Quote from: Curtains873 on April 13, 2016, 12:29:25 AM

I´ve heard about those ghost cities but didn´t realize that it could be this massive..25% of housing empty? That is truly staggering. How about the financing? Is that through some ghost banks? I can´t imagine that it´ll end well. The regime will do anything to stay in power, especially in the interests of the self-preservation of the party bosses. It´s going to be very interesting next couple of years.

I'm not overly familiar with how banking in China works except it's heavily dictated by the communist party which isn't good at all. Other than that, I just know what is reported which is that China is pumping massive amounts of money into the stock market to inflate asset prices, and has all kinds of programs encouraging regular citizens to invest in the market at these inflated prices too. When that crashes, it will crash hard and wipe out a significant amount of wealth from China's middle class. I don't think it's a perfect analogy, but it would be similar to the US government enticing people to buy into the stock market in the 1920s, far beyond what was already happening naturally, and then at the same time also actively manipulating the market to send stock prices even higher. By the time that gravy train ended in 1929, it would have made the Great Depression one hell of a lot worse than it was, because in addition to all that wealth disappearing, all that artificial wealth the government tried to create would have disappeared too, and that would have made the hole to dig out of that much deeper. That's where I view China today.