Chinese police swoop on $7.6 Billion ‘record-breaking online Ponzi scheme’

[kbart]

Not surprising, if they even managed to run fake banks(0)..

0. http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-30932424

[wyred]

Silly question here, why were the account books buried instead of burned? Do the books have any use in future if they never got caught?

[maximmilius_rob]

Why even have records in paper?

[shaurz]

Chinese people have amassed a lot of wealth but their investment options are very limited. Hence the Chinese stock market bubble, property-building bubble and Ponzi schemes.

[toomuchtodo]

I think the problem is, there simply is no venue for them to invest in. Real estate and the stock market, as you mentioned. The only other places would be commodities, which are tanking.....due to demand falling off in China.

What do you do when there is nowhere to invest your excess funds? (not rhetorical) You either invest in riskier asset classes, or you don't need to generate as much income (work less perhaps?)

[kbenzle]

How can one China Ponzi sheme have $7.5 billion, but the the best ponzi sheme to date, bitcoin, market cap only stands at like $5 billiion?

[hamburglar]

Bernie Madoff stole $18 billion in his ponzi scheme.

[broknbottle]

reminds me of wcm777

[biot]

That's a horrible site on mobile... it tries to do some weird app loading thing, wants to consume additional local storage while a percentage counter slowly climbs one percent per second with no content visible.

Better link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-3425972/China-co...

[lowmagnet]

Or, with less tabloid sidebar (now with 100 less celebrity gossip boxes): https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-comp...

[yuncun]

First time I've ever seen Daily Mail cited as 'better link'

[sharetea]

The China's own ponzi economy will be mirroring the collapse of Ezubo .

"So in two short decades, China has erected a monumental Ponzi economy that is economically rotten to the core. It has 1.5 billion tons of steel capacity, but “sell-through” demand of less than half that amount.... The same is true for its cement industry, ship-building, solar and aluminum industries—to say nothing of 70 million empty luxury apartments and vast stretches of over-built highways, fast rail, airports, shopping mails and new cities.

In short, the flip-side of the China’s giant credit bubble is the most massive malinvesment of real economic resources—-labor, raw materials and capital goods—ever known"

China’s Monumental Ponzi: Here’s How It Unravels http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/chinas-monumental-ponz...

[kaonashi]

That's not a Ponzi scheme; that really doesn't have anything to do with Ponzi schemes, I wonder why you even bring it up?

[jbooth]

That guy looks like a kook. Not that everything's on the up-and-up in China but I bet this guy spent 2008-2012 exhorting everyone to buy gold.

[shaurz]

Anything for more GDP growth! I wonder if the insane over-provisioning is a genius scheme to monopolise worldwide manufacturing for a century (even at massive cost to their population) or just a drive to keep up unsustainable growth statistics. Either way the game will be up eventually...

[muddyrivers]

There are many serious issues in China's economy. Unfortunately, there are no feasible way to avoid them considering the hyper-growth in 30 years, as far as we as a society know. If you have thoughts and ideas, please share. Call it "Monumental Ponzi"? I suggest you to do one of two things. Either do some serious study in economics and live and do business in China for a couple of years to see what it really is, if you can afford it. Or continue shedding your eyes from the world and being delusional.