.7%；新线投产2226公里。“根据目前的工作进度和下半年铁路建设的计划安排，经过努力，年内可以实现全国铁路投资和建设目标。”中国铁路总公司有关部门负责人表示。
今年铁路投资的目标是要保持在8000亿元以上，新投产里程8000公里以上。目前铁路建设仍保持高歌猛进的态势。在今年上半年完成的国家铁路固定资产投资中，铁路基本建设投资2342亿元，同比增长13%；国家铁路机车车辆购置309亿元，同比增长9.2%。
7月15日，南昌至赣州铁路客运专线全线开工建设，南昌至赣州客运专线全长415.165公里，设计时速250公里，建设工期5年，工程投资507.5亿元。

the 1st highspeed railway linking my homecity started on July15th. It is a 415km long and costs 50.75 biliion Usd(9billion USD). It is to be finished in 5 yearss.

here is the map of the highspeed railway.
http://defenceforumindia.com/forum/atta ... -jpg.5492/

the news says that CHina has invested 265.3 billion RMB( about 40 billion USD) on Chinese inter-city railways system(exclude urban subways).

it also says that the yearly investment on Chinese inter-city railways system in 2015 is to total over 800 billion RMB(about 125 billion USD). With the investment, CHina's intercity raiways is to increase additional 8000KM long railways.

Picklu · Post by **Picklu** » 25 Jul 2015 21:00

Congratulations Liu.

With the over capacity built in, the Chinese govt would soon order a space port to be built in every city as well.

Unruly chaotic Indian tongue firmly in cheek. Chinese tongue, last heard, has been outlawed.

TSJones · Post by **TSJones** » 25 Jul 2015 21:19

there's nothing wrong in building infrastructure. it's an investment in the future.

Picklu · Post by **Picklu** » 25 Jul 2015 21:24

and there is nothing wrong in paying 50 cent army either. it's just reward of better english and net savvy. let's leave it at that.

RamaY · Post by **RamaY** » 25 Jul 2015 21:31

Question to gurus...

What was Chinese stock Market capitalization in 2014? ($4-5T)?
It reached $10T in June 2015
People say it lost $3T value after recent crash so fell back to $7T?

Does it mean China basically readjusted its forex reserves ($3T) with this crash?

Does China have $50b money to invest in Pakistan after its forced to pump $3-500b into stock market?

TSJones · Post by **TSJones** » 25 Jul 2015 21:34

Picklu wrote:and there is nothing wrong in paying 50 cent army either. it's just reward of better english and net savvy. let's leave it at that.

as long as they are going to deal with actual facts, who cares?

where I draw the line is where they start pumping smoke up my dhotis with straight line graph predictions where China is going to be the bestest by such and such a date in the future. I call BS on that.

TSJones · Post by **TSJones** » 25 Jul 2015 21:50

RamaY wrote:Question to gurus...

What was Chinese stock Market capitalization in 2014? ($4-5T)?
It reached $10T in June 2015
People say it lost $3T value after recent crash so fell back to $7T?

Does it mean China basically readjusted its forex reserves ($3T) with this crash?

Does China have $50b money to invest in Pakistan after its forced to pump $3-500b into stock market?

when analyzing stock moves, you can't think in terms of actual cash. It's all hypothetical until you decide to monetize it.

and that can be tricky depending upon many factors, such as

a."if I sell will the market respond downward (that's huge amounts of stock, but for hedge funds a valid question)".

b. "who is starting another armed conflict today?"

c. "did Putin get any nooky last night?"

d. "is a severe winter storm heading for New York City?" or any other major financial center on the globe for that matter?"

e. "when do I need to retire?"

f. "I've got cancer/heart transplant/etc, I need my money now?"

and so on and on.......it just depends,

so China threw cash at the problem to staunch the collapse.

I would remind you that China controls the yuan closely and has a huge economy to soak up the problems.....

true, it doesn't have a lot of depth with their export or die policy but still......it's big.

RamaY · Post by **RamaY** » 25 Jul 2015 21:59

My suggestion to China (I know the party is reading me) is that it starts a immigration-ponzi scheme to usurp US/Canada natural resources.

Spend $1T to sponsor EB5 Green Cards in U.S. For 2 million Chinese Communist party workers (EB5 costs $0.5M investment that generates 10 local jobs).

In 2nd round onwards the EB5s will provide employment to the previously landed Chinese Green Card holders.

In 10 Yrs, China can occupy at least CA, Arizona, TX states with its 50-100m communist GC holders.

TSJones · Post by **TSJones** » 25 Jul 2015 22:04

RamaY wrote:My suggestion to China (I know the party is reading me) is that it starts a immigration-ponzi scheme to usurp US/Canada natural resources.

Spend $1T to sponsor EB5 Green Cards in U.S. For 2 million Chinese Communist party workers (EB5 costs $0.5M investment that generates 10 local jobs).

In 2nd round onwards the EB5s will provide employment to the previously landed Chinese Green Card holders.

In 10 Yrs, China can occupy at least CA, Arizona, TX states with its 50-100m communist GC holders.

oh yeah that's gonna work....

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 25 Jul 2015 22:24

RamaY wrote:Question to gurus...

What was Chinese stock Market capitalization in 2014? ($4-5T)?
It reached $10T in June 2015
People say it lost $3T value after recent crash so fell back to $7T?

Does it mean China basically readjusted its forex reserves ($3T) with this crash?

Does China have $50b money to invest in Pakistan after its forced to pump $3-500b into stock market?

I guess it all depends if the crash is a planned event or greed vs fear thing.

If you plan to crash it then you can encash most of what you want , If its just the normal crash we see in stock market fue to seasonal ups and downs , then the few smart people who saw it coming would make most of it while most would just looose it.

I remember in India when we had the last stock crash , many people lost their life savings and many committed suicide etc , I guess the story is the same every where.

In case of China the government would make most of the riches while in West/India etc the corporate make the most gain , at the cost of unsuspecting common man

Even our stock in India are highly over valued much due to Modi hype and the promised reform that is slow to come , I think even we would face the crash sooner or later either due to external factors or our own bubble

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 26 Jul 2015 18:26

There is a Chinese reality, who knows what it is? and then there is the Western view of it, that is massively colored by the ongoing battle in the West between free-market fundamentalists and capitalist-socialists, about the proper role of government. For those whom "government can do no good", China poses a huge challenge, and so China has to always be a shell-game, a paper economy on the verge of collapse, etc.; it is simply impossible to concede the possibility that a government, especially an authoritarian government, might accomplish some good. Truth will be somewhere between the Chinese government's glowing numbers and the doomsayers in the rest of the world.

Yagnasri · Post by **Yagnasri** » 26 Jul 2015 21:00

I agree that they are somewhere in between two. But the NPA posistion and financial position is quite difficult to recover. I am not sure if bad lendings of such a scale can be without bad results. The advantage China has is the total support from their rulers and total freedom those rulers enjoy to do whatever they want. The other advantage is the huge reserves they have.

We have to see how they use both these advantages.

RamaY · Post by **RamaY** » 27 Jul 2015 02:03

TSJ garu,

I don't agree "completely" with all the losses being on paper only. There will be a good % of REAL loss in terms of margin-calls, people leaving the market, portfolio changes etc when a crash happens (or even in boom). That change is done in real cash.

If we assume this amount is 10% (just pulled out of my Musharraf) of net change in market capitalization, nearly $300B real money is lost when Chinese market lost $3T in value.

I think this is the amount CPC pumped into the market to stabilize the situation.

Depending on tax laws & other stuff, CPC may not make that much money in a bull run.

Am I ballpark?

TSJones · Post by **TSJones** » 27 Jul 2015 04:14

yes, I think you are right.

pankajs · Post by **pankajs** » 27 Jul 2015 11:16

The Chinese gov. need to do more to control their stock market

EconomicTimesMarkets ‏@ETMarkets 17m17 minutes ago

CHINA CRACKS: #ShanghaiComp down over 5%, #ShenzenComp down 3%

hanumadu · Post by **hanumadu** » 27 Jul 2015 11:45

Why did the chinese govt had to ungli the stock market in the first place? What I gathered from posters here is the chinese govt exhorted the people to buy stocks, to make it national mission to buy stocks. Did it even assure them of returns? So why kick a sleeping dog? How will people react to their losses?

pankajs · Post by **pankajs** » 27 Jul 2015 11:55

If $500 billion allocation does not stop this kind of gyrations the Chinese gov will need to up the budget.

Bloomberg TV India ‏@BloombergTVInd 7m7 minutes ago

#BreakingNews Global Alert: Chinese Markets end weak; Shanghai composite falls over 8.4%.

Remarkable how little you get in return for $500 billion these days.

JE Menon · Post by **JE Menon** » 27 Jul 2015 14:36

Bloody hell... This shite is beginning to look like it actually might be a problem...

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 27 Jul 2015 19:26

JE Menon wrote:Bloody hell... This shite is beginning to look like it actually might be a problem...

The understatement is most elegant

The total paper loss from the peak is about $4-4.5 trillion now ?

Vamsee · Post by **Vamsee** » 27 Jul 2015 19:40

Suraj garu,

The rise last year was also spectacular. All this fall is just wiping out that rise. They are still up compared to last year I think.

Regards,
Vamsee

hanumadu · Post by **hanumadu** » 27 Jul 2015 19:56

Suraj wrote:
JE Menon wrote:Bloody hell... This shite is beginning to look like it actually might be a problem...
The understatement is most elegant The total paper loss from the peak is about $4-4.5 trillion now ?

No. Just gave up some of the gains of the last few days after the chinese govt back stopped the market.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 27 Jul 2015 22:02

This reminds me of the parabolic rise of the Nikkei of the late 80s . Back then it was the Japanese who seemed they could walk on water. They dropped and dropped a long way. They still have not recovered to the peak then.

TSJones · Post by **TSJones** » 28 Jul 2015 00:28

as pointed out a number of weeks ago, the Chinese stock market rise was done largely on margin,

when the rise stopped and profit taking began, the loans were called in resulting in panic selling.

like mc hammer sang "can't touch this"

you can't create a market bubble on margin

"can't do that"

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 28 Jul 2015 03:01

A_Gupta wrote:Truth will be somewhere between the Chinese government's glowing numbers and the doomsayers in the rest of the world.

Bulls and bears

RamaY · Post by **RamaY** » 28 Jul 2015 05:05

vayu tuvan wrote:
A_Gupta wrote:Truth will be somewhere between the Chinese government's glowing numbers and the doomsayers in the rest of the world.
Bulls and bears

Truth is truth. Instead of fatuous erudition, we must seek truth!

Market is sometimes bullish & sometimes bearish. Truth moves along with it, not on law of averages.

Per law of averages everything is half wrong or we are half asleep all the time.

China losing 1Yr worth market growth means Indian Market advanced by 2Yrs in comparison.

Yesterday China lost another $50-80B actual money, along with gone Paki Industrial corridor. No wonder Pakis went back to their usual tactical brilliance today.

pankajs · Post by **pankajs** » 28 Jul 2015 09:47

George Chen ‏@george_chen 2h2 hours ago

Chinese state media: foreign force must be behind stock market crash this time and let's fight to defend our wealth!

Business Insider ‏@businessinsider 3h3 hours ago

China is rolling out the verbal intervention in another desperate attempt to underpin the nation's stock market http://read.bi/1JMO08T

rsingh · Post by **rsingh** » 28 Jul 2015 18:38

Suraj wrote:This reminds me of the parabolic rise of the Nikkei of the late 80s . Back then it was the Japanese who seemed they could walk on water. They dropped and dropped a long way. They still have not recovered to the peak then.

Japanese Emperor 's palace was more expensive than whole California. Remember cartoon in Time (or was it newsweek?) .....Amercan Flag with "Made In Japan " on it. It was so outlandish at that time.

ashashi · Post by **ashashi** » 28 Jul 2015 19:20

Someone said it so well....

Chinese stock markets are like a Casino, except in a Casino you know the rules of the game.

pankajs · Post by **pankajs** » 29 Jul 2015 12:11

SK Anand ‏@di_an 2h2 hours ago

@Leopard212 Chinese govt response to Stock Crisis - Inject US$100 b into soverign rescue fund http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-2 ... ss-asian-e … …

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 29 Jul 2015 12:19

Good job by them. $100 billion sounds like quite a significant market stabilization intervention. It should last at least a day if they use it right.

When the going gets tough...
Uncertain times fuel occult beliefs in China's Party hierarchy

Sometime in the last year, a group of mid-ranked government officials gathered for a dinner in a private room in a Beijing restaurant, all slightly nervous, but keen with anticipation.

The guest of honor - a Buddhist master who would predict their fortunes.

The master looked around the room and into the eyes of each of the dozen or so attendees, according to one of those present, who spoke on condition of anonymity as officials and Communist Party members are not supposed to believe in "superstition".

"He picked people out depending on the shape of their eyes and told them whether they had been touched by luck or misfortune," the source, a government official with ties to the leadership, told Reuters.

A few months later, one of the people present whose eyes told of misfortune to come was under investigation for abuse of power, the source added.

"At times like this with so much uncertainty, lots of us are looking for ways to foresee our fortunes," the source said.

The source declined to name the master, citing a fear he may be arrested.

Altair · Post by **Altair** » 29 Jul 2015 16:19

Why cant the Chinese start printing their own currency and start lending it to these investors..It has been done before in a country on the other side of the world and they became a superpower!!