Thursday, July 5, 2012

Two Notes on China

First, a terrifying, almost hilarious quote on inland China's construction industry:

However, some fear that buyers of its concrete mixing machines are doubling up on their debt by using new machines as collateral for further loans. The concrete mixing companies are then selling their ready mixed concrete on credit to cash-strapped property developers.
Analysts at Jefferies in Hong Kong, who went to Jiangsu province to study the concrete market in April, say that more than half of the concrete machines sold in the first quarter by Zoomlion had not even been switched on. Customers were putting the machines in storage and only wanted them to generate cash that they need to pay salaries, electricity bills and buy raw materials. 

There's no way that can end up badly.

Second, an interesting ad I saw while reading the (online) New York Times:


Translation:

Euro falling? You can make money from this fall!
In a world of a collapsing Euro, stumbling stock market, fiercely rising oil prices, ballooning gold, how do you make money? At Xianqiquan (company name) dealer, make fast returns - in less than hour earn back 85% of your investment!

Forex traders are everywhere! This followed up with catching a random cellphone conversation snippet that began with "The American economy isn't doing that well" made for an interesting evening.

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