Once upon a time Hugh Hendry was one of the world's most prominent financial skeptics, arguing with anyone who would listen that the status quo is doomed and that central planning will never work.
Via GEFIRA,
Several weeks ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping paid a visit to CCTV and People’s Daily to tell them what a great job they’re doing. The feeling, The Shanghaiist quipped, was mutual.
The media, Xi said while making the rounds, should “reflect the will of the Party, mirror the views of the Party, preserve the authority of the Party, preserve the unity of the Party and achieve love of the Party, protection of the Party and acting for the Party.”
So what you’re saying is that it’s all about the Party?
Recent footage of another instance of a “floating city” in China has once again gone viral. While many explain the phenomena as natural “fata morgana”, a type of optical illusion, the Inquisitor point out that the most recent “city sighting” may have some very un-natural origins: The ghostly “floating city” was witnessed by hundreds of stunned residents of Dalian who stopped to gawk and snap photographs of the massive ghost city with towering skyscrapers that loomed in fog or city smog over the Dalian harbor.
Back in October when we first looked at ground zero of the commodity price collapse, we found something striking: as of the end of 2014, one half of China's commodity companies with corporate debt were totally insolvent - based on Macquarie data they were unable to cover even one interest payment (let along debt maturity) with existing cash creation.