China suffers worst wheat harvest in 55 years

Record failed wheat harvest. Isn't that what forced the Russians to invade us in Red Dawn? OMG...it's happening.

They're arresting short sellers now. Fuck China, burn 1 billion chingchongs to the fucking ground.

Stock markets work on the concept that the people that own the stock own the company. In China you can buy stock but you gain no control only a potential share of the profits. Most Chinese companies simply don't have any profits instead they have simply ever increasing mountains of debt that is being hidden from shareholders. So no control and no profits means no reason to own stocks. When the stock market took off there last year the smart money knew it was time to cash out of as much worthless paper as they could. Now the suckers have realized the same and are rushing to the exit.

Moral is that in the end property rights, proper accounting, and the rule of law do actually matter.

The following applies to foreign investors too...

China's securities regulator took the drastic step of banning shareholders with stakes of more than 5% from selling shares for the next six months in a bid to halt a plunge in stock prices that is starting to roil global financial markets.

...An IG Markets strategist, Evan Lucas, said: "Iron ore has just logged its worst trading day on record. The steel price in China is now cheaper per tonne than cabbage."

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China bans major shareholders from selling their stakes for next six months | World news | The Guardian

As for the amount of money involved in this, almost half the listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen have now halted trading, freezing $ 2.4 trillion of stocks.

Ha sorry never read the spoiler and just the clicked the article.

The chinese should immigrate to the EU and crowd out the muslims. Kung fu vs. jihadis. I bet on the chinese. They can beachhead in Belarus via Russia and rename it West China. The one child policy will be lifted in West China, and soon Poland will be renamed Wester China.

The 'crash' is more of a correction really. They're still ahead like 70% year-to-year. Their domestic market is ridiculously volatile at the best of times and it's gotten 100x worse since new regulations on capital flight made many retail investors play on their local market. Bear in mind that many of China's largest and most successful firms are listed on Wall Street and not on their domestic exchanges.

I could critique where and how you're wrong, but then you'd just cry.

From what I understand investment opportunities in China for the emergent middle class are HIGHLY limited. There really is very little for them to do with their money besides for buy shit or send it home to the provinces. Hence the real estate bubble that is looming and threatening to shit on everyone, and I suppose it would also explain why investing in worthless stocks seems like it might be a better option than investing in another pair of shoes or keeping your money under your mattress. It would also explain why they're investing in America and trying to buy California. Although I think the japs beat them to that. Another option, I guess, is to try to start one of those worthless rinky-dink companies and trade your own worthless stocks on the local market. But that's a dangerous game to play, an expensive game to play, and I have to assume in China a very corrupt and heavily regulated game to play.

I might be wrong, but it's what I understand.

It's easy to say"transition to a consumer-based economy"but the Chinese are still like every other savings-crazed asian, they're culturally pre-disposed AGAINST being the consumer whores that Americans and the west are. They're actually a littlemore uptight with their moneythan the legendary tightwads of Japan. To us, the concept of saving more than 20% of your income or not being up-to-your-eyeballs in debt is grotesque, unamerican, and probably gets you on the NSA's watch-list. But to the 300 million newly middle-class Chinese, "disposable income" means "investment fund".

The Chinese government actually understands this problem. Unfortunately it's one of those cases where an unchallenged totalitarian central government can become a hindrance. Instead of broad guidelines their instinct is to command the whole country towards one form of spending activity over another. So if they can't make the Chinese bootstrap a rampant consumer-driven economy, why not guide that instinct to invest every penny in useful and productive ways? So you get shit like entirely new cities built by real-estate speculation but noone to buy or live in them:


They'd keep building those too, since the risk of a property bubble is balanced against the recession risk of NOT producing 20+ million new jobs every year. But recently they decided to limit capital flight and opened wider access for individual investors to play their domestic stock market. So you get crazy this crazy volatility instead. They could've avoided all this by pushing for 80" LCD TV's in every bathroom and gold-plated ipads for every fetus.

khorum_sl said:

To us, the concept of saving more than 20% of your income or not being up-to-your-eyeballs in debt is grotesque, unamerican, and probably gets you on the NSA's watch-list.

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The US savings rate is currently 5-6%, but that doesn't include forced savings through social security and what is arguably fairly similar, e.g. Medicare.

However, that also masks massive differences by income. For example, the bottom 2 quintiles save nothing, while the third quintile saves 11%, the fourth quintile saves 17%, and the top quintile saves 24%, according tothis.

Luckily they are mostly mediocre tires anyway. My oem P Zeros take forever to warm up, have only mediocre traction, suck in weather and to boot the wear on them is maybe 5-10% better than comparable (and by that I mean strictly superior) performance competitors like the Michelin PSS, if that.