{"id":315,"date":"2016-01-22T23:30:16","date_gmt":"2016-01-23T04:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/?p=315"},"modified":"2016-01-18T11:08:26","modified_gmt":"2016-01-18T16:08:26","slug":"no-chinese-free-lunch-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/?p=315","title":{"rendered":"No Chinese Free Lunch Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was only about 4 scant months ago that I wrote a column about China<\/a> and the real and present dangers it presented to the global economy.\u00a0 And here we are on the edge of the meltdown, watching as the Chinese stock market drops and drops in value.<\/p>\n

Nothing seems to help during this latest flurry of devaluation on the Chinese Stock Market.\u00a0 The automatic circuit breakers halted trading on two separate occasions before the Chinese government concluded that they were doing more harm than good.\u00a0 The market then proceeded to tank again.\u00a0 And despite all this turmoil, the central government keeps beating the drum that growth in the economy is still on pace for 6-7%.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, back in the United States, many market participants on the NYSE or NASDAQ have lost their collective heads and have begun selling everything off in sight.\u00a0 Of course, cooler, less-emotional heads are buying and at a discount but it looks like the public at large doesn\u2019t care.\u00a0 There is an old saying, which goes something like \u201cthe beatings will continue until morale improve\u201d, that applies here.<\/p>\n

I bring up these crazy, irrational responses as way of a prelude to the main point here.\u00a0 \u00a0Human behavior gets muddled when strong emotions are roiling under the surface.\u00a0 Nothing new there! And few things engender strong emotions as much as money \u2013 or more precisely the freedom that having lots of money implies.\u00a0 But the less-cynical-me had hoped that paid professionals in both the financial and media sectors to be able to detach emotion and discuss objectively.<\/p>\n

Anyone with common sense and the ability to keep their emotions in check would have been able to warn that the \u2018China miracle\u2019 was anything but.\u00a0 There was no shortage of voices who were questioning the Dragon\u2019s wisdom in constructing high-rise apartment buildings in which no one lives, or the raising of large malls where no one shops.\u00a0 And yet, China\u2019s \u2018new economy\u2019 made headlines all over the world.<\/p>\n

Even now, with the precipitous loses of the last two weeks, the best that seems to come out of \u2018money reporting\u2019 are tame and vapid pieces like Heather Long\u2019s Why China doesn\u2019t know what it\u2019s doing<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 Ms Long\u2019s lead in reads<\/p>\n

China's growth miracle is cracking. The country no longer seems to know what it's doing when it comes to the economy and, especially, financial markets<\/p>\n
-Heather Long, CNN<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Huh?\u00a0 When did China ever know what it was doing?\u00a0 I\u2019m willing to bet that she is someone who would dismissively scoff at the ordinary sorts of miracles that those religious \u2018country bumpkins\u2019 accept.<\/p>\n

Later in the piece she is willing to ask the question<\/p>\n

But here's the real takeaway: Why did it take the rest of the world so long to figure out that China didn't have it all under control?<\/p>\n
-Heather Long, CNN<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

I would love to see what she would have said if she were reporting on the pyramid scheme of Bernie Madoff.\u00a0 Perhaps her text would read<\/p>\n

Madoff\u2019s investment return miracle is beginning to crack.\u00a0 He no longer seems to know what he is doing with his client\u2019s money.\u00a0 But the real takeaway is why none of us ever questioned how his get-rich-quick, never-downturning-growth could be sustained.\u00a0 Silly us, maybe we should give his genius a second chance.<\/p>\n
- M. Y. Cynicism<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

And so the more-cynical-me jumps to a conclusion that it wishes to share.\u00a0 There will always be buffoons in the market, like rubes in at the circus.\u00a0 Eager to see something new or strike it rich or whatever, they are willing to suspend not only disbelief but common sense.\u00a0 They are quite willing to look the other way while their pocket is picked clean.\u00a0 Some members of the financial industry and of the intelligentsia in the media aid in this shearing by acting as either side-show barkers or as those encouraging bystanders who tell us \u201cWhat have ya got to lose.\u201d\u00a0 Other members act as the \u2018friends\u2019 who consoles us with platitudes about it not being our fault or how could we have known or it was just bad luck.\u00a0 Only a few, honest ones continue to tells us that there is no such thing as a free lunch.\u00a0 I just don\u2019t think many of us will ever listen those guys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was only about 4 scant months ago that I wrote a column about China and the real and present dangers it presented to the global economy.\u00a0 And here we... Read more ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":318,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions\/318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}