The Housing Bubble

“Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis accused the creditors of blackmail.

But he pledged a deal would be reached soon after the vote and that current limits on bank withdrawals would ease.”

Could hubris stand in the way of a deal?

The euro and Greece
Europe’s future in Greece’s hands
Whatever its outcome, the Greek crisis will change the EU for ever
Jul 4th 2015 | From the print edition
Timekeeper

THE European Union has never seen the like of the past eight days in Greece: barred banks, capital controls, the first IMF default by a developed country, the collapse of a multi-billion-euro bail-out, plans for a referendum that may hasten Greece’s ejection from the single currency, and the beggary of the people. Were the stakes not so high, all those emergency summits and last-minute demands would count as farce.

Instead it is a tragedy, where an outcome that all sides say they do not want—Greece’s exit from the euro—seems increasingly likely. The chaos is evidence that leaving the euro would be disastrous for Greece, not least because modest gains from default and devaluation would be overwhelmed by political and economic instability. For the rest of Europe, too, “Grexit” has well-rehearsed risks, notably that of a failing state on the continent’s south-eastern flank. But as the drama has become more desperate, so Europeans seem less worried. They take comfort from the fact that Greece is uniquely dysfunctional. Game-playing and repeated miscalculation have poisoned the negotiations (see article). Without Greece, many now conclude, the euro zone might actually be more stable.

Sadly, that is wrong. Look beyond Greece, and the threat of further conflict within the euro is all but inevitable. Although Greece’s departure would prove the euro is not irrevocable, nobody would know what rule-breaking would lead to expulsion. Nor would it resolve the inevitable polarisation of debtor and creditor governments in bail-outs. If the single currency does not face up to the need for reform, then this crisis or the next will witness more Greeces, more blunders and more dismal weeks. In time, that will wreck the euro and the EU itself.
…

Thx for the great personal anecdotes in your post, and your spelling was just fine.

Another dollop of crow, anyone?

Thanks NJ!

“Are they invested in the Chinese stock market?? Hell, NO! Both her Cousin and Brother both called it a stock market bubble and have no intention of losing money on it.”

It’s all the retail investors with grade school educations who are driving up the market (or WERE driving up the market). It will be interesting to see how they react when they lose their life savings, especially since the government pushed investing in the stock market as a patriotic duty.

Thanks for the fascinating “boots on the ground” report. You can’t always glean the truth from economic statistics and financial indices.

Repent Dan! The end is nigh!!!

London, according to Max Kaiser, is the global epicenter of financial fraud. JP Morgan outsourced its fraud to London (the London Whale) and who knows what other surprises are percolating under the surface?

CNN Money
Business
Personal Finance
Investing Guide
Why China’s crazy stock market is getting scary
By Charles Riley
What’s happening in Chinese markets?
Fill in the blank: In recent weeks, China’s stock markets have __________________.
A) Wiped out as much as $2 trillion of investors’ wealth.
B) Swung by as much as 10% in a matter of hours.
C) Scared the living daylights out of millions of shareholders.
D) All of the above.

Yes, correct! The answer is “all of the above.” China’s stocks markets have been swinging wildly since the middle of last month. One minute shares are up 6%, the next they’re down 5% and plunging into a bear market. The main Shanghai market lurched lower again Thursday, dropping 3.5%.

Here’s what you need to know:

1) First, relax — at least for now. Unless you’re reading this from China, you probably don’t have much invested in these markets. Foreigners own just 1.5% of Chinese shares, according to Capital Economics. That number is growing, but only very gradually.

2) For Chinese investors, however, it’s been a very wild ride. The Shanghai Composite — the world’s third largest stock exchange if you add up the value of its companies — has lost 24% since June 12. The bears are growling even louder on the smaller Shenzhen Composite, down roughly 30% in the same period.

3) Right, but those markets are still up for the year? Yes, that’s true. The sharp losses follow a long bull run. The Shanghai Composite is still up 20% since Jan 1.

4) Still, there’s a lot of pain out there, especially among retail investors. Just 10% to 12% of Chinese households own shares, but a wave of newbie investors have flooded into the market this year. Brokers opened four million new accounts in a single week in April, according to BlackRock.

5) Analysts have come up with a bunch of theories to explain why the bubble burst. Here’s the most compelling: Shares prices had got way ahead of economic growth — now at its weakest since 2009 — and company profits, which are actually lower than a year ago.

6) Particularly troubling is an explosion in margin trading. That’s when investors buy stocks with borrowed money. When margin bets go sour, investors are forced to quickly pay back huge amounts of cash.

7) Things could get much worse. According to Oxford Economics, shares may have to fall another 35% or so to bring them into line with long-term averages.

Trouble in the stock market has the potential to ripple through the Chinese economy, the second biggest on the planet with trade ties to nearly every country. Another 30% fall would erase roughly $1 trillion in wealth. That could have a big impact far beyond China.

Beijing is worried and is trying to prevent panic. The central bank has already cut interest rates to a record low. Market regulators have tried to reassure investors by blaming “irresponsible internet hearsay” and critical commentaries for “disturbing market order.”

9) But official moves could simply pump more air into the bubble, risking an even bigger crash. Regulators further relaxed rules on margin trading Thursday.

Full crow territory. Don’t skip the feet, they are the best part.

Out, out brief candle.

ft dot com
July 1, 2015 11:19 am
Reversal of China’s stock market rally breeds anger and regret
Gabriel Wildau in Shanghai
Chinese stock investors monitor their share prices at a stock brokerage firm in Huaibei, east China’s Anhui province on June 4, 2012. Chinese investors took notice after the key Shanghai stock index ended down 64.89 points — exactly matching the numerals in June 4, 1989 — the date of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. CHINA

At a stock trading hall for retail investors near People’s Square in Shanghai on Wednesday, the mood is glum.

Shenyin Wanguo, like other Chinese brokerages, maintains its hall for investors to hang around, make a few trades and share tips. Among the mostly elderly investors there, zest for market speculation goes hand-in-hand with the socialist conviction that the government can and should protect them from risk.

“Even I, an old party member who started playing the market in the 1990s — I don’t believe the regulators any more,” says Ms Xu, 76-year-old retiree.

China’s main stock index lost 5 per cent on Wednesday, shrugging off an interest-rate cut by the central bank over the weekend. The market has now tumbled 22 per cent since hitting a seven-year high on June 12. Ms Xu blames the securities regulator for approving too many initial public offerings, siphoning demand away from existing shares. She wants the regulator to slow the flow of IPOs to one per month.

She also lost money punting on internet stocks amid pledges by top leaders to promote the technology sector. ChiNext, the Shenzhen-based start-up index, had more than tripled in the year to early June but has since plummeted 30 per cent.

“The country is promoting ‘internet plus’ so I bought some internet-themed stocks,” she says. “Their results looked good. But then came a few days of limit-down. Now I’m stuck,” she says, referring to the maximum 10 per cent limit on a stock’s gain or loss on a single day.

Reflecting the surge of retail investors into the market, trading accounts holding at least some stock hit 68m by the end of May, up 27 per cent from a year earlier, according to clearing house figures.

Yet analysts say the roots of China’s stock boom, and its unfolding bust, lie not in old-fashioned retail trading halls, which are steadily disappearing. Instead, margin lending, which did not exist during China’s last big equity boom and bust, has played a central role in the current cycle.

Official margin lending through securities brokerages peaked at Rmb2.3tn ($371bn) on June 19, up from just Rmb403bn a year earlier. Goldman Sachs estimates such lending equals 12 per cent of the free-float market capitalisation of margin-eligible stocks, and 3.5 per cent of gross domestic product, “both of which are easily the highest in the history of global equity markets”.

But even that figure fails to capture the full extent of leveraged stock investing. In addition to brokerages, grey-market margin lending through third parties has pumped an additional Rmb500bn to Rmb1tn in borrowed money into the market, according to estimates from Haitong Securities.

Brokerages limit margin leverage to a ratio of two to one and require clients to put up at least Rmb500,000. By contrast, Xunqianwang, a company that connects punters with borrowed money, allows leverage of up to six to one, and requires as little as Rmb2,000 of the client’s own funds. The company, whose Chinese name translates as “Search for Money”, boasts on its website that new clients can gain approval in an hour.

“We can still control the risk because we strictly examine and assess every client,” says Zhong Jingtian, founder and chief executive. The company restricts which stocks a client can buy and does not give loans to a single client exceeding Rmb3m.

Analysts say the proliferation of margin lending creates the risk of a snowball effect as margin investors, faced with mounting losses, are forced to liquidate their positions unless they can post additional collateral.

David Cui, equity analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, estimates that the Shanghai Composite would need to fall an additional 40 per cent for large-scale margin calls to kick in on official margin lending.

“However, this doesn’t mean that margin call is not a serious risk right now,” he wrote in a note on Wednesday. “The selling pressure so far has mainly come from stock-related borrowings via various unofficial channels where the leverage is much higher.”
…

China Housing Prices Fall Again

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2015/03/20150311_china6.jpg

““There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that the positive wealth effect following a surging domestic stock market has played a role”

“According to data from China Securities Depository and Clearing Co, residents from Guangdong opened the biggest number of new stock accounts among all regions in China in 2014, with Shenzhen residents accounting for about half of all new accounts in the province.”

Shenzhen real estate is being pushed up by all those stock market profits. So how’s that stock market doing?

Baaaaahahahahahahhahahh!

When your exhaling breath is considered a toxic substance . . . [I'm drawing a blank here, you fill in the rest]

From the article:

“For homeowners currently locked in at a low rate, rising mortgage rates could represent a budgetary curveball should they decide to buy another home in coming years. Homeowners used to a certain monthly mortgage payment may balk at paying a higher amount per month in financing costs for a home roughly comparable to their current residence, to say nothing of a home that is more expensive.

In this way, higher mortgage rates – and higher prices! – make it more difficult if not impossible for households to move to different home, which cuts housing turnover and sales and puts downward pressure on prices: the “mortgage rate lock-in” phenomenon, as it’s called.

“For decades, homeowners haven’t had to worry about that,” the analysis warns. “By this time next year, they’ll need to start.”

“This is another success of the current monetary policies, and the no-holds-barred credit boom they have engendered. They’ve led to a convoluted and precarious situation where nearly all assets, including homes, are overpriced, and not just by a little. It will unwind, as these things always do over time, and for many people, a home will once again become an expense rather than that wealth-producing asset that they were promised it would be.”

The “mortgage rate lock-in phenomenon,” coming soon to a homeowner’s nightmare near you.

Odds that someone will get burned are at 100% certainty.

Masthead
m dot ft dot com/markets
Home > Markets
Why Grexit odds are probably 99% wrong
Ralph Atkins in London

What is the probability of Greece exiting the eurozone? The fluctuating survival chances of the eurozone’s weakest economy are hugely important for global financial markets. Its continuing membership of Europe’s monetary union would avert a disruptive market correction, at the very least.

Statisticians would say the odds are impossible to calculate. “Grexit” — Greece’s exit — would follow a sequence of events, decisions and emotional choices by voters and politicians, and unpredictable economic and financial forces. Even if point estimates were possible, this week’s news flow shows they would change from hour to hour.

But that has not stopped economists and strategists attaching quite precise numbers to Grexit risks. On Monday, Berenberg Bank raised the possibility of Grexit from 40 per cent to 55 per cent. BNP Paribas reckoned it had increased only to about 20 per cent. But Standard & Poor’s rating agency saw a 50 per cent likelihood. Writing for the Financial Times, Mohamed El-Erian, economic adviser to Allianz, saw an 85 per cent probability. Nobody was specific about the timing.

Are such estimates of any use? Possibly, as a shorthand way of expressing levels of concern — or grabbing headlines. But the range of estimates highlights their spurious accuracy (are you sure it is 55 per cent and not 62 per cent?), which in turn reveals markets’ inability to price political risks. In fact, a widespread view among traders recently has been that Grexit risks are impossible to trade, which helps explain why share and bond price movements have been relatively limited as events have unfolded in Athens.

The danger, however, is that assigning numerical probabilities creates the false impression that markets have superior knowledge about the future; the risk is of being caught out badly when they are wrong.
…

Business Insider
Finance
A Greek politician told us Grexit will ‘100%’ happen if ‘No’ wins on Sunday — and plans are already being made
Mike Bird
Jul. 2, 2015, 2:06 AM
Greece protest eu flag REUTERS/Alexandros AvramidisAnti-austerity protesters march in front of a destroyed EU flag during a demonstration in Thessaloniki, Greece July 1, 2015

ATHENS, Greece — Contradictory polls are showing that any result is possible in Greece’s upcoming referendum.

The “No” campaign against the bailout seemed to be in the lead on Tuesday morning, while another later in the day showed “Yes” narrowly ahead.

A Yes vote would mean agreeing to a bailout deal set down by Greece’s European creditors, which the government is against — though since Greece’s existing programme expired on June 30, it’s not even clear that’s on the table any more.

A No vote would reject the proposals, which aim for more austerity and reforms — which could even mean Greece leaving the eurozone.
…

It’s officially off by over twenty percent in just two weeks time. Mathematically speaking, this reverses 40% of the 100% gain over the preceding year and wipes out untold amounts of margin debt that was used to speculate in the Chinese stock markets.

How much farther it is to the bottom, nobody knows.

Which way she goes,
Nobody knows.

That’s a one man two women setup. It’ll never fly. If folks are serious about legalizing multiple partner relationships they are going to have to forge the way with a one woman/multiple man arrangement so the feminists and victim classes can get behind it. Once that becomes legal they can hardly say no to one man with many wives, which would end up being the more common arrangement anyway.

One key difference between gay marriage and polygamy is that gay marriage fits rather well into the legal system, whereas polygamy would be a legal nightmare.

Palmy - if you want to see where this depravity will lead - go read up on a really bad Roman leader (Ceasar) named Tiberius especially his little brothel and pedofile compound on the Isle of Capri back in the day in the Roman Empire (the corrupt thing that evolved from the Roman Republic).
Tiberius was a disgusting, appalling pedofile and murderer who saw nothing wrong with putting children on full display in his court and if he did not like the circuses he saw simply threw them off a 1000 ft. cliff to their deaths.
Kinda redefines eating crow doesn’t it?
How u?

http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2015/07/02/countrys-first-gay-divorce-firm-opens-in-philadelphia/

keep gov out of it!!

Didn’t you read the disclaimer when you signed up for your brokerage account?

But buying at Whole Foods makes me feel special and wonderful, just like I’m listening to NPR or walking in a Susan Komen pink walkathon. It feels almost as good as voting for Hillary (”H”).

‘For example, inspectors weighed eight packages of chicken tenders, which were priced at $9.99 per pound. Consumers who purchased these packages would have been overcharged by about $4.13 on average, according to a DCA release. One package was overpriced by $4.85.’

“Straight up, we made some mistakes and we want to own that,” Whole Foods co-CEO Walter Robb said in a two-minute video apology alongside John Mackey, the chain’s co-founder.’

Mistakes? Isn’t the label generating process semi-automatic? How does the process consistently misweigh the chicken? It had to be deliberate.

All those yoga pants stretched over bottoms you could bounce a quarter off of make the Whole Foods experience well worth it, on the whole.

I’m in.

A few words for Macy’s and NBC:

McDonald’s. I’m lovin’ it.

He’s better off without NBC anyway. That network has been stinkin’ out the joint for years.

But they believe in free screech! And freedumb of the press.

The social justice warriors are really out to get him.

I wish they wouldn’t. As a lib I’d be delighted to see The Donald as the GOP nominee.

Yup, Trump is making people nervous.

a self proclaimed socialist

eu=pu

“Memo to Trump: Bernie didn’t pay anyone $50 to hear him speak”

Didn’t have to. Soros covered it for him. Hope he paid the bills faster than he did in Ferguson. There were some disgruntled rioters, er, uh, warriors there when the smoke cleared.

I know, let’s shove a corporatist trade agreement, trading jobs for corporate profits, down the nation’s throat over the people’s strong objections, and call it a jobs creator in true Orwellian fashion, while transforming the US into a nation of insecure, underpaid servants.

What is especially amazing is that the exact same thing is happening on both sides of the Pacific. Governments are signing up for the treaty without their congresses and parliaments even being allowed to read it. It’s a corporatist’s wet dream. They now hold all the cards and they now it. What will be next? Will corporations have a feudal era like power of life and death over us? Will constitutions be abrogated and replaced with corporate by-laws?

Why not cut PR loose and let them become an independent nation, like most of the other Caribbean islands? Maybe that’s the best deal to be had… have the US pay off most or part of the debt then cut the cord.

I wonder which banks and financial institutions sold producers those hedges, and how much they’ve had to pay out so far?

Betting on oil is ALWAYS bad.

the odd thing is that 75% of the country think that 95% of the country is stupid.

I love rags to riches stories!! The American Dream!! Work hard in your next life and you may not be a hater.

George Soros, a Hungarian-American businessman, stock investor, and political activist, was born on August 12, 1930 in Budapest, Hungary. He is the son of the Esperantist writer Tivadar Soros, a Hungarian Jew who was imprisoned after World War I until he escaped and took refuge in Russia. Soros childhood was spent in the hardships of war; and he was one of the very few people who survived the German occupancy and the Battle of Budapest. In 1947, the 17 year old Soros emigrated to England to live with his uncle who helped him with his educational and living expenses.

He completed his Bachelor of Science in philosophy from the prestigious London School of Economics in 1952. In 1956, Soros came to New York City where, from 1956 to 1959, he worked as an arbitrage trader. Later, in 1959, he served Wertheim and Company as a financial analyst. He left the company in 1963 and joined Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder as the vice-president and held the position till 1973.
In 1991, Soros received the doctoral degrees from Corvinus University of Budapest, and Yale University.

Sorry, stay off the “Hill’s” and outta the “Bush’s”

Well, score one for the good guys! $5 worth of ammo saved countless thousands in trials and incarceration; that’s called a win for the taxpayers.

Big question here - did husband escalate the situation by going for his gun, or would he have been shot regardless? These are the kinds of life-and-death decisions that every gun owner must contemplate.

The decision is much simpler if you don’t have a gun - you are then just at the mercy of whoever has one on you!

Welp, he’s the decider.

Exhibit A for NOT legalizing MJ.

I thought after the epic incompetence of the first Bush administration, ‘Muricans would never re-elect him. I was wrong. I will never again underestimate the stupidity of the ‘Murican electorate.

Markets Commodities Oil Markets
Oil Falters After Rig Count Grows
U.S. oil producers added 12 rigs last week, after 29 weeks of cuts
Traffic slowly moves along the 110 Freeway in downtown Los Angeles. U.S. oil stocks unexpectedly rose this week despite it being the summer driving season when Americans take to the roads increasing gasoline consumption, which usually draws on supplies. Photo: Associated Press
By Timothy Puko
Updated July 2, 2015 4:47 p.m. ET

The amount of rigs drilling for oil in the U.S. rose for the first time in seven months, triggering a slump in crude oil prices to their lowest settlement in two months.

U.S. oil producers added 12 rigs last week, breaking 29 straight weeks of cuts, in response to prices that have rebound to- and stayed at $60 a barrel since late April. That convinced producers to end months of massive cutbacks that started after the U.S. shale drilling boom flooded the market and sent prices crashing.

But the increase in rigs is scaring investors and analysts who have warned that oil could be on the verge of another sharp fall. Production has kept making small gains even as drilling has declined and stockpiles have hit historic levels around the world. If rigs get back to work, that could keep the market flooded with oil, a concern that built strong momentum this week.

On Wednesday, the U.S. benchmark price broke below a $4 range it had traded in for two months. That jolt came after the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported domestic oil stockpiles unexpectedly rose for the first time in nine weeks.

Those drilling-rig cuts have slowed dramatically in recent weeks, and last week’s increase is a sign the market may stay oversupplied and head for a “replay” of the past year’s steep fall in prices, said John Kilduff, founding partner of Again Capital in New York, which invests in energy commodities.

“It seems to be a definitive break in the trend and it’s definitely registering in the market,” he added. “The rig count’s going up, but the production, after all the past cuts, isn’t going down either. This is a week of very bearish news for the oil market.”
…

Markets | Fri Jul 3, 2015 12:47am EDT
Oil prices drop on rising U.S. rig count, China stock market probe
SINGAPORE | By Henning Gloystein and and Keith Wallis
Motorists queue for fuel at a fuel station in Jakarta March 30, 2012.
Reuters/Enny Nuraheni

Oil prices dropped on Friday as a rising U.S. rig count stoked fears of oversupply and after Chinese regulators opened an investigation into suspected stock market manipulation.

Front-month U.S. crude futures CLc1 were trading at $56.70 per barrel at 0439 GMT, down 23 cents from their last settlement.

That means U.S. crude has fallen from a price range of $57-62 per barrel that it had been in since early May.

Brent crude futures LCOc1 were down 14 cents at $61.93 per barrel. But the contract remained in a downward trend that has been in place since early May and which has seen prices fall almost 10 percent.

“Negative sentiment stemmed from an increased U.S. oil rig count (by 12 to 640), after dropping for six months. U.S. shale producers have brought down the breakeven cost from $35 to $20 per barrel,” ANZ bank said on Friday.

“The current U.S. horizontal and vertical rig count across the Permian, Eagle Ford, Bakken and Niobrara shale plays implies that U.S. oil production growth will reach 135,000 barrels per day year-on-year by 4Q15,” Goldman Sachs said on Friday.

The rising U.S. rig count adds to near record production by OPEC and Russia.

“The market decided to focus on the economy and the old story about the oil glut (in trading on Friday),” said Jonathan Barratt, chief investment officer at Sydney’s Ayers Alliance.

“Summer drive time (in the United States) is not as strong, the rig count is up, (and) shale output is not translating into real demand as it should be,” Barratt said.

“With oil prices at these levels the concern is people are have not stopped producing.” The Greek economic and debt crisis and worries over China’s commodities markets also weighed on investor sentiment, Barratt said.

He expected oil prices to move lower next week and could retest April’s lows.

Traders said that Asia’s commodity markets were also impacted by reports that China’s regulators had opened an investigation into suspected market manipulation after a slump of more than 20 percent in Chinese stocks since mid-June.
…

The other cool part is that the Chinese government is pulling out all the stops to prop up the stock market, apparently to no avail.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

Tea Leaf Nation
Chinese Stock Investors Seek a Savior, or a Scapegoat
If Shanghai’s stock index is a proxy for national strength and pride, what happens when it plunges?
By David Wertime
July 2, 2015

Chinese stocks are hurtling back toward earth, and the public fallout is fast getting ugly. After a dizzying ascent that saw the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index rocket from 2,185 on August 1, 2014, to 5,166 on June 12, it has since surrendered 24 percent of its value, wiping out more than $2.4 trillion in wealth in the grisly process. That’s bad news for China’s mom-and-pop investors, or xiao san, who had flooded the market in recent months, especially those who used borrowed money. It’s also bad news for the Chinese government, which now faces a simultaneous hit to the national bottom line and to Communist Party credibility, much of which is staked on stable economic development. Perhaps inevitably, the search has begun for someone else to blame.

During the market rally and the recent pain that has ensued, the government has utilized not only monetary and fiscal policy, but also its outsized voice in state media in an attempt to steady the market. Recently, little in its vast toolbox seems to have worked. On Saturday, June 27, the day following a vertigo-inducing 7.4 percent tumble in the Shanghai Index, the Central Bank announced cuts to interest rates and, the same day, said it would reduce the amount of capital banks were required to keep on hand, which would allow banks to pump more money into the financial system. In the announcement’s wake, four major publications focusing on the markets proclaimed a continuing bull market. The Securities Times wrote that the market was primed for a “slow bull” over the rest of 2015, echoing claims in a March article series in state mouthpiece People’s Daily that predicted a “slow bull,” one eventually “expected to challenge 4,000.” What read then as an optimistic prediction had come, by mid-2015, to look like a floor that the government would backstop.

But on Monday, June 29, the Shanghai Index took another tumble. That evening, the Chinese treasury announced that it would consider allowing pension funds to invest directly in the market. Such funds collectively hold about $460 billion — the influx of some of that capital could raise, or at least stabilize, faltering stock prices. The next day, June 30, was the best for Chinese stocks in weeks. That evening, Bai Yansong, a respected political commenter who anchors a television show called News 1+1 for state-run China Central Television, remonstrated those looking to state-run pensions to act as “a great savior, coming in waves like the People’s Liberation Army.” Bai pointed out the law allowing pensions to invest was only a draft; in passing, he noted that June 30 had been a good day, “with aunties in trading halls everywhere singing the national anthem,” invoking a (possibly apocryphal) report that had appeared online the day before. Bai’s comment was meant as a cautionary tale, although images of smiling, middle-aged women singing patriotically in front of backlit stock boards seemed to gain more media traction than his admonitions.

The flip side of the implication that those who invest love China is that those who sell or gainsay the market do not. About the same time that Bai was trying to reason with his viewers, a rambling article packed with invective and bereft of evidence went viral on massive mobile platform WeChat, accusing the United States Federal Reserve of orchestrating the recent swoon by jiggering U.S. interest rates to keep capital in U.S. equities, instead of flowing into China. The presence of wealthy funders, the author wrote, was like well-positioned fighters on a “battlefield.” If China could attract more risk capital into domestic stock markets, “Chinese production would move up the value chain, swallowing American industry and allowing us to stomp on America’s corpse.”

Also on June 30, state-run digital magazine the Paper shared a tongue-in-cheek cartoon that repurposed old Communist propaganda showing a woman and child wishing Chinese soldiers well as they return from battle. In the remixed images, the troops are marked with the names of state-run financial institutions like China International Capital Corp. and Central Huijin. “During the days you were gone,” the woman tells the soldiers, “the foreign devils harmed the villagers greatly.” A July 2 article in online portal Sina Finance called “Someone Is Maliciously Shorting A-Shares” invoked U.S. financier George Soros’ short sales of Malaysian ringgit during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, drawing a parallel between those short sales and the Chinese stock market’s current plight. Online rumors have fingered Goldman Sachs for short selling in the Chinese market too.

Social tensions are growing as China’s retail investors, once so eager to enter the market, seem to have lost a bit of their collective nerve. July 1 began with a loss of over 5 percent; the morning of July 2, shortly after stocks opened even worse, a woman leaped to her death in a Shanghai shopping mall. A Chinese-language report (warning: graphic images) wrote that while the reason for her suicide was not immediately clear, “morning markets were diving to 3,911” when she took her life. Online outlet China News reported that another woman in her 30s lost about $640,000 in recent gyrations and now “trembles” at the mere mention of the word “stock.”

Because some investors expected — or hoped — that the government would act as a shield against massive losses, the recent swoon ultimately hits at the state’s credibility. After the close of trading on Friday, July 2, the market had fallen below 4,000, the floor that the government had once implicitly vouchsafed. That evening, with recent government measures foundering, state agency Xinhua published an open letter from a group of five finance professors complaining about the drop, which it called a “near disaster.” It found the failure of state-driven efforts to stabilize the markets “inexplicable.” Among other factors, the letter blamed experts, reporters, and bloviators for “irresponsibly” bad-mouthing Chinese stocks. It warned darkly that the market fall was not only damaging to middle-class aspirants, but to Chinese society and the China dream — “and cannot be taken lightly.”
…

Man, that blood splatters far and wide. Don’t look if you get queasy.

Kung Pao crow Dan, it’ll make it go down easier.

April 11, 2013
How to Eat Crow, by Chef Melissa Perfit
Photograph by Elizabeth Renstrom for Bloomberg Businessweek

So you’re just going to give me a crow? I’d probably slit its throat, hang it by its feet to get the blood out. Then chop off the head and feet, they’re probably really poky and talony. I suppose you’d pluck it. You don’t want to eat its feathers.

The meaty part of a crow is its breast meat. Butcher that, set it aside. We’re going to use the other part of the bird for crow stock. Gotta use the whole animal. Put the crow bones and the wings on a sheet tray and roast them at 400 degrees until they get nice and brown and crispy. Put them in a pot, cover them with water. Add yellow onions with skins, celery, carrots, and thyme. You let that simmer for probably eight hours. Crow stock: done.

Season the crow breasts with salt and pepper, and sear them in a hot pan with canola oil. Just until they’re browned, not cooked through. And by the way, crow breasts are tiny, so this would be quite a few crows that we’re using, or else we’d have to make the smallest batch of gumbo ever. You’ll need a whole murder of crows.
…

Here’s a polite comment:

That Chinese stock market is on quite a roll!

Panic and superstition seem to have taken hold in the minds of Chinese stock market investors trying to explain the massive losses they have incurred.

It couldn’t possibly be the case that these people are reaping the logical consequences of making REALLY STOOPID investments!?

Comment by phony scandals
2015-07-03 05:50:12

They Want To Use ‘Hate Speech Laws’ To Destroy Freedom Of Speech In America
By Michael Snyder, on July 2nd, 2015
endoftheamericandream.com/archives/they-want-to-use-hate-speech-laws-to-destroy-freedom-of-speech-in-america