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Comment by joefranklinsrs | Hacker News Reader

I see my comment about China touched a nerve :) there's no need to downvote me, this is just based on my personal observation, which is too long to be typed up, so I merely summarized it here.

I'm not sure if anyone who knows what they're talking thought China was going to fail in 1990. I think most of the world at that time was concentrating on Japan, Russia, and US. China was too small of a player to be noticed by anyone prominent.

In any case, my observation is based on numbers and trends. Ebbs and flows for a country, government and culture. Debts and growth. Demographics, core strengths, and relationships. I stand by my observation: China will most likely fail.

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Can you give more details on why you think China's debt is a problem? I've been hearing about it for several years, but as far as I can tell from the numbers, it is about the same level as Japan (Japan's debt is 253% of GDP, China's is 260% of GDP), and Japan doesn't even look like it is beginning to fail. And China appears to be actively taking steps to curtail the debt.

Sure, keep an eye on shadow debt (10T - 20T), not included in official figures. It is what is crushing the small enterprises, builders, and manufacturers in China right now.

Are you shorting the Chinese market, if not why should we take you seriously?

This always comes up in these threads. There are very good reasons not to short things, even if you think they are a house of cards. It's a strongly negative EV trade, on average, share borrowing costs will eat you alive if your timing is off, limited upside+unlimited downside, "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent", etc. Most people should not try to time the market. That doesn't mean their opinions are invalid.

> That doesn't mean their opinions are invalid.

Well if you are not confident with you own analysis why preach it to others then. If you are going give excuses that the markets are irrational then you should not give opinions about things you are not confident about.

He said xyz would fail, he didn't say they would fail imminently.

You can very rationally simultaneously believe you're right about the future and not want to make a bet on it in the market - you need to not only be right, but right at very close to the right time, unless you're going long.

The bar for sharing your opinions is not "willing to bet on them in the market".

> He said xyz would fail, he didn't say they would fail imminently.

What does that even mean, in the end with a long period of time all companies would fail. If he claims he can look at the data he should be able to predict the imminence if not he is just using weasel words.

> The bar for sharing your opinions is not "willing to bet on them in the market".

The bar for taking opinions seriously about gloom and doom prediction is.

Dropping in to give an alternate interpretation.

When, many layer up joefranklinsrs said that china would fail I think he likely meant that china today would fail in a number of years.

That is, it would have to change in some meaningful way to keep succeeding and so in term or reliable investment is not a good option whether it fail or not.

> he likely meant that china today would fail in a number of years.

How many years?

who knows, that is irrelevant in some sense. more than the number of years the focus should be on the causes and the problems causing it to fail.

when china will fail likely all that predicted it would have guessed by mere luck. But they might have spotted the right problems.

If I had to take a very wild guess the only ways china could fail would be success from external attack or side problems with their ability to handle the usual problems.

Also when somebody says X will fail in Y years they might mean "im working so that it will happens"

> who knows, that is irrelevant in some sense.

Exactly, that is why you should not waste your time reading such gloom and doom predictions unless that person is confident enough to put money on the line.

the prediction is often useless, the predicted causes can be intersting (quite often they are just memetic parroting of other still...)

I can't remember my voting, been pretty active today, and the last few actually, but did I downvote you?

I normally don't do that if a comment is worth responding to.

If you got a downvote, it wasn't from me.

EDIT: just checked. Downvote was mine. Sorry for this comment claiming I didn't.

Still, your prognostications are all just as much hogwash as everyone else'. Whether you guys are right, or wrong, is all a matter of luck. It truly is whether you want to believe that or not.

> "If you got a downvote, it wasn't from me."

> "EDIT: just checked. Downvote was mine. Sorry for this comment claiming I didn't."

XD (slightly funny to read those sequentially)

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