Comments by "Arthur Mosel" (@arthurmosel808) on "Where did the US$2 trillion surplus in trade go? How China's Rich Transfer Their Assets?" video.
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@lindapindabelinda3570 I keep brushing the send key. And on paper they pay good dividends, along came COVID, businesses closed and people needed money. The banks really didn't have adequate resources, so the government acted and banks seized or limited depositors ability to get cash. Lets look at housing. Builders were essentially running a Ponzi scheme where projects were funded by sales of future projects. This meant without future projects being sold that they could fund the ones already sold. People were using these purchases for investments since housing prices constantly rose. They would borrow from the bank to purchase the home, and immediately start paying for a project that hadn't even been begun. Again, along came COVID and this House of Cards began to collapse. Builder couldn't build and building material prices rose if they could. People started complaining and refusing to pay. The builders went bankrupt, losing billions and leaving buyers holding the bag. Since biggest part of the economy was the home market, the national economy took a direct hit. Now look at the actual buildings. Historically there was a practice, often called "the squeeze" by Westerners of the period. Under Imperial rule, people at all levels of the government took some of the Imperial money entrusted to them; an honest man only took up to 10%. This would mean if a project had an Imperial funding of 100,000 (I am not using the money's name or a real amount), the first person kept say 10,000 leaving the project 90,000. The next man kept 9,000, leaving the next 81,000. The next took 8,100, leaving 72,900. This would continue until it reached the last person. For our example, let's say it was the man who got 72,900. He of course needed to make a profit, so he would use the cheapest labor and material he could and pocket the savings. Look at today's Chinese construction. It often uses substandard or even fraudulent materials, leaving buildings to start breaking up within a few years. This applies to even some government projects. Meaning the actual value of compieted buildings is less than the paper value. By the way, this method of reducing costs has also been seen in poison baby formula (substituting a poisonous material for a more expensive item) bolts made of cheaper grade steel than that required, etc. Now to the governmen, the game there is played by companies being owned by the government officials family. There by allowing the official to profit from this position (perhaps learned from the West or perhaps the West learned from them. Think President Biden's family. Enough said, the Chinese economy has always been a Hkuse of Cards made of smoke and mirrors awaiting a strong wind to destroy it. COVID was that wind, it didn't cause the problems; it exposed them.
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