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HONG KONG — Talk of an economic slowdown in China has become so loud and persistent that it now has its own slang: ghost cities, ghost fleets, rocket eggs, naked officials. The downturn has even led to the invention of a new financial algorithm, something called the China Stress Index — and the index remains high.
Some of the stresses were mentioned over the weekend by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao as he spoke of “huge downward pressure” on the world’s No. 2 economy, due principally, he averred, to slackening consumer demand in Europe and real estate speculation at home.
As my colleague Keith Bradsher reports, housing construction has nearly stopped. Work sites that had recently been going round the clock seven days a week are now down to one shift — and just on weekdays.
Analysts and government planners are now resigned to the fact that the growth rate in 2012 will slip under the once-magic (and numerologically auspicious) figure of 8 percent. Instead, keeping growth above 7 percent has become the immediate task at hand, especially with the important 18th Party Congress coming this autumn.
Nomura, the Japanese financial services firm, has launched the China Stress Index, and the Nomura analyst Rob Subbaraman affirmed Monday that the company sees “a one-in-three probability” that China will experience “a hard economic landing commencing before the end of 2014.”
Foreign Policy magazine has a new overview of the economy called “Five Signs of the Chinese Economic Apocalypse.” (Business Insider sees that bet, and triples it, with a story headlined “Fifteen Reasons Why Everyone Is Suddenly Freaking Out About China.”)
In making its case for apocalypse now, or soon, the Foreign Policy piece says, “Businesses are taking fewer loans. Manufacturing output has tanked. Interest rates have unexpectedly been cut. Imports are flat. GDP growth projections are down, with some arguing that China might already be in recession.”
Government figures released Monday showed that consumer prices dropped 0.6 percent in June compared with May, raising the concern of deflation, as Keith reports.
Meanwhile, though, some food prices have risen so sharply (and food contamination scares have been so profound) that people are increasingly growing their own vegetables and more folks are keeping pigs. Mainland chickens are now laying “rocket eggs,” a reference to their price trajectory.
Local governments, after years of massive and prideful investments, are now seeing loans coming due. (How many of these loans are already underperforming is a matter of some debate among economists and analysts.)
The central government in Beijing is even insisting on some austerity now, from sell-offs of the fleets of luxury cars assigned to local bosses to cutbacks on high-end liquor and nosh at official banquets.
Some of the (few) more bullish analysts speak admiringly of the robustness of the state banking system and Beijing’s ability to manipulate the levers of its highly controlled economy. But when they start listing areas of deep concern, they can barely come up for air.
Sales of luxury goods in China, for example, are slowing. Wealthy mainlanders, including government and party officials, are feverishly offshoring their cash by buying properties abroad, from Hong Kong and Macau to Australia, Europe and the United States. Hedging against possible political or economic upheavals, they are keeping so few (seizable) assets in China that they’re being called luo guan — “naked officials.”
Coal, iron ore and copper also are piling up in China, which has led Chinese shippers, once happy to ply the coastal routes, to head for blue water in search of new business. In a new blog post — “Is China Running Out of Steam?” — Evan Osnos of The New Yorker called this “the freight equivalent of deer wandering out of the woods in search of food. Because it materialized out of the shadows, shipping people have named it the ‘ghost’ fleet.”
There are plenty of China experts in the gloom camp, and some in the doom camp. In a recent Barron’s piece called “Falling Star,” Jonathan Laing took the temperature of Jim Chanos, “the most outspoken Sino-Skeptic” on Wall Street.
Never one to mince words, Chanos contends that China is headed for a hard landing of epic proportions because of its shaky financial system and an imminent collapse in its property market, which undergirds the entire economy. “I’m being conservative when I say that the coming bust in China’s real-estate market will be a thousand times that of Dubai,” he told Barron’s.
After a recent trip to China, Rosemary Righter wrote in The Times Literary Supplement of “tens of millions of houses and apartments as well as Ozymandian public buildings and factory estates — and what hits the eye is how much of it all stands empty. Across the country, uninhabited concrete blocks scab the land, not only in the megacities of the eastern seaboard but also in the sleepier southwest; from filthy mining towns in Henan, all the way to entire ghost towns in Inner Mongolia.”
Mr. Laing also got a diagnosis from Edward Chancellor, a global strategist for GMO, the investment management firm based in Boston.
“I can’t tell you precisely when the downturn will hit,” he says. “No one can. All I know is that China has all the earmarks of a classic mania that will end badly — a compelling growth story that seduces investors into ill-starred speculation, blind faith in the competence of Chinese authorities to manage through any cycle, and over-investment in fixed assets with inadequate returns facilitated by an explosion in credit.”
Calling China a “Field of Dreams” economy — if we build it, they will come — he mentioned “a highway system with sparse traffic, local airports running at half-capacity and the rapidly expanding national high-speed railroad system, a technical marvel that can’t charge ticket prices sufficient to pay for itself.”
HONG KONG — Talk of an economic slowdown in China has become so loud and persistent that it now has its own slang: ghost cities, ghost fleets, rocket eggs, naked officials. The downturn has even led to the invention of a new financial algorithm, something called the China Stress Index — and the index remains high.
Some of the stresses were mentioned over the weekend by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao as he spoke of “huge downward pressure” on the world’s No. 2 economy, due principally, he averred, to slackening consumer demand in Europe and real estate speculation at home.
As my colleague Keith Bradsher reports, housing construction has nearly stopped. Work sites that had recently been going round the clock seven days a week are now down to one shift — and just on weekdays.
Analysts and government planners are now resigned to the fact that the growth rate in 2012 will slip under the once-magic (and numerologically auspicious) figure of 8 percent. Instead, keeping growth above 7 percent has become the immediate task at hand, especially with the important 18th Party Congress coming this autumn.
Nomura, the Japanese financial services firm, has launched the China Stress Index, and the Nomura analyst Rob Subbaraman affirmed Monday that the company sees “a one-in-three probability” that China will experience “a hard economic landing commencing before the end of 2014.”
Foreign Policy magazine has a new overview of the economy called “Five Signs of the Chinese Economic Apocalypse.” (Business Insider sees that bet, and triples it, with a story headlined “Fifteen Reasons Why Everyone Is Suddenly Freaking Out About China.”)
In making its case for apocalypse now, or soon, the Foreign Policy piece says, “Businesses are taking fewer loans. Manufacturing output has tanked. Interest rates have unexpectedly been cut. Imports are flat. GDP growth projections are down, with some arguing that China might already be in recession.”
Government figures released Monday showed that consumer prices dropped 0.6 percent in June compared with May, raising the concern of deflation, as Keith reports.
Meanwhile, though, some food prices have risen so sharply (and food contamination scares have been so profound) that people are increasingly growing their own vegetables and more folks are keeping pigs. Mainland chickens are now laying “rocket eggs,” a reference to their price trajectory.
Local governments, after years of massive and prideful investments, are now seeing loans coming due. (How many of these loans are already underperforming is a matter of some debate among economists and analysts.)
The central government in Beijing is even insisting on some austerity now, from sell-offs of the fleets of luxury cars assigned to local bosses to cutbacks on high-end liquor and nosh at official banquets.
Some of the (few) more bullish analysts speak admiringly of the robustness of the state banking system and Beijing’s ability to manipulate the levers of its highly controlled economy. But when they start listing areas of deep concern, they can barely come up for air.
Sales of luxury goods in China, for example, are slowing. Wealthy mainlanders, including government and party officials, are feverishly offshoring their cash by buying properties abroad, from Hong Kong and Macau to Australia, Europe and the United States. Hedging against possible political or economic upheavals, they are keeping so few (seizable) assets in China that they’re being called luo guan — “naked officials.”
Coal, iron ore and copper also are piling up in China, which has led Chinese shippers, once happy to ply the coastal routes, to head for blue water in search of new business. In a new blog post — “Is China Running Out of Steam?” — Evan Osnos of The New Yorker called this “the freight equivalent of deer wandering out of the woods in search of food. Because it materialized out of the shadows, shipping people have named it the ‘ghost’ fleet.”
There are plenty of China experts in the gloom camp, and some in the doom camp. In a recent Barron’s piece called “Falling Star,” Jonathan Laing took the temperature of Jim Chanos, “the most outspoken Sino-Skeptic” on Wall Street.
Never one to mince words, Chanos contends that China is headed for a hard landing of epic proportions because of its shaky financial system and an imminent collapse in its property market, which undergirds the entire economy. “I’m being conservative when I say that the coming bust in China’s real-estate market will be a thousand times that of Dubai,” he told Barron’s.
After a recent trip to China, Rosemary Righter wrote in The Times Literary Supplement of “tens of millions of houses and apartments as well as Ozymandian public buildings and factory estates — and what hits the eye is how much of it all stands empty. Across the country, uninhabited concrete blocks scab the land, not only in the megacities of the eastern seaboard but also in the sleepier southwest; from filthy mining towns in Henan, all the way to entire ghost towns in Inner Mongolia.”
Mr. Laing also got a diagnosis from Edward Chancellor, a global strategist for GMO, the investment management firm based in Boston.
“I can’t tell you precisely when the downturn will hit,” he says. “No one can. All I know is that China has all the earmarks of a classic mania that will end badly — a compelling growth story that seduces investors into ill-starred speculation, blind faith in the competence of Chinese authorities to manage through any cycle, and over-investment in fixed assets with inadequate returns facilitated by an explosion in credit.”
Calling China a “Field of Dreams” economy — if we build it, they will come — he mentioned “a highway system with sparse traffic, local airports running at half-capacity and the rapidly expanding national high-speed railroad system, a technical marvel that can’t charge ticket prices sufficient to pay for itself.”
HONG KONG — Talk of an economic slowdown in China has become so loud and persistent that it now has its own slang: ghost cities, ghost fleets, rocket eggs, naked officials. The downturn has even led to the invention of a new financial algorithm, something called the China Stress Index — and the index remains high.
Some of the stresses were mentioned over the weekend by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao as he spoke of “huge downward pressure” on the world’s No. 2 economy, due principally, he averred, to slackening consumer demand in Europe and real estate speculation at home.
As my colleague Keith Bradsher reports, housing construction has nearly stopped. Work sites that had recently been going round the clock seven days a week are now down to one shift — and just on weekdays.
Analysts and government planners are now resigned to the fact that the growth rate in 2012 will slip under the once-magic (and numerologically auspicious) figure of 8 percent. Instead, keeping growth above 7 percent has become the immediate task at hand, especially with the important 18th Party Congress coming this autumn.
Nomura, the Japanese financial services firm, has launched the China Stress Index, and the Nomura analyst Rob Subbaraman affirmed Monday that the company sees “a one-in-three probability” that China will experience “a hard economic landing commencing before the end of 2014.”
Foreign Policy magazine has a new overview of the economy called “Five Signs of the Chinese Economic Apocalypse.” (Business Insider sees that bet, and triples it, with a story headlined “Fifteen Reasons Why Everyone Is Suddenly Freaking Out About China.”)
In making its case for apocalypse now, or soon, the Foreign Policy piece says, “Businesses are taking fewer loans. Manufacturing output has tanked. Interest rates have unexpectedly been cut. Imports are flat. GDP growth projections are down, with some arguing that China might already be in recession.”
Government figures released Monday showed that consumer prices dropped 0.6 percent in June compared with May, raising the concern of deflation, as Keith reports.
Meanwhile, though, some food prices have risen so sharply (and food contamination scares have been so profound) that people are increasingly growing their own vegetables and more folks are keeping pigs. Mainland chickens are now laying “rocket eggs,” a reference to their price trajectory.
Local governments, after years of massive and prideful investments, are now seeing loans coming due. (How many of these loans are already underperforming is a matter of some debate among economists and analysts.)
The central government in Beijing is even insisting on some austerity now, from sell-offs of the fleets of luxury cars assigned to local bosses to cutbacks on high-end liquor and nosh at official banquets.
Some of the (few) more bullish analysts speak admiringly of the robustness of the state banking system and Beijing’s ability to manipulate the levers of its highly controlled economy. But when they start listing areas of deep concern, they can barely come up for air.
Sales of luxury goods in China, for example, are slowing. Wealthy mainlanders, including government and party officials, are feverishly offshoring their cash by buying properties abroad, from Hong Kong and Macau to Australia, Europe and the United States. Hedging against possible political or economic upheavals, they are keeping so few (seizable) assets in China that they’re being called luo guan — “naked officials.”
Coal, iron ore and copper also are piling up in China, which has led Chinese shippers, once happy to ply the coastal routes, to head for blue water in search of new business. In a new blog post — “Is China Running Out of Steam?” — Evan Osnos of The New Yorker called this “the freight equivalent of deer wandering out of the woods in search of food. Because it materialized out of the shadows, shipping people have named it the ‘ghost’ fleet.”
There are plenty of China experts in the gloom camp, and some in the doom camp. In a recent Barron’s piece called “Falling Star,” Jonathan Laing took the temperature of Jim Chanos, “the most outspoken Sino-Skeptic” on Wall Street.
Never one to mince words, Chanos contends that China is headed for a hard landing of epic proportions because of its shaky financial system and an imminent collapse in its property market, which undergirds the entire economy. “I’m being conservative when I say that the coming bust in China’s real-estate market will be a thousand times that of Dubai,” he told Barron’s.
After a recent trip to China, Rosemary Righter wrote in The Times Literary Supplement of “tens of millions of houses and apartments as well as Ozymandian public buildings and factory estates — and what hits the eye is how much of it all stands empty. Across the country, uninhabited concrete blocks scab the land, not only in the megacities of the eastern seaboard but also in the sleepier southwest; from filthy mining towns in Henan, all the way to entire ghost towns in Inner Mongolia.”
Mr. Laing also got a diagnosis from Edward Chancellor, a global strategist for GMO, the investment management firm based in Boston.
“I can’t tell you precisely when the downturn will hit,” he says. “No one can. All I know is that China has all the earmarks of a classic mania that will end badly — a compelling growth story that seduces investors into ill-starred speculation, blind faith in the competence of Chinese authorities to manage through any cycle, and over-investment in fixed assets with inadequate returns facilitated by an explosion in credit.”
Calling China a “Field of Dreams” economy — if we build it, they will come — he mentioned “a highway system with sparse traffic, local airports running at half-capacity and the rapidly expanding national high-speed railroad system, a technical marvel that can’t charge ticket prices sufficient to pay for itself.”
HONG KONG — Talk of an economic slowdown in China has become so loud and persistent that it now has its own slang: ghost cities, ghost fleets, rocket eggs, naked officials. The downturn has even led to the invention of a new financial algorithm, something called the China Stress Index — and the index remains high.
Some of the stresses were mentioned over the weekend by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao as he spoke of “huge downward pressure” on the world’s No. 2 economy, due principally, he averred, to slackening consumer demand in Europe and real estate speculation at home.
As my colleague Keith Bradsher reports, housing construction has nearly stopped. Work sites that had recently been going round the clock seven days a week are now down to one shift — and just on weekdays.
Analysts and government planners are now resigned to the fact that the growth rate in 2012 will slip under the once-magic (and numerologically auspicious) figure of 8 percent. Instead, keeping growth above 7 percent has become the immediate task at hand, especially with the important 18th Party Congress coming this autumn.
Nomura, the Japanese financial services firm, has launched the China Stress Index, and the Nomura analyst Rob Subbaraman affirmed Monday that the company sees “a one-in-three probability” that China will experience “a hard economic landing commencing before the end of 2014.”
Foreign Policy magazine has a new overview of the economy called “Five Signs of the Chinese Economic Apocalypse.” (Business Insider sees that bet, and triples it, with a story headlined “Fifteen Reasons Why Everyone Is Suddenly Freaking Out About China.”)
In making its case for apocalypse now, or soon, the Foreign Policy piece says, “Businesses are taking fewer loans. Manufacturing output has tanked. Interest rates have unexpectedly been cut. Imports are flat. GDP growth projections are down, with some arguing that China might already be in recession.”
Government figures released Monday showed that consumer prices dropped 0.6 percent in June compared with May, raising the concern of deflation, as Keith reports.
Meanwhile, though, some food prices have risen so sharply (and food contamination scares have been so profound) that people are increasingly growing their own vegetables and more folks are keeping pigs. Mainland chickens are now laying “rocket eggs,” a reference to their price trajectory.
Local governments, after years of massive and prideful investments, are now seeing loans coming due. (How many of these loans are already underperforming is a matter of some debate among economists and analysts.)
The central government in Beijing is even insisting on some austerity now, from sell-offs of the fleets of luxury cars assigned to local bosses to cutbacks on high-end liquor and nosh at official banquets.
Some of the (few) more bullish analysts speak admiringly of the robustness of the state banking system and Beijing’s ability to manipulate the levers of its highly controlled economy. But when they start listing areas of deep concern, they can barely come up for air.
Sales of luxury goods in China, for example, are slowing. Wealthy mainlanders, including government and party officials, are feverishly offshoring their cash by buying properties abroad, from Hong Kong and Macau to Australia, Europe and the United States. Hedging against possible political or economic upheavals, they are keeping so few (seizable) assets in China that they’re being called luo guan — “naked officials.”
Coal, iron ore and copper also are piling up in China, which has led Chinese shippers, once happy to ply the coastal routes, to head for blue water in search of new business. In a new blog post — “Is China Running Out of Steam?” — Evan Osnos of The New Yorker called this “the freight equivalent of deer wandering out of the woods in search of food. Because it materialized out of the shadows, shipping people have named it the ‘ghost’ fleet.”
There are plenty of China experts in the gloom camp, and some in the doom camp. In a recent Barron’s piece called “Falling Star,” Jonathan Laing took the temperature of Jim Chanos, “the most outspoken Sino-Skeptic” on Wall Street.
Never one to mince words, Chanos contends that China is headed for a hard landing of epic proportions because of its shaky financial system and an imminent collapse in its property market, which undergirds the entire economy. “I’m being conservative when I say that the coming bust in China’s real-estate market will be a thousand times that of Dubai,” he told Barron’s.
After a recent trip to China, Rosemary Righter wrote in The Times Literary Supplement of “tens of millions of houses and apartments as well as Ozymandian public buildings and factory estates — and what hits the eye is how much of it all stands empty. Across the country, uninhabited concrete blocks scab the land, not only in the megacities of the eastern seaboard but also in the sleepier southwest; from filthy mining towns in Henan, all the way to entire ghost towns in Inner Mongolia.”
Mr. Laing also got a diagnosis from Edward Chancellor, a global strategist for GMO, the investment management firm based in Boston.
“I can’t tell you precisely when the downturn will hit,” he says. “No one can. All I know is that China has all the earmarks of a classic mania that will end badly — a compelling growth story that seduces investors into ill-starred speculation, blind faith in the competence of Chinese authorities to manage through any cycle, and over-investment in fixed assets with inadequate returns facilitated by an explosion in credit.”
Calling China a “Field of Dreams” economy — if we build it, they will come — he mentioned “a highway system with sparse traffic, local airports running at half-capacity and the rapidly expanding national high-speed railroad system, a technical marvel that can’t charge ticket prices sufficient to pay for itself.”
HONG KONG — Talk of an economic slowdown in China has become so loud and persistent that it now has its own slang: ghost cities, ghost fleets, rocket eggs, naked officials. The downturn has even led to the invention of a new financial algorithm, something called the China Stress Index — and the index remains high.
Some of the stresses were mentioned over the weekend by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao as he spoke of “huge downward pressure” on the world’s No. 2 economy, due principally, he averred, to slackening consumer demand in Europe and real estate speculation at home.
As my colleague Keith Bradsher reports, housing construction has nearly stopped. Work sites that had recently been going round the clock seven days a week are now down to one shift — and just on weekdays.
Analysts and government planners are now resigned to the fact that the growth rate in 2012 will slip under the once-magic (and numerologically auspicious) figure of 8 percent. Instead, keeping growth above 7 percent has become the immediate task at hand, especially with the important 18th Party Congress coming this autumn.
Nomura, the Japanese financial services firm, has launched the China Stress Index, and the Nomura analyst Rob Subbaraman affirmed Monday that the company sees “a one-in-three probability” that China will experience “a hard economic landing commencing before the end of 2014.”
Foreign Policy magazine has a new overview of the economy called “Five Signs of the Chinese Economic Apocalypse.” (Business Insider sees that bet, and triples it, with a story headlined “Fifteen Reasons Why Everyone Is Suddenly Freaking Out About China.”)
In making its case for apocalypse now, or soon, the Foreign Policy piece says, “Businesses are taking fewer loans. Manufacturing output has tanked. Interest rates have unexpectedly been cut. Imports are flat. GDP growth projections are down, with some arguing that China might already be in recession.”
Government figures released Monday showed that consumer prices dropped 0.6 percent in June compared with May, raising the concern of deflation, as Keith reports.
Meanwhile, though, some food prices have risen so sharply (and food contamination scares have been so profound) that people are increasingly growing their own vegetables and more folks are keeping pigs. Mainland chickens are now laying “rocket eggs,” a reference to their price trajectory.
Local governments, after years of massive and prideful investments, are now seeing loans coming due. (How many of these loans are already underperforming is a matter of some debate among economists and analysts.)
The central government in Beijing is even insisting on some austerity now, from sell-offs of the fleets of luxury cars assigned to local bosses to cutbacks on high-end liquor and nosh at official banquets.
Some of the (few) more bullish analysts speak admiringly of the robustness of the state banking system and Beijing’s ability to manipulate the levers of its highly controlled economy. But when they start listing areas of deep concern, they can barely come up for air.
Sales of luxury goods in China, for example, are slowing. Wealthy mainlanders, including government and party officials, are feverishly offshoring their cash by buying properties abroad, from Hong Kong and Macau to Australia, Europe and the United States. Hedging against possible political or economic upheavals, they are keeping so few (seizable) assets in China that they’re being called luo guan — “naked officials.”
Coal, iron ore and copper also are piling up in China, which has led Chinese shippers, once happy to ply the coastal routes, to head for blue water in search of new business. In a new blog post — “Is China Running Out of Steam?” — Evan Osnos of The New Yorker called this “the freight equivalent of deer wandering out of the woods in search of food. Because it materialized out of the shadows, shipping people have named it the ‘ghost’ fleet.”
There are plenty of China experts in the gloom camp, and some in the doom camp. In a recent Barron’s piece called “Falling Star,” Jonathan Laing took the temperature of Jim Chanos, “the most outspoken Sino-Skeptic” on Wall Street.
Never one to mince words, Chanos contends that China is headed for a hard landing of epic proportions because of its shaky financial system and an imminent collapse in its property market, which undergirds the entire economy. “I’m being conservative when I say that the coming bust in China’s real-estate market will be a thousand times that of Dubai,” he told Barron’s.
After a recent trip to China, Rosemary Righter wrote in The Times Literary Supplement of “tens of millions of houses and apartments as well as Ozymandian public buildings and factory estates — and what hits the eye is how much of it all stands empty. Across the country, uninhabited concrete blocks scab the land, not only in the megacities of the eastern seaboard but also in the sleepier southwest; from filthy mining towns in Henan, all the way to entire ghost towns in Inner Mongolia.”
Mr. Laing also got a diagnosis from Edward Chancellor, a global strategist for GMO, the investment management firm based in Boston.
“I can’t tell you precisely when the downturn will hit,” he says. “No one can. All I know is that China has all the earmarks of a classic mania that will end badly — a compelling growth story that seduces investors into ill-starred speculation, blind faith in the competence of Chinese authorities to manage through any cycle, and over-investment in fixed assets with inadequate returns facilitated by an explosion in credit.”
Calling China a “Field of Dreams” economy — if we build it, they will come — he mentioned “a highway system with sparse traffic, local airports running at half-capacity and the rapidly expanding national high-speed railroad system, a technical marvel that can’t charge ticket prices sufficient to pay for itself.”
HONG KONG — Talk of an economic slowdown in China has become so loud and persistent that it now has its own slang: ghost cities, ghost fleets, rocket eggs, naked officials. The downturn has even led to the invention of a new financial algorithm, something called the China Stress Index — and the index remains high.
Some of the stresses were mentioned over the weekend by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao as he spoke of “huge downward pressure” on the world’s No. 2 economy, due principally, he averred, to slackening consumer demand in Europe and real estate speculation at home.
As my colleague Keith Bradsher reports, housing construction has nearly stopped. Work sites that had recently been going round the clock seven days a week are now down to one shift — and just on weekdays.
Analysts and government planners are now resigned to the fact that the growth rate in 2012 will slip under the once-magic (and numerologically auspicious) figure of 8 percent. Instead, keeping growth above 7 percent has become the immediate task at hand, especially with the important 18th Party Congress coming this autumn.
Nomura, the Japanese financial services firm, has launched the China Stress Index, and the Nomura analyst Rob Subbaraman affirmed Monday that the company sees “a one-in-three probability” that China will experience “a hard economic landing commencing before the end of 2014.”
Foreign Policy magazine has a new overview of the economy called “Five Signs of the Chinese Economic Apocalypse.” (Business Insider sees that bet, and triples it, with a story headlined “Fifteen Reasons Why Everyone Is Suddenly Freaking Out About China.”)
In making its case for apocalypse now, or soon, the Foreign Policy piece says, “Businesses are taking fewer loans. Manufacturing output has tanked. Interest rates have unexpectedly been cut. Imports are flat. GDP growth projections are down, with some arguing that China might already be in recession.”
Government figures released Monday showed that consumer prices dropped 0.6 percent in June compared with May, raising the concern of deflation, as Keith reports.
Meanwhile, though, some food prices have risen so sharply (and food contamination scares have been so profound) that people are increasingly growing their own vegetables and more folks are keeping pigs. Mainland chickens are now laying “rocket eggs,” a reference to their price trajectory.
Local governments, after years of massive and prideful investments, are now seeing loans coming due. (How many of these loans are already underperforming is a matter of some debate among economists and analysts.)
The central government in Beijing is even insisting on some austerity now, from sell-offs of the fleets of luxury cars assigned to local bosses to cutbacks on high-end liquor and nosh at official banquets.
Some of the (few) more bullish analysts speak admiringly of the robustness of the state banking system and Beijing’s ability to manipulate the levers of its highly controlled economy. But when they start listing areas of deep concern, they can barely come up for air.
Sales of luxury goods in China, for example, are slowing. Wealthy mainlanders, including government and party officials, are feverishly offshoring their cash by buying properties abroad, from Hong Kong and Macau to Australia, Europe and the United States. Hedging against possible political or economic upheavals, they are keeping so few (seizable) assets in China that they’re being called luo guan — “naked officials.”
Coal, iron ore and copper also are piling up in China, which has led Chinese shippers, once happy to ply the coastal routes, to head for blue water in search of new business. In a new blog post — “Is China Running Out of Steam?” — Evan Osnos of The New Yorker called this “the freight equivalent of deer wandering out of the woods in search of food. Because it materialized out of the shadows, shipping people have named it the ‘ghost’ fleet.”
There are plenty of China experts in the gloom camp, and some in the doom camp. In a recent Barron’s piece called “Falling Star,” Jonathan Laing took the temperature of Jim Chanos, “the most outspoken Sino-Skeptic” on Wall Street.
Never one to mince words, Chanos contends that China is headed for a hard landing of epic proportions because of its shaky financial system and an imminent collapse in its property market, which undergirds the entire economy. “I’m being conservative when I say that the coming bust in China’s real-estate market will be a thousand times that of Dubai,” he told Barron’s.
After a recent trip to China, Rosemary Righter wrote in The Times Literary Supplement of “tens of millions of houses and apartments as well as Ozymandian public buildings and factory estates — and what hits the eye is how much of it all stands empty. Across the country, uninhabited concrete blocks scab the land, not only in the megacities of the eastern seaboard but also in the sleepier southwest; from filthy mining towns in Henan, all the way to entire ghost towns in Inner Mongolia.”
Mr. Laing also got a diagnosis from Edward Chancellor, a global strategist for GMO, the investment management firm based in Boston.
“I can’t tell you precisely when the downturn will hit,” he says. “No one can. All I know is that China has all the earmarks of a classic mania that will end badly — a compelling growth story that seduces investors into ill-starred speculation, blind faith in the competence of Chinese authorities to manage through any cycle, and over-investment in fixed assets with inadequate returns facilitated by an explosion in credit.”
Calling China a “Field of Dreams” economy — if we build it, they will come — he mentioned “a highway system with sparse traffic, local airports running at half-capacity and the rapidly expanding national high-speed railroad system, a technical marvel that can’t charge ticket prices sufficient to pay for itself.”
HONG KONG — Talk of an economic slowdown in China has become so loud and persistent that it now has its own slang: ghost cities, ghost fleets, rocket eggs, naked officials. The downturn has even led to the invention of a new financial algorithm, something called the China Stress Index — and the index remains high.
Some of the stresses were mentioned over the weekend by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao as he spoke of “huge downward pressure” on the world’s No. 2 economy, due principally, he averred, to slackening consumer demand in Europe and real estate speculation at home.
As my colleague Keith Bradsher reports, housing construction has nearly stopped. Work sites that had recently been going round the clock seven days a week are now down to one shift — and just on weekdays.
Analysts and government planners are now resigned to the fact that the growth rate in 2012 will slip under the once-magic (and numerologically auspicious) figure of 8 percent. Instead, keeping growth above 7 percent has become the immediate task at hand, especially with the important 18th Party Congress coming this autumn.
Nomura, the Japanese financial services firm, has launched the China Stress Index, and the Nomura analyst Rob Subbaraman affirmed Monday that the company sees “a one-in-three probability” that China will experience “a hard economic landing commencing before the end of 2014.”
Foreign Policy magazine has a new overview of the economy called “Five Signs of the Chinese Economic Apocalypse.” (Business Insider sees that bet, and triples it, with a story headlined “Fifteen Reasons Why Everyone Is Suddenly Freaking Out About China.”)
In making its case for apocalypse now, or soon, the Foreign Policy piece says, “Businesses are taking fewer loans. Manufacturing output has tanked. Interest rates have unexpectedly been cut. Imports are flat. GDP growth projections are down, with some arguing that China might already be in recession.”
Government figures released Monday showed that consumer prices dropped 0.6 percent in June compared with May, raising the concern of deflation, as Keith reports.
Meanwhile, though, some food prices have risen so sharply (and food contamination scares have been so profound) that people are increasingly growing their own vegetables and more folks are keeping pigs. Mainland chickens are now laying “rocket eggs,” a reference to their price trajectory.
Local governments, after years of massive and prideful investments, are now seeing loans coming due. (How many of these loans are already underperforming is a matter of some debate among economists and analysts.)
The central government in Beijing is even insisting on some austerity now, from sell-offs of the fleets of luxury cars assigned to local bosses to cutbacks on high-end liquor and nosh at official banquets.
Some of the (few) more bullish analysts speak admiringly of the robustness of the state banking system and Beijing’s ability to manipulate the levers of its highly controlled economy. But when they start listing areas of deep concern, they can barely come up for air.
Sales of luxury goods in China, for example, are slowing. Wealthy mainlanders, including government and party officials, are feverishly offshoring their cash by buying properties abroad, from Hong Kong and Macau to Australia, Europe and the United States. Hedging against possible political or economic upheavals, they are keeping so few (seizable) assets in China that they’re being called luo guan — “naked officials.”
Coal, iron ore and copper also are piling up in China, which has led Chinese shippers, once happy to ply the coastal routes, to head for blue water in search of new business. In a new blog post — “Is China Running Out of Steam?” — Evan Osnos of The New Yorker called this “the freight equivalent of deer wandering out of the woods in search of food. Because it materialized out of the shadows, shipping people have named it the ‘ghost’ fleet.”
There are plenty of China experts in the gloom camp, and some in the doom camp. In a recent Barron’s piece called “Falling Star,” Jonathan Laing took the temperature of Jim Chanos, “the most outspoken Sino-Skeptic” on Wall Street.
Never one to mince words, Chanos contends that China is headed for a hard landing of epic proportions because of its shaky financial system and an imminent collapse in its property market, which undergirds the entire economy. “I’m being conservative when I say that the coming bust in China’s real-estate market will be a thousand times that of Dubai,” he told Barron’s.
After a recent trip to China, Rosemary Righter wrote in The Times Literary Supplement of “tens of millions of houses and apartments as well as Ozymandian public buildings and factory estates — and what hits the eye is how much of it all stands empty. Across the country, uninhabited concrete blocks scab the land, not only in the megacities of the eastern seaboard but also in the sleepier southwest; from filthy mining towns in Henan, all the way to entire ghost towns in Inner Mongolia.”
Mr. Laing also got a diagnosis from Edward Chancellor, a global strategist for GMO, the investment management firm based in Boston.
“I can’t tell you precisely when the downturn will hit,” he says. “No one can. All I know is that China has all the earmarks of a classic mania that will end badly — a compelling growth story that seduces investors into ill-starred speculation, blind faith in the competence of Chinese authorities to manage through any cycle, and over-investment in fixed assets with inadequate returns facilitated by an explosion in credit.”
Calling China a “Field of Dreams” economy — if we build it, they will come — he mentioned “a highway system with sparse traffic, local airports running at half-capacity and the rapidly expanding national high-speed railroad system, a technical marvel that can’t charge ticket prices sufficient to pay for itself.”
HONG KONG — Talk of an economic slowdown in China has become so loud and persistent that it now has its own slang: ghost cities, ghost fleets, rocket eggs, naked officials. The downturn has even led to the invention of a new financial algorithm, something called the China Stress Index — and the index remains high.
Some of the stresses were mentioned over the weekend by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao as he spoke of “huge downward pressure” on the world’s No. 2 economy, due principally, he averred, to slackening consumer demand in Europe and real estate speculation at home.
As my colleague Keith Bradsher reports, housing construction has nearly stopped. Work sites that had recently been going round the clock seven days a week are now down to one shift — and just on weekdays.
Analysts and government planners are now resigned to the fact that the growth rate in 2012 will slip under the once-magic (and numerologically auspicious) figure of 8 percent. Instead, keeping growth above 7 percent has become the immediate task at hand, especially with the important 18th Party Congress coming this autumn.
Nomura, the Japanese financial services firm, has launched the China Stress Index, and the Nomura analyst Rob Subbaraman affirmed Monday that the company sees “a one-in-three probability” that China will experience “a hard economic landing commencing before the end of 2014.”
Foreign Policy magazine has a new overview of the economy called “Five Signs of the Chinese Economic Apocalypse.” (Business Insider sees that bet, and triples it, with a story headlined “Fifteen Reasons Why Everyone Is Suddenly Freaking Out About China.”)
In making its case for apocalypse now, or soon, the Foreign Policy piece says, “Businesses are taking fewer loans. Manufacturing output has tanked. Interest rates have unexpectedly been cut. Imports are flat. GDP growth projections are down, with some arguing that China might already be in recession.”
Government figures released Monday showed that consumer prices dropped 0.6 percent in June compared with May, raising the concern of deflation, as Keith reports.
Meanwhile, though, some food prices have risen so sharply (and food contamination scares have been so profound) that people are increasingly growing their own vegetables and more folks are keeping pigs. Mainland chickens are now laying “rocket eggs,” a reference to their price trajectory.
Local governments, after years of massive and prideful investments, are now seeing loans coming due. (How many of these loans are already underperforming is a matter of some debate among economists and analysts.)
The central government in Beijing is even insisting on some austerity now, from sell-offs of the fleets of luxury cars assigned to local bosses to cutbacks on high-end liquor and nosh at official banquets.
Some of the (few) more bullish analysts speak admiringly of the robustness of the state banking system and Beijing’s ability to manipulate the levers of its highly controlled economy. But when they start listing areas of deep concern, they can barely come up for air.
Sales of luxury goods in China, for example, are slowing. Wealthy mainlanders, including government and party officials, are feverishly offshoring their cash by buying properties abroad, from Hong Kong and Macau to Australia, Europe and the United States. Hedging against possible political or economic upheavals, they are keeping so few (seizable) assets in China that they’re being called luo guan — “naked officials.”
Coal, iron ore and copper also are piling up in China, which has led Chinese shippers, once happy to ply the coastal routes, to head for blue water in search of new business. In a new blog post — “Is China Running Out of Steam?” — Evan Osnos of The New Yorker called this “the freight equivalent of deer wandering out of the woods in search of food. Because it materialized out of the shadows, shipping people have named it the ‘ghost’ fleet.”
There are plenty of China experts in the gloom camp, and some in the doom camp. In a recent Barron’s piece called “Falling Star,” Jonathan Laing took the temperature of Jim Chanos, “the most outspoken Sino-Skeptic” on Wall Street.
Never one to mince words, Chanos contends that China is headed for a hard landing of epic proportions because of its shaky financial system and an imminent collapse in its property market, which undergirds the entire economy. “I’m being conservative when I say that the coming bust in China’s real-estate market will be a thousand times that of Dubai,” he told Barron’s.
After a recent trip to China, Rosemary Righter wrote in The Times Literary Supplement of “tens of millions of houses and apartments as well as Ozymandian public buildings and factory estates — and what hits the eye is how much of it all stands empty. Across the country, uninhabited concrete blocks scab the land, not only in the megacities of the eastern seaboard but also in the sleepier southwest; from filthy mining towns in Henan, all the way to entire ghost towns in Inner Mongolia.”
Mr. Laing also got a diagnosis from Edward Chancellor, a global strategist for GMO, the investment management firm based in Boston.
“I can’t tell you precisely when the downturn will hit,” he says. “No one can. All I know is that China has all the earmarks of a classic mania that will end badly — a compelling growth story that seduces investors into ill-starred speculation, blind faith in the competence of Chinese authorities to manage through any cycle, and over-investment in fixed assets with inadequate returns facilitated by an explosion in credit.”
Calling China a “Field of Dreams” economy — if we build it, they will come — he mentioned “a highway system with sparse traffic, local airports running at half-capacity and the rapidly expanding national high-speed railroad system, a technical marvel that can’t charge ticket prices sufficient to pay for itself.”
HONG KONG — Talk of an economic slowdown in China has become so loud and persistent that it now has its own slang: ghost cities, ghost fleets, rocket eggs, naked officials. The downturn has even led to the invention of a new financial algorithm, something called the China Stress Index — and the index remains high.
Some of the stresses were mentioned over the weekend by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao as he spoke of “huge downward pressure” on the world’s No. 2 economy, due principally, he averred, to slackening consumer demand in Europe and real estate speculation at home.
As my colleague Keith Bradsher reports, housing construction has nearly stopped. Work sites that had recently been going round the clock seven days a week are now down to one shift — and just on weekdays.
Analysts and government planners are now resigned to the fact that the growth rate in 2012 will slip under the once-magic (and numerologically auspicious) figure of 8 percent. Instead, keeping growth above 7 percent has become the immediate task at hand, especially with the important 18th Party Congress coming this autumn.
Nomura, the Japanese financial services firm, has launched the China Stress Index, and the Nomura analyst Rob Subbaraman affirmed Monday that the company sees “a one-in-three probability” that China will experience “a hard economic landing commencing before the end of 2014.”
Foreign Policy magazine has a new overview of the economy called “Five Signs of the Chinese Economic Apocalypse.” (Business Insider sees that bet, and triples it, with a story headlined “Fifteen Reasons Why Everyone Is Suddenly Freaking Out About China.”)
In making its case for apocalypse now, or soon, the Foreign Policy piece says, “Businesses are taking fewer loans. Manufacturing output has tanked. Interest rates have unexpectedly been cut. Imports are flat. GDP growth projections are down, with some arguing that China might already be in recession.”
Government figures released Monday showed that consumer prices dropped 0.6 percent in June compared with May, raising the concern of deflation, as Keith reports.
Meanwhile, though, some food prices have risen so sharply (and food contamination scares have been so profound) that people are increasingly growing their own vegetables and more folks are keeping pigs. Mainland chickens are now laying “rocket eggs,” a reference to their price trajectory.
Local governments, after years of massive and prideful investments, are now seeing loans coming due. (How many of these loans are already underperforming is a matter of some debate among economists and analysts.)
The central government in Beijing is even insisting on some austerity now, from sell-offs of the fleets of luxury cars assigned to local bosses to cutbacks on high-end liquor and nosh at official banquets.
Some of the (few) more bullish analysts speak admiringly of the robustness of the state banking system and Beijing’s ability to manipulate the levers of its highly controlled economy. But when they start listing areas of deep concern, they can barely come up for air.
Sales of luxury goods in China, for example, are slowing. Wealthy mainlanders, including government and party officials, are feverishly offshoring their cash by buying properties abroad, from Hong Kong and Macau to Australia, Europe and the United States. Hedging against possible political or economic upheavals, they are keeping so few (seizable) assets in China that they’re being called luo guan — “naked officials.”
Coal, iron ore and copper also are piling up in China, which has led Chinese shippers, once happy to ply the coastal routes, to head for blue water in search of new business. In a new blog post — “Is China Running Out of Steam?” — Evan Osnos of The New Yorker called this “the freight equivalent of deer wandering out of the woods in search of food. Because it materialized out of the shadows, shipping people have named it the ‘ghost’ fleet.”
There are plenty of China experts in the gloom camp, and some in the doom camp. In a recent Barron’s piece called “Falling Star,” Jonathan Laing took the temperature of Jim Chanos, “the most outspoken Sino-Skeptic” on Wall Street.
Never one to mince words, Chanos contends that China is headed for a hard landing of epic proportions because of its shaky financial system and an imminent collapse in its property market, which undergirds the entire economy. “I’m being conservative when I say that the coming bust in China’s real-estate market will be a thousand times that of Dubai,” he told Barron’s.
After a recent trip to China, Rosemary Righter wrote in The Times Literary Supplement of “tens of millions of houses and apartments as well as Ozymandian public buildings and factory estates — and what hits the eye is how much of it all stands empty. Across the country, uninhabited concrete blocks scab the land, not only in the megacities of the eastern seaboard but also in the sleepier southwest; from filthy mining towns in Henan, all the way to entire ghost towns in Inner Mongolia.”
Mr. Laing also got a diagnosis from Edward Chancellor, a global strategist for GMO, the investment management firm based in Boston.
“I can’t tell you precisely when the downturn will hit,” he says. “No one can. All I know is that China has all the earmarks of a classic mania that will end badly — a compelling growth story that seduces investors into ill-starred speculation, blind faith in the competence of Chinese authorities to manage through any cycle, and over-investment in fixed assets with inadequate returns facilitated by an explosion in credit.”
Calling China a “Field of Dreams” economy — if we build it, they will come — he mentioned “a highway system with sparse traffic, local airports running at half-capacity and the rapidly expanding national high-speed railroad system, a technical marvel that can’t charge ticket prices sufficient to pay for itself.”
HONG KONG — Talk of an economic slowdown in China has become so loud and persistent that it now has its own slang: ghost cities, ghost fleets, rocket eggs, naked officials. The downturn has even led to the invention of a new financial algorithm, something called the China Stress Index — and the index remains high.
Some of the stresses were mentioned over the weekend by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao as he spoke of “huge downward pressure” on the world’s No. 2 economy, due principally, he averred, to slackening consumer demand in Europe and real estate speculation at home.
As my colleague Keith Bradsher reports, housing construction has nearly stopped. Work sites that had recently been going round the clock seven days a week are now down to one shift — and just on weekdays.
Analysts and government planners are now resigned to the fact that the growth rate in 2012 will slip under the once-magic (and numerologically auspicious) figure of 8 percent. Instead, keeping growth above 7 percent has become the immediate task at hand, especially with the important 18th Party Congress coming this autumn.
Nomura, the Japanese financial services firm, has launched the China Stress Index, and the Nomura analyst Rob Subbaraman affirmed Monday that the company sees “a one-in-three probability” that China will experience “a hard economic landing commencing before the end of 2014.”
Foreign Policy magazine has a new overview of the economy called “Five Signs of the Chinese Economic Apocalypse.” (Business Insider sees that bet, and triples it, with a story headlined “Fifteen Reasons Why Everyone Is Suddenly Freaking Out About China.”)
In making its case for apocalypse now, or soon, the Foreign Policy piece says, “Businesses are taking fewer loans. Manufacturing output has tanked. Interest rates have unexpectedly been cut. Imports are flat. GDP growth projections are down, with some arguing that China might already be in recession.”
Government figures released Monday showed that consumer prices dropped 0.6 percent in June compared with May, raising the concern of deflation, as Keith reports.
Meanwhile, though, some food prices have risen so sharply (and food contamination scares have been so profound) that people are increasingly growing their own vegetables and more folks are keeping pigs. Mainland chickens are now laying “rocket eggs,” a reference to their price trajectory.
Local governments, after years of massive and prideful investments, are now seeing loans coming due. (How many of these loans are already underperforming is a matter of some debate among economists and analysts.)
The central government in Beijing is even insisting on some austerity now, from sell-offs of the fleets of luxury cars assigned to local bosses to cutbacks on high-end liquor and nosh at official banquets.
Some of the (few) more bullish analysts speak admiringly of the robustness of the state banking system and Beijing’s ability to manipulate the levers of its highly controlled economy. But when they start listing areas of deep concern, they can barely come up for air.
Sales of luxury goods in China, for example, are slowing. Wealthy mainlanders, including government and party officials, are feverishly offshoring their cash by buying properties abroad, from Hong Kong and Macau to Australia, Europe and the United States. Hedging against possible political or economic upheavals, they are keeping so few (seizable) assets in China that they’re being called luo guan — “naked officials.”
Coal, iron ore and copper also are piling up in China, which has led Chinese shippers, once happy to ply the coastal routes, to head for blue water in search of new business. In a new blog post — “Is China Running Out of Steam?” — Evan Osnos of The New Yorker called this “the freight equivalent of deer wandering out of the woods in search of food. Because it materialized out of the shadows, shipping people have named it the ‘ghost’ fleet.”
There are plenty of China experts in the gloom camp, and some in the doom camp. In a recent Barron’s piece called “Falling Star,” Jonathan Laing took the temperature of Jim Chanos, “the most outspoken Sino-Skeptic” on Wall Street.
Never one to mince words, Chanos contends that China is headed for a hard landing of epic proportions because of its shaky financial system and an imminent collapse in its property market, which undergirds the entire economy. “I’m being conservative when I say that the coming bust in China’s real-estate market will be a thousand times that of Dubai,” he told Barron’s.
After a recent trip to China, Rosemary Righter wrote in The Times Literary Supplement of “tens of millions of houses and apartments as well as Ozymandian public buildings and factory estates — and what hits the eye is how much of it all stands empty. Across the country, uninhabited concrete blocks scab the land, not only in the megacities of the eastern seaboard but also in the sleepier southwest; from filthy mining towns in Henan, all the way to entire ghost towns in Inner Mongolia.”
Mr. Laing also got a diagnosis from Edward Chancellor, a global strategist for GMO, the investment management firm based in Boston.
“I can’t tell you precisely when the downturn will hit,” he says. “No one can. All I know is that China has all the earmarks of a classic mania that will end badly — a compelling growth story that seduces investors into ill-starred speculation, blind faith in the competence of Chinese authorities to manage through any cycle, and over-investment in fixed assets with inadequate returns facilitated by an explosion in credit.”
Calling China a “Field of Dreams” economy — if we build it, they will come — he mentioned “a highway system with sparse traffic, local airports running at half-capacity and the rapidly expanding national high-speed railroad system, a technical marvel that can’t charge ticket prices sufficient to pay for itself.”
HONG KONG — Talk of an economic slowdown in China has become so loud and persistent that it now has its own slang: ghost cities, ghost fleets, rocket eggs, naked officials. The downturn has even led to the invention of a new financial algorithm, something called the China Stress Index — and the index remains high.
Some of the stresses were mentioned over the weekend by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao as he spoke of “huge downward pressure” on the world’s No. 2 economy, due principally, he averred, to slackening consumer demand in Europe and real estate speculation at home.
As my colleague Keith Bradsher reports, housing construction has nearly stopped. Work sites that had recently been going round the clock seven days a week are now down to one shift — and just on weekdays.
Analysts and government planners are now resigned to the fact that the growth rate in 2012 will slip under the once-magic (and numerologically auspicious) figure of 8 percent. Instead, keeping growth above 7 percent has become the immediate task at hand, especially with the important 18th Party Congress coming this autumn.
Nomura, the Japanese financial services firm, has launched the China Stress Index, and the Nomura analyst Rob Subbaraman affirmed Monday that the company sees “a one-in-three probability” that China will experience “a hard economic landing commencing before the end of 2014.”
Foreign Policy magazine has a new overview of the economy called “Five Signs of the Chinese Economic Apocalypse.” (Business Insider sees that bet, and triples it, with a story headlined “Fifteen Reasons Why Everyone Is Suddenly Freaking Out About China.”)
In making its case for apocalypse now, or soon, the Foreign Policy piece says, “Businesses are taking fewer loans. Manufacturing output has tanked. Interest rates have unexpectedly been cut. Imports are flat. GDP growth projections are down, with some arguing that China might already be in recession.”
Government figures released Monday showed that consumer prices dropped 0.6 percent in June compared with May, raising the concern of deflation, as Keith reports.
Meanwhile, though, some food prices have risen so sharply (and food contamination scares have been so profound) that people are increasingly growing their own vegetables and more folks are keeping pigs. Mainland chickens are now laying “rocket eggs,” a reference to their price trajectory.
Local governments, after years of massive and prideful investments, are now seeing loans coming due. (How many of these loans are already underperforming is a matter of some debate among economists and analysts.)
The central government in Beijing is even insisting on some austerity now, from sell-offs of the fleets of luxury cars assigned to local bosses to cutbacks on high-end liquor and nosh at official banquets.
Some of the (few) more bullish analysts speak admiringly of the robustness of the state banking system and Beijing’s ability to manipulate the levers of its highly controlled economy. But when they start listing areas of deep concern, they can barely come up for air.
Sales of luxury goods in China, for example, are slowing. Wealthy mainlanders, including government and party officials, are feverishly offshoring their cash by buying properties abroad, from Hong Kong and Macau to Australia, Europe and the United States. Hedging against possible political or economic upheavals, they are keeping so few (seizable) assets in China that they’re being called luo guan — “naked officials.”
Coal, iron ore and copper also are piling up in China, which has led Chinese shippers, once happy to ply the coastal routes, to head for blue water in search of new business. In a new blog post — “Is China Running Out of Steam?” — Evan Osnos of The New Yorker called this “the freight equivalent of deer wandering out of the woods in search of food. Because it materialized out of the shadows, shipping people have named it the ‘ghost’ fleet.”
There are plenty of China experts in the gloom camp, and some in the doom camp. In a recent Barron’s piece called “Falling Star,” Jonathan Laing took the temperature of Jim Chanos, “the most outspoken Sino-Skeptic” on Wall Street.
Never one to mince words, Chanos contends that China is headed for a hard landing of epic proportions because of its shaky financial system and an imminent collapse in its property market, which undergirds the entire economy. “I’m being conservative when I say that the coming bust in China’s real-estate market will be a thousand times that of Dubai,” he told Barron’s.
After a re
I thought I told amy whinehore to shut the fuck up
You did! I heard you. I guess she just don’t listen very well, huh?
At least someone heard me, Oh well I got 99 problems and bitches ain’t one
This is one of the best fails in recent memory
FRED, what Memory??? Ooo!!! The day I was Fucking your Mom????? or was it the day when I seen you sucking on your Daddy Cock???
2lolo, I just can’t understand why you talk to yourself and call yourself Fred. I understand that it’s a very cool name, but it’s not yours, buddy. When the fuck are you gonna tell your shrink about this disorder?
You’re an idiot. You’re humiliating yourself, go play with your barbies.
Hehe. Mhaha.
“animal lover”
hahaha
Since he seemed to be on my side, I wasn’t going to go there.
It might seem that way, but Animal Lovers are on nobody’s side.
I…really…am not quite qualified to agree/disagree with that comment. Can I just play along?
Nevertheless, in my book “animal lover” is synonymous with “animal fucker”. Sorry AL. Just the way I was raised.
Maybe we could just call him ALF?
Suffice it to say this dude fucks anything on 4 legs, and cannot be trusted around your pet.
He and Pineapple would be fast friends. The only thing for them to fight about would be who gets to be on top.
You can turn him onto PineConeDick if you like, but I know a few neighborhood regulars that he/she would have trouble loving or “loving”. Might have a change of heart, either way, before it’s all over.
Hey Animal Lover, go to youtube and search “Kitty Washing Machine”.
You will NOT be disappointed.
Double idiot. I’m female and I’m a veterinarian. I do not fornicate with animals, you disgusting turds. Fred and 2lolo are the same person, right? What do I win? I come here for twisted humor and I get a 12 year old snot jacking off whilst looking at BOOBIES. Grow a pair, grow up, and get off your mother’s computer. Fucking idiots around here.
Somehow I don’t think you’ve ever had sex with anything or anyone. Maybe your hand but that’s it. You are a giant turd floating in a porta potty toilet surrounded by flies that shit on you. It’s really scary that people like you are the future of this world, really fucking scary. You’ll end up in prison or dead, which is fine with me. By the way, I don’t fuck animals you sack of shit, I take care of them. You really need to think about your life, I’m sure your parents would be horrified by your behavior on these comment pages. I’m sure you have no friends so you have nothing better to except come here and share your pathetic comments. Go away! Nobody wants you here.
Well, fuck it then! I’ll just leave! Nyah!
Welp, it’s obvious she didn’t watch “Kitty Washing Machine”.
Well, bugs are animals too. HJ shouldn’t be shovin’ ‘em up her ass.
Well heather I would agree. If you like I am more then willing for you to visit the smurf village instead of 2lolo
what a stupid picture!!!!!!!!
Awesome. Best fail of the day.
Other than your ridiculous posts!
Hey! This shit is foreplay, isn’t it? You two are gonna meet up and hate fuck the shit outta each other, aren’t you?
Kelta, I thought I had a claim! And DF, why you wanna take my stuff when you have Liz? WTF is up with you two? Huh?
Not foreplay Fred, this is hate play. I wouldn’t fuck this ignorant wii fucker with my pristine pussy. It’s all for you Fred, every inch of my silky smooth body!
Don’t worry sweetheart, I’m your woman!
Cunta.Flows, can you please stop trying so hard? You’re really making yourself look like a tool by attacking nearly every post of mine even when there is nothing really to attack.
Fred, I wouldn’t want to take this bitch. She’s the one that keeps coming after me. And, no, I don’t have a Liz. I’ve got a Tonya.
Excuse me. I thought you were married to a Liz. My mistake.
I don’t have to try at all, and don’t feel so singled out, I attack all idiots on this site, not just you DeadlyCocksucker.
And you WERE married to liz…. here’s the link to prove it…
www (DOT) epicfail (DOT) com/2011/12/30/eyebrows-win/
fucking fly and ya u broke it and then u just run away kudos
2lolo, let’s meet. I would really like to see what the fuck you are. Where do you live? I’ll come to you …oh and I am animal lover, I registered so they’re using my username. Name the time and I’ll come to you…I do need your address and phone number though. I hope you’re not too chicken to meet me.
I live in Canada, do you have a passport?
Wait a minute! Heatherjoy, he does not live in Canada. He lives in Las Vegas. And he’s a retard, so go easy on him.
Yeah, 2lolo. You’ve fucked up now. I’ve told you and told you. You just don’t listen, buddy. Now Heatherjoy is gonna kick your ass.
Wait… Heather Joy….
HJ!!!
Her initials are HJ! That’s AWESOME! Now I DEFINITELY want to meet her!
I don’t need a passport, I live in Victoria. You? My dad is a pilot and has a small plane, he can fly me anywhere. What’s your address? We’ll fly to the nearest airport. Although, I won’t be able to bring my rottie, but Pops is just as EAGER to meet you as Rottie is. And no, I don’t give HJs, hot jalapenos aren’t good gifts to give someone you’ve just met.
1082 Wolseley Ave. Winnipeg, MB R3G1G1
Buzzer code is 056
I sleep late so don’t come till about noon (central time).
Tell your dad I said he can blow me, by the way.
Damn, I lied too! I don’t live in Victoria, I live in Los Angeles. No need for daddy’s plane! Woo hoo! Address? I fucking hate Vegas, a bunch of ego driven, dumb ass men and women!
Fuck, and I was just about to tell you about how beautiful Victoria is. I used to go there every week when I worked on cruise ships, one of the prettiest ports on the itinerary.
Fuck off, 2lolo, your sick pedophile bullshit is too much. Learn some god damn boundries, sick fuck. You have no idea who you’re dealing with. The National Sex Offenders list is something you’ll NEVER get away from once you’re on.
REPLY BUTTON.
THAT IS ALL.
Somehow I doubt that. In many of your comments, you mention being a pedophile. You commented ” I’d still do her” on a page depicting a minor. If you’re not a pedophile yet, it’s just a matter of time. Or is it that you were on the receiving end of a pedophile and you’re just acting out your frustrations? Whatever the case, you’re sick and you’re being watched. Watch yourself, young man, and learn some fucking boundries! Sick piece of shit.
Just a little reminder, you’re on a site called “Epicfail”. I’m not sure what you expected to encounter here, but you’re taking it just a little too seriously for your own good. You can “watch” me all you want. If you want to watch me make a ham sandwich, that’s fine. If you want to watch me eat/have sex with it, that’s fine too. I’m not here to judge. You, however, are. Good luck with that.
By the way, what did your dad say about blowing me? Cause I don’t have all day.
It seems like you can’t quite grasp the concept of a joke. I can understand if you’re just a child trying to get a rise out of me, but the only thing you’re doing is turning me on. Are you under the age of 15? If so, PLEASE don’t stop with the childish sexy retorts!!! I get the honor of putting up with people like you every week!
Heatherjoy? You got any panties on right now?
CAN YOU AND YOUR DAD FLY TO ALABAMA? I NEED HIS CONSENT.
You sound hot.
I’ll have hogjowls and grits ready fer ya’ll.
Little boy, you’re sick. I love this site. It’s FUNNY. You are sick. You go too far. Don’t you get it? I could give a fuck what or who you fuck, as long as you’re not hurting anyone. Look up this word: etiquette. You can be funny without being a total fucking loser. You harass people on here when they leave comments about whatever fail they’re commenting on. They don’t ask to be fucked with, do they? They’ve asked you several times to shut the fuck up, but noooo, you press on. You win the douche bag of the year award. When you get to high school and lokk back on all the perverted crap you wrote when you were 11 or 12, you’re going to be very disappointed in yourself. I noticed the comments you left for people on you tube have been taken off, gee I wonder why? CUZ YOU’RE A SICK, PATHETIC excuse for a human being. Call yourself “troll” all you want, but even trolls have balls and a brain. Tone your shit down. Don’t you have any real friends? You know, the kind you can hang out with, have sleep overs? We know how you love sleep overs. Take off your mother’s wig and heels before anyone comes over. Doesn’t feel good, does it? I’m actually a very nice person, I hate fucking bullies…pathetic, mean, bullies…that’s YOU!
I WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH YOUR MOUTH
I REMOVED THOSE BIRTHING VIDEOS FROM MY FAVORITES LIST BECAUSE I ALREADY DOWNLOADED THEM AND BURNED THEM TO DVD!
Fred, my dear, you couldn’t handle me. FAP to that!
CAN I FAP TO THAT? NEVERMIND I ALREADY DID.
HJ, just did. T’was good for me. Thank you sweetie.
2lolo you’re too pathetic, I’d do Fred before you. Well, no, I’d never do you.
DAMN, FRED ALWAYS GETS THE CHICKS ON THIS SITE. MAYBE THERE’S SOMETHING TO THAT ASS 2 MOUTH SCHOOL AFTER ALL…
Fred, I hope it was fan~tabulous! 2lolo, shoo! This party is for two. See?? Pathetic.
Heatherjoy, baby, a tissue didn’t handle even a little of the clean-up. Had to wipe off with a towel. I think I’m in love. Now I need to go shower. It’s getting sticky.
God damn it! When 2 lolo commented that he fapped, I mistakenly thought it was you, Fred. Sorry! But I do hoped it was…ummm…fapalicious? Cool.
Can I be your Kitty Washing Machine? I’m tongue powered!
Oh Fred, my heart is pounding! I have to admit, my panties are a bit moist.
Okay, quit it! I’m gettin’ another rise! I’m gonna be to sore to get outta bed in the morning.
And you can call me Heather, Joy is my middle name.
VERY nice to meet you, Heather Joy!
CAN I CALL YOU SUCKITALL?
*Just Heather? Sorry.
You shet up!
Yeah, what if this is suckitall in disguise?
Not you, Heather.
Sorry to disturb your fap session, Fred. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. I’ll let the other 2lolo take it from here.
Have a good night, HJ.
Can’t be. To literate.
Same to you, 2lolo.
BTW: I’m warming up my own Kitty Washing Machine.
TRUE BUT I THINK SHE’LL JUST END UP GETTING TROLLED UNTIL SHE STOPS GETTING ON HERE.
Probably. Talking shit is fun, though. You seem to get a kick out of it…as do I.
VAGINA
i approve this message.
Fred, what’s this kitty washing machine thing? Damn, am I gonna get kicked out of here for this?
No, you won’t get kicked out.
If it’s a cat in a washing machine, I’ll cry, if it’s porn, I’ll barf…kind of a los~lose situation.
No, it’s on YouTube. It’s a machine someone built to wash your kitty. Not the kinda kitty that I prefer, though.
I found it funny because cats just don’t like water. You may not like it.
Googled it, horrifying! That poor cat! I could understand doing that if he was really dirty or had 2lolo stuck all over him. Poor cat
On another topic, I am glad I have a new word for “shit”…2lolo just sounds better. It fits!
Well, you weren’t talking to the real-deal. The real one is a fuckwit that has trolled us all for a coupla years. We screw with him back. That includes taking on his persona and making people like you hate him more. New people don’t know who the real one is. The real one says stupid shit about everybody, uses caps inappropriately, and can’t spell worth a shit. If you keep an eye out, he usually shows up around noon everyday and goes through all the threads trying to piss someone off…usually, me.
I had to bathe my cat once, it wasn’t pretty! I have to hit the sack, good night. Perhaps we’ll see each other here tomorrow. I’ll look for you.
Goodnight.
Hello?
How did you do that?
Dumb ass. Thats why there are signs saying don’t walk under barriers.