Evergrande Is Only the Beginning
brookfieldbrief.com
brookfieldbrief.com
https://twitter.com/Cokedupoptions/status/143980011582110105...
It does suggest that what you’re reading hasn’t been proofed. That increases the chances of other, more significant errors, e.g. ones in fact checking, logic or thoroughness.
I think OP's point is that rather than some authoritative oracle, this guy is just a guy.
He makes interesting points, but take them all with a grain of salt.
As such, I dismiss their dismissals as the ravings of a fool.
"Some more words to make this seem more profound a thought than it is."
So, when these Chinese firms are trading on US exchanges, they aren't trading in the actual stock, but instead, the VIE. It will only take China outlawing VIEs to wipe them out. While there is an active debate about that, there are many reasons why it would be in the Chinese interest to do so, namely, the use of VIEs as a means for Chinese expats to liberate cash from China, and, China's reduced control of company VIEs. During wartime, or as a lever, this could be fully weaponized.
Due to the VIE structure and presence on exchanges, they are much more likely to be included in ETFs. Talk about a potential for huge losses!
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-29/china-hid...
[2] https://www.ubs.com/global/en/wealth-management/chief-invest...
Unfortunately, I've never heard of brookfieldbrief, so that doesn't help any. Has anyone?
Very interesting. Seems to me 'the West' is slowly moving towards a more Chinese world view.
I love how you tell everyone this is hilarious, but you don't go into any depth why you find this quite so funny.
The fact that this was expected to be taken seriously, and then seemingly was by being upvoted to the front of Hacker News is what's funny.
Many Chinese believer of "Freedom of Speech" was shattered after seen previous POTUS account vanishes from Twitter. This echoes the memory of their own accounts purged from Weibo.
And crackdown of Covid-19 "false info" utilize the same method as the Chinese Internet companies do.
And your second point, again, is something private companies are doing, not the government.
There's a big difference between individual companies deciding how to police their services versus what a government forces a company to do.
This gives the appearance of a Freedom of Speech issue, but it is actually more complex than that.
But generally speaking, we do have some checks in place that at least so far have kept us from going as far as China has.
Jen Psaki, Whitehouse Press Secretary
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/202...
It would certainly be welcome to see some people actually advancing these arguments in legal suits, but the extant cases are turning on allegations which don't advance these claims very well.
No doubt Jen Psaki has Andy Stone, former Democratic PAC Communication Director, now Facebook Director on speed dial?
Hell I doubt Jen clicks anything when a quick call will do.
Sounds like they are missing out on US Civics 101 then - makes sense since Americans are the only people who take that.
It should be remembered that Trump was not kicked off of Twitter until after a literal insurrection which he had helped to incite. It's not entirely clear if Trump's speech crosses the very high bar set by Brandenburg v Ohio, which you should recall holds that advocating violent overthrow of the government is First Amendment-protected free speech, but that it is toeing that line means that said speech would be outright illegal in most countries.
Removing false information from some public social networking sites (and all sorts of other things like violent threats, depictions of violent crimes, kiddie porn etc), is not the same thing as removing arbitrary comments, information about the CCP, imprisoning or killing journalists and citizens for speaking basic, actual truths.
Westerners are absolutely free to post COVID rubbish, or say almost anything they want about 'the President' on their own websites and communications if they want to.
That said, it's going to take more data from these supposed financial posts (and more transparency on their sources) in order for us to give it legitimacy.
That's delusional thinking on their part then. There's obviously an enormous difference. Which is why we're able to freely have this conversation on HN.
In China it's a blanket national policy. There is zero free speech in China, as determined by the government. You are not free to set up your own service, blog, site, etc. to skirt that.
Trump is a billionaire and is free to start his own social platform, which has been discussed by his camp on multiple occasions since the coordinated social media bans. He has drastically more resources than he needs to launch a platform to push his voice in any way he sees fit.
Trump wasn't censored by the US Government. Private social media companies decided they disagreed with how he was behaving and or what he was saying.
As someone that isn't a billionaire, before the day is out, with an hour of time, I could choose from any number of dozens of hosts and push a new communication platform out to the world, whether a blog or other. Or just sign up for Substack and say what I think there. I can use it to rant endlessly about politicians, government, ideology, Covid, nearly anything I see fit to say.
You can do none of that in China. The context could hardly be any more different when it comes to speech, between the US and China.
Does anyone known what is the cause of this?
- people are getting more education. So instead of getting hitched at 18 they are still in school at 22, 23
- more financial burden with raising family (getting married usually equals kids)
- more financial independence. People don’t need to pair up to get by anymore. Also don’t need the extra labor from kids either
- changes in cultural expectation. In china women are mostly still expected to get married young, but it’s rapidly changing. Being a single man / woman isn’t as much of an issue as it was before.
for example: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan all have marriages and child birth decline. young, college educated people have more options compare to the older generation.
After the great recession era (~2008 forward) Chinese consumers noticeably started loading up on debt. Household debt went from being very modest to being a serious issue. Particularly their debt is a lot more expensive in China, their household debt to income ratio is increasingly dire.
That is, if you're an only child, you have to support your parents in their old age (or at least be prepared to do so). That leaves you less prepared to take on the financial obligations of marriage.
With the power and inflation crises in the west, my concern is superpowers war.
One of the biggest benefits of so thoroughly intertwining our economies is that this is exceptionally unlikely. China can't war its way out of a debt crisis, because that war would be against its biggest customers, and biggest sources of cash flow.
Meanwhile some western nations just see some mild inflation that was very common 30 years ago.
If you want to see a "horror story" look at the UK and the effects of Brexit.
Note that traditionally hyper inflation (which people often seem to conflate with our current status) is defined by economists to be 50% per month. The west is a long, long way from any sort of real crisis caused by inflation.
Hyperinflation tends to work in an exponential fashion. Perhaps we aren't at the bottom of an exponential curve for this period of inflation, perhaps it can be prevented from going too high like it has in the past for the US (I still want to believe that's the case, but I'm converting my fiat into assets just in case that's wrong). But it's far from a guarantee.
There's many countries suffering from hyperinflation out there in the world today that probably acted similarly when they were at the same stage as we are right now.
[1]: https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2020/07/16/Exponential-Growth-Pr...
[2]: https://purposefocuscommitment.medium.com/the-rice-and-the-c...
The differences between 2,5,10 percent per annum vs almost 13000% inflation per annum are just categorically different, and you don’t get there by accident.
And sure, they're a different category (as I said, the US has had high inflation but not hyperinflation in the past and we've recovered from it, like in the 70s). But just because the US hasn't shifted from one category to the other in the past, doesn't mean it couldn't this time.
You are right about all inflation itself being exponential, but I think you mean prices, whereas I'm talking about the percentages. You can't be talking about percentages because you're saying it's only going up 2, 5, 10% at the most (roughly).
Just take Venezuela. In less than 2 years (from 2018 to 2019), their inflation percentage jumped from 9% to 10,000,000%. I.e. they went from your first category to an exponential increase in the inflation percentage. It can happen very quickly once the ball gets rolling enough.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/02/venezuela-inflation-at-10-mi...
The west is not on the brink of runaway inflation by any means. It wasn’t in the 1970s either. Hyperinflation has historically only occurred under very specific circumstances, typically after widespread devastation due to war or outright government collapse.
Edit: to add a response to the case of Venezuela, the 9% inflation rate had nothing to do with the ensuing hyperinflation. It’s not as if people’s expectations got out of control. They relied heavily on oil exports and oil production collapsed due to state mismanagement. They could’ve had 0% inflation to begin with and still would have been in this situation.
Great Britain I'd peg a bit higher, around a 12% chance, based on some articles I've been reading about their Brexit and supply chain issues.
They aren’t even at their 20th century high point yet, and even then they didn’t crack 30% per annum. [1]
[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/time...
Yes, I am talking about the Weimar Republic, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.