Posts Tagged ‘china’

#China ; Earth’s Most Populous Nation Brings The Minority Report to Life

Posted: March 14, 2016 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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by @anarchyroll

One of the most oppressive governments in the world enacting a science fiction based methods for stopping crime and terrorism…what could go wrong?

The Minority Report was an alright movie because of how fantastical the concept of solving crimes before they happen is. Fantastical in a free society at least.

Don’t let the fact that it is the largest economy in the world fool you, China is not a free society. Their communist government has their fingers in everything. In the case of the electronic data of the citizens of China, the government prefers a hand on the throat instead of a finger on the pulse.

I wonder if this attempt to stop crime and terrorism before it happens is in any way correlated with the ideological purification campaign the government has admittedly been undergoing.

Intense cultural censorship, absolutely zero digital privacy, and an authoritarian government. People in America seem paranoid that Donald Trump, a benefactor of a free market society in a democracy is going to descend the country into a racist, fascist state. Yet, the country that owns over a trillion dollars of US debt, is enacting a reality on its citizenry beyond what George Orwell could have imagined.

An authoritarian regime using data mining to predict crime before it happens seems more troubling than a real estate mogul making it halfway through a democratic election process. There is so much going on in this world it is impossible for a person to put care and effort into all the news that’s fit to print.

But let us keep the proverbial eye out as technology and power continue to intersect with each other, so we don’t one day wake up blindfolded to a materialized science fiction dystopia.

Think that a Matrix movie like dystopia is pure fantasy? What exactly does this image remind you of?

 

What is #Alibaba? And How Did It Become the Biggest IPO Ever?

Posted: October 7, 2014 in Excess and Algorithms
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by @anarchyroll
10/6/2014

The biggest Initial Public Offering (IPO) in the history of the New York Stock Exchange occurred recently.

Have you heard of Alibaba? Had you heard about Alibaba before last month? Have you already forgotten about Alibaba after it didn’t carry over to a fresh news cycle? When someone mentioned it to me last month, all I thought of was the Beastie Boys song.

What is Alibaba?

  • Google, Amazon, PayPal and eBay all rolled into one
  • A wholesale marketplace; Alibaba is the middleman the connects retailers/sellers directly to customers/buyers
  • Alibaba is the top dog in the largest e-commerce market in the world

How did Alibaba become the biggest IPO ever?

  • Capitalizing on the Chinese consumers’ desires to shop online, for cheap, with trustworthy retailers/merchants
  • 80% of China’s e-commerce is done through Alibaba
  • Domination of the world’s largest growing market paired with international expansion has Wall Street drooling

So China’s biggest internet cash cow has gone public on stock market. Yahoo is the biggest American company to directly benefit from Alibaba’s IPO success as the two are very  much in bed together, on the level, and in public NOT under the table. In fact, Yahoo has benefited so much from Alibaba’s success there is talk of them investing in and/or acquiring Snapchat.

What are potential problems with Alibaba?

  • It’s Chinese, the communist government/central bank could throw a monkey wrench into the mix at any time, and already has
  • The stock being bought isn’t actual stock in the company, but in their Cayman Islands shell corporation
  • Is Alibaba-Mania a product of a new Dot Com Bubble? The question is worth asking.

Should you go out and buy as much Alibaba stock as you can afford? Well, if you’re a good investor, you should always asked yourself; what would Warren Buffett do?

As with most IPOs, if you weren’t ahead of the curve or a fan of the band before they were cool, the ship has mostly sailed on this one. What I find personally noteworthy about Alibaba, is everyone I know who invests and is well off because of it, wants nothing to do with Alibaba. Why? They all say the same thing; the Chinese government. How much is the government involved with Alibaba? How much influence do they have? How much transparency is there and how much of that can actually be trusted?

When the Head of the FBI goes on 60 Minutes and openly talks about the Chinese military attempting to cyber attack the US economy, one should be very cautious about investing in the Cayman Islands shell company of a Chinese internet marketplace with direct ties to the Chinese government.

The #China Bubble

Posted: May 28, 2014 in Excess and Algorithms
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eanda logoby @anarchyroll
5/27/2014

What happens when the country that we borrow from needs to borrow from someone?

China is starting to see companies collapse and borrowing go up. Why should you care?

Because the United States of America is dependent on China whether we want to be or not, whether people know it or not. China now has to spend $4 to make a $1.

If China goes through a depression or a recession or even something resembling a recession, we are going to feel the negative effects here at home. Not just because they buy so much of our government debt, but because China is responsible for 1/3 of global economic input according to the article linked to above.

There’s no need to panic or ring a doomsday alarm. But China is in a debt crisis.When that language/terminology is used there must be cause for concern in the name of financial responsibility and fiduciary duty. Why is that the case? Why should you care about this?

China owns $1 Trillion with a T of US Government Debt.

That may not seem like a lot when you see the total amount of government debt. But a trillion dollars is a trillion dollars no matter how economists may try to justify it to themselves. Anytime a trillion dollars is involved, it’s safe to say that an eye and an ear should be paid to it at all times. Especially when a margin call from China could put us on a bullet train to a 2008 sequel. The sequel is never better than the original, but let’s keep this one in the territory of Casablanca and Old School and let the original stand alone with the test of time.

#China’s Great Wall of Recession

Posted: March 15, 2014 in Excess and Algorithms
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by @anarchyroll
3/14/2014

China’s influence on the global economy is well documented. If you don’t know what it is; since the mid 1990s China has basically become the straw that stirs the drink that is the global economy. Why? After all Europe as a whole and the United States are technically bigger players with more liquidity in the markets.

The reasons are how much money has been moving into China because of their precedent busting annual economic growth rates, in addition to their purchasing of US government debt. All major international economic players have been investing in China two decades, and they basically own the United States the way a bank owns your mortgage or your credit card debt. China is the world economic HBIC whether people like to admit it or not, and they don’t.

They don’t like admitting it, but they’ll put their money there. Manufacturing, real estate, consumer goods purchases, GDP, and every economic indicator in China has been going one direction since the Clinton administration, up…until now.

To maintain their status of belles of the ball in addition to maintain what has appeared to be unmaintainable growth rates, China’s government has essentially been cooking the books to make their economy look stronger than it actually is. Ironically their downfall may be identical to the downfall of the US economy circa 2008, real estate.

Last season on VICE on HBO, the ghost cities of China were explored and showcased in crystal clear high-definition for the world to see. The Chicago Tribune recently did a feature on Chicago architecture firms building skyscraper after skyscraper in an architectural arms race in the new metropolises of China. The very well researched and written article showed the highlights and low lights of the urban migration of the Chinese population. Some of those low lights included more ghost buildings, ghost towns, unemployment, and environmental problems.

The economic numbers on paper aren’t matching up with the physical reality of the external world. Wow, I guess China is becoming more like the US every day. I kid, I kid, they are actually becoming more like Japan every day by taking steps very similar to that of the Lost Decade.

The other economic catastrophe shoe may be getting ready to drop. Although GDP growth grew, it is at its slowest pace in 15 years. Manufacturing and trade are both down, two cornerstones of China’s economic darling status. The only things that are sharply moving up are industrial bankruptcies and inflation.

If you’re still reading you’re probably wondering why you should give a shit. The answer to that is simple. If China goes into a recession or depression, so does the rest of the first world because anyone who invests has money tied up in China.  If a run on the bank occurs in China, what is to stop them from doing a margin call on the US debt they’ve been purchasing since the 90s? And if that happens, what exactly happens?

It may not be time to move all of your money into canned tomato soup and shotguns…yet. But it looks more and more like buying American may not just be for cars and furniture anymore. It might be time for anyone with a mutual fund to make sure their assets aren’t being remedied with any eastern medicine.