[Specie33]

Interesting about this is that Evergrande is defaulting only on foreign held debt. Not internal debt after a ccp mandate.

If their economy continues its downturn then this precedent would hold for all debt. I would really watch personal funds and investments and insure they dont hold any chinese debt as an asset.

[ChuckMcM]

Mark Levine had some good thoughts on this situation, and it really does seem to encapsulate the entire Chinese "free market" experiment in a single entity. I hope that market regulators all around the planet are paying attention to the challenges of trying to "control" market movements in order to promote an agenda (whether it is protecting pension funds or national prestige).

If you've got your "thumb on the scale" as the saying goes, there will always be forces that try to exploit that condition.

[KarlKemp]

National banks have always had certain objectives (or “agendas”) that broadly correspondent to the general welfare and stability of the system. I don’t know how it would even be possible for them to make decisions without having objectives, so the “hands-off” or “neutrality” people clamor for seems rather unspecific.

The idea that tying the money to some physical (gold standard) or mathematical (Bitcoin) “reality” is somehow preferable is just the naturalistic fallacy wrapped in cynicism, namely that today’s institutions are incapable of making better decisions than the completely arbitrary whims of these alternatives. And all the ghosts people seem haunted by (hyperinflation) are figments of history a century removed.

[jacquesm]

The same happened in reverse with the Euro and the Swiss Franc.

[AlexCoventry]

Do you mean Matt Levine? If not, could you give a link, please?

[ChuckMcM]

Yes, Matt, and I get the newsletter so I don't know where the link is, but here is an excerpt: EDIT found the link: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-09-21/evergr...

From Matt Levine:

It seems to me that what is interesting about Evergrande is not so much the magnitude of its debt problems but their variety. Evergrande owes money to Chinese banks. It owes money to foreign hedge funds, and foreign investors own its stock. It owes money to suppliers, and to Chinese retail investors in those wealth management products. And it owes apartments to buyers. And the retail investors who bought Evergrande wealth management products were often also Evergrande homeowners, because the products were sold at Evergrande buildings:

    “My parents put the bulk of their savings, which is Rmb200,000 and not a lot by Evergrande’s standard, into its [wealth management products],” said the daughter of one investor who asked to be identified by her surname Xu. 

    She said an Evergrande financial adviser stationed in an apartment tower built by the company in central China had persuaded her mother to invest. “They wouldn’t have trusted Evergrande’s wealth products had they not bought the developer’s apartment,” she said.

In fact they were apparently advertised in the elevators:

    "I bought from the property managers after seeing the ad in the elevator, as I trusted Evergrande for being a Fortune Global 500 company,” said the owner of an Evergrande property in the conglomerate's home province of Guangdong surnamed Du.

And it also sold the wealth management products to employees:

    When the troubled Chinese property giant Evergrande was starved for cash earlier this year, it turned to its own employees with a strong-arm pitch: Those who wanted to keep their bonuses would have to give Evergrande a short-term loan.

    Some workers tapped their friends and family for money to lend to the company. Others borrowed from the bank. Then, this month, Evergrande suddenly stopped paying back the loans, which had been packaged as high-interest investments. …

    The extent of the campaign and how much money it might have raised were unclear. Employees were told to each invest a certain amount of money in Evergrande Wealth products, and that if they failed to do so, their performance pay and bonuses would be docked, employees told Anhui.

These products were simultaneously (1) “categorised as fixed-income products suitable for ‘conservative investors seeking steady returns’” and (2) sold with 11% yields. Seems bad!

When a big company runs out of money, the basic questions are (1) who gets paid and who doesn’t and (2) should the government pay its debts for it? Those questions are interconnected. There is an ordinary way to answer the first question, some waterfall of claim seniority. You look at the company’s capital structure and say “well these people have senior claims and will get paid back, and these people have junior claims and won’t, and these other people are somewhere in the middle and might get some recovery.” And there are complex and subtle questions about the best way to preserve value in the business: Perhaps you have the legal right to stiff customers (perhaps their deposits aren’t particularly senior claims), but if you do that you’ll never get any more customers, so you treat them better than you are legally required to. And the managers of the business and the creditors and the lawyers work together to figure out a plan that maximizes the recovery for everyone.

But if the ordinary process to answer the first question ends up with an answer like “sympathetic ordinary people lose their life savings,” or “politically connected people lose everything,” or “the banking system loses a lot of money and becomes undercapitalized,” or for that matter “housing prices collapse,” then that is a good reason for the government to step in. And if the government is stepping in, there is no particular reason to assume that the ordinary claims of seniority will apply. If the government steps in to rescue small investors or the banking system or housing prices, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will also rescue foreign hedge funds.

Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway did an Odd Lots episode with analyst Travis Lundy about this, in which he gives his best guess at a waterfall of repayment. “I think that if you start from the ranking of who ends up coming out well on this, if you had to ask, this is the Communist Party of China who's the most important stakeholder in this,” he says, and then goes through a list of claimants ordered by, basically, how politically sympathetic they are. This seems like a more reasonable analysis than, like, looking at the corporate structure and legal document to see which claims are more senior.

Much of the writing about Evergrande has been about “is this China’s Lehman moment?” The main lesson of Lehman was that the collapse of a big levered interconnected firm could cause serious economic damage, and since Lehman, financial regulators in the U.S. and Europe have done a lot of work on reducing leverage and interconnection and damage.

[Specie33]

This is very Sam Zell no BS type advice....When a big company runs out of money, the basic questions are (1) who gets paid and who doesn’t and (2) should the government pay its debts for it? Guessing whom gets paid back first is often a great way to make a lot of money if you can monetize it. Think MBS tranches AAA or BBB. With the international real estate market being at all time highs there is a huge movement of money that will trade hands in the next 10 years. How that will happen and how to gain exposure is the 1mm dollar question. Maybe Aladdin and BLRK have the answer?

[mjevans]

Housing should be a human right, not an investment.

[dash2]

The guy down the road from me got his flat as a human right. He throws his empty bottles on to the street where I have to walk my dog. The rumour is his sister is also in there and is on the game. His behaviour is making the guy who lives beneath him not sleep at night. The housing association has given up "trying to support him to change his behaviour" and is now taking him to court. By the end of the year, we all hope, he will be out of his flat. Then he will be given another flat, next to some even unluckier people, as a human right.

[BoiledCabbage]

Sounds like he's an ass. And if he paid rent he'd still be an ass. It's not a magic cure for what's wrong with him.

[Specie33]

Give the homeless one of the houses in St Louie or Gary. They can fix it up and have a place. There is lots of housing that is not expensive but people have to WORK for it or it doesn't mean anything.

[AlexCoventry]

Thanks.

[Laforet]

Much of their domestic debt has been quietly swapped for equity and commercial papers over the past few years. A tonne of unsecured debt that they have no intention nor ability to pay back.

The reason why Evergrande has accumulated so much foreign debt in the first place is because no domestic bank wanted to touch them with a ten foot pole. After all they have effectively defaulted once already by unilaterally declaring an equity swap on 130 billion CNY worth of maturing bonds in September last year.

[fspeech]

Clearing firm Clearstream said all coupons were paid. It is insteresting how little patience people have. There is an authoritative source here. People could just wait for a few more hours for it: https://news.yahoo.com/evergrande-makes-overdue-interest-pay...

[topper-123]

> Evergrande, the world's most indebted developer … grapples with more than $300 billion in liabilities, $19 billion of which are international market bonds.

Sounds like this is mostly domestic debt, so they cant make this go away by saying they wont support international debt holders. Seems like the CCP in a tough spot here.

[hogFeast]

There is no distinction between foreign held and internal debt. The offshore debt is owned predominantly by Chinese state banks. There are a few funds that hold these bonds (Ashmore is one), but there is a massive dollar surplus within China and so all the state banks were looking for somewhere to invest money...and Evergrande created a way to do that.

[seanmcdirmid]

> Interesting about this is that Evergrande is defaulting only on foreign held debt. Not internal debt after a ccp mandate.

This will put a huge hamper on China's FDI: if foreign investors are given a worse place in line in case of insolvency, they will either shy away from investing at all or demand higher returns for the extra risk.

[urthor]

Chinese FDI inflows and outflows are actually almost equivalent in USD terms. Furthermore, China is well known for placing huge restrictions on capital outflow in its economy.

I think it's safe to say that even if every last dollar of FDI dried up, China would be more than fine with its domestic capital supply.

Furthermore, the identities of the big FDI investors are dominated by physical manufacturers investing in onshore operations. Not so much liquid global securities trading.

[jonahbenton]

Uh, Tether?

[vmception]

because some guy on twitter said any Tether exposure to commercial paper = 150% exposure to imploding evergrande bonds

this is the funniest meme, “we made it up” https://youtu.be/GM-e46xdcUo

Its a pretty clever meme because pointing out how dumb it is makes it seem like that person doesnt believe there is anything else wrong with tether, immediate derailing their criticism of the latest rumor, allowing for literally any rumor to be masqueraded as truth.

[raesene9]

I don't think Tether is in purely Evergrande bonds, but I do think Tether has a load of Chinese bonds/commercial paper, and if an Evergrande default causes a general reduction in the value of those, Tether will be in a very sticky position as they'll have a large hole in their reserves...

[alasdair_]

Why would anyone care? It's not like Tether has ever been audited and there is so much other shadiness that it's more than likely there is already a massive hole in the Tether reserves.

[AlexCoventry]

Why do you believe that?

[raesene9]

So AFAIK Tether has ~$30b of commercial paper (https://tether.to/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/tether_assuranc...) which would make it one of the larger commercial paper operators in the US market if it operated there.

From what I've read, other paricipants in the US market have stated they don't see Tether partipating there, to that kind of volume.

Combine that with the fact that, until recently, China was a huge market for crypto both miners and traders, and it seems likely that the large chinese commercial paper market would be where Tether would have at least some of it's money.

[lamontcg]

I don't understand why anyone believes Tether when they say they own $30b of commercial paper. The fact that nobody in any of the commercial paper markets know who they are suggests that Tether is once again at least being misleading if not lying.

[lmm]

If their commercial paper is something other than Evergrande, surely they'd have said so by now. (Assuming it exists at all, of course)

[vmception]

They dont need to respond to every rumor, its been a whole decade, they’ve weathered much greater crisis of confidence with far below $1 exchange rates. The people that do care would have said prove it, aka “disprove the random rumor”, and wouldn't be satisfied with any statement or attestation or anything greater that they’ve never done anyway. At this point whats the use of energy in that direction anymore. Even audited stablecoins are a systemic risk to the crypto ecosystem. So at this point your either in or out. Hot potato. Just like all the other markets where Lehman bros and Aig got such great audits and ratings. I’m not trying to squash conversation about it, just offering a perspective because really the standard being levied applies to USDC, GUSD, PAXOS and others who have grown to similarly large heights.

Even the earlier assumption that Tether wouldnt have US assets is made up on the spot, its weird! They were banking in Peurto Rico for years! Two US regulators didnt move to freeze their assets they just said “update your disclaimers”. Why dont we make a rumor that they hold Hertz bonds and Certificates of Deposit at Capital One Bank? Its arbitrary! They should prove they dont have Hertz bonds just so I can say “I …. dont believe you.”

[colinmhayes]

They have said it's not Evergrande.

[rp1]

China has been waging economic warfare via equity markets for a while now. The U.S. hasn’t done anything to protect investors from billions in losses. Totally embarrassing.

[xxpor]

A) What do you propose the US do?

B) Why should the US do anything? If your risk profile when dealing with Chinese companies doesn't include the risk that the CPC will change the rules of the game later to benefit the domestic economy, you're a sucker.

[gpm]

A) I'd suggest that there are a wide variety of options here, reciprocal actions are common in diplomacy, so for instance the US could default on an equal amount of US debt that China holds, or perhaps pass a law that in the case of the bankruptcy of US companies bonds owned by Chinese nationals at any time after the proposal of said law (to avoiding them just selling them) are void.

Of course these options (and probably any other options you imagine) would have pretty wide reaching side effects - to the extent that I'm not even sure they are worth the cost - but they definitely exist.

B) Because transfer of wealth from US investors to China harms US interests, the US government exists to serve US interests and part of that is standing up for their nationals in international trade.

[whimsicalism]

The United States government defaulting on any amount of its debt would be really really really stupid policy.

> Because transfer of wealth from US investors to China harms US interests, the US government exists to serve US interests and part of that is standing up for their nationals in international trade.

I am not convinced apriori that this is the case, and don't feel comfortable having politicians who definitely have no clue whether that is the case making the calls.

[Robotbeat]

> The United States government defaulting on any amount of its debt would be really really really stupid policy.

Also arguably unconstitutional

[viro]

>Also arguably unconstitutional

Umm how?

[scoopertrooper]

The market has a way of dealing with this. Chinese corporate debt is currently trading for pennies on the dollar. Chinese companies are going to be essentially locked out of global credit markets for the foreseeable future.

[shagie]

> for instance the US could default on an equal amount of US debt that China holds

https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt14_S4_1_1...

> The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

The US defaulting on any debt is unconstitutional.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Why should the US do anything?

If private investors want to invest in China, that's fine. But pensions and banks should not, and should not be investing in funds that do. Their risks are shared, and China trashing their balance sheets is a public policy concern.

[chii]

> But pensions and banks should not [invest in china], and should not be investing in funds that do.

It could be argued that pensions should not be investing in risky bonds (or assets), but this idea shouldn't have anything to do with china specifically. Institutions that can't absorb these risks should not take them.

Just because it's china related, doesn't mean that the gov't should have a specific policy to prevent it from happening (but allow these institutions to invest in other, equally risky assets). To allow such policy to be set is to turn investment into political weapon. I do not want to see that.

[rp1]

For A) the U.S. should delist all Chinese ADRs to start. There were literally billions of stock in completely fraudulent companies being sold on U.S. exchanges.

[_xnmw]

A) Fight back by limiting Chinese expansion with US financial influence. Sanctions, etc.

B) The US should do something, because if they don't, China will continue to take advantage of US ineptness. States have powers which investors simply don't have.

[shmatt]

US government ineptness? Or US citizen ineptness. It's not the government buying this debt

Now what, the government stops people from trying to make a quick buck on a high risk investments? We can start from stopping Americans from paying 7 figures for digital drawings of monkeys

[mschuster91]

> We can start from stopping Americans from paying 7 figures for digital drawings of monkeys

NFTs are even more moronic than that: they are nothing more than links to external content - Tweets, images, videos, whatever. Meaning that everyone who wants to see and reproduce the content you paid a million dollars for only has to download and dump the corresponding blockchain... and also meaning that you are the proud owner of a bit of nothing when the external hosting service goes down.

If you ask me, NFTs are a combination of tulip mania, scams and good old-fashioned money laundering using art.

[Specie33]

There is other value than the current outlook on NFT's. It is a record of a digital thumbprint. This is really the value of all blockchain based tech.

The example i use is this. Think of the Green Rolling Hills photo that was on however billion windows desktops. The original owner could have copyrighted that photo and registered its first upload onto the blockchain. It is registered then as the first photo of a very specific high use photo and i would say that digital asset has a value.

Crypto Kitties etc are not my cup of tea, its the value created by the option of the tec that i think will have ramifications. I am working on a project in this space currently.

[_xnmw]

> US government ineptness? Or US citizen ineptness. It's not the government buying this debt

You are focusing on this one type of transaction whereas the reality is that the Chinese state exercises influence in a lot of other areas where US investors have no control. Say, for, example using state-sponsored hacking and espionage to give an unfair advantage to their investors on the international free market. Something US investors could go to jail for if they tried to do. I repeat, if the US doesn’t fight for US investors interests, China will nonetheless fight for theirs.

[throw9000]

If the US intervenes, they're branded as interlopers. If they don't, they're branded as inept. Seems like they're fucked either way in the eyes of the rest of the world.

[uoaei]

The government should do everything* to protect me, the citizen.

*Except the things that make me confused and angry, even if they benefit other citizens.

Welcome to neoliberal hell.

[adfm]

Bashing on neolibs and alt-right isn't going to solve anything.

The problem with politics is the left knows it's not always right.

[uoaei]

I want to understand that second sentence better. Is it the same sentiment as the Bukowski quote stating “The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence”?

[rp1]

Neoliberalism is an economic policy, it has nothing to do with liberal politics.

[uoaei]

If we hamfist "politics" to mean nothing but culture war noise, then sure, economics and politics are separate. I always thought that people were smarter than that.

[justicezyx]

It's naive to split economy and politics... Just like it's naive to split culture and engineering in a company.

[sudosysgen]

Did you really just say that economic policy has nothing to do with politics?

[runako]

I guess it's "warfare via equity markets" if you didn't exit the trade soon enough.

But what would you call it when American investors make boatloads of money investing in Chinese stocks? And should the US regulate away their ability to earn those returns?

Since US investors can also lose money when US companies default, should investors also be prevented from investing in those too?

Incidentally, this "protect investors" logic is the same reason for the accredited investor regulations that prevent the masses from investing in startups.

[spamizbad]

A bunch of greedy US investors dumped money into quixotic Chinese companies and we should bail them out? Sounds politically toxic to me.

[zaptrem]

If a large group of innocent US citizens that ventured to China for tourism reasons were shot down by CCP police would you say the government should stay out of it, instead blaming them for trusting China?

[ncallaway]

It’s almost like those to situations are entirely different and so it’s completely reasonable that someone would have a different reaction to them.

[kevingadd]

Handing money to a foreign business because you see dollar signs that aren't there is not remotely comparable to getting killed by a police officer.

[chii]

if those large group of people agreed to be shot at, for a chance to get a lot of money in return, then they made their own choice and must live with those consequences.

Unless there's some element of fraud undertaken on the part of a national gov't (like CCP), which only the US gov't could present as a counter to, there should be no intervention from the US gov't about the defaults in china and the investment losses incurred to US citizens.

[duxup]

What is the US supposed to do, prevent anyone from being exposed to this situation?

That's a wide ranging / impossible mandate there.

[emkoemko]

how about not let people invest in companies that are Chinese? since the CCP bans them from being listed anyways, now when you invest in Chinese companies your investing in some fake company in the Bahamas ...

[mym1990]

China markets are heavily intertwined with everything, not investing in Chinese companies will not protect you.

[HenryKissinger]

The U.S. shouldn't protect investors from the free market? That's the free market at work. Investors are not entitled to be paid. All investments carry risk.

[theandrewbailey]

I agree with that, but that didn't happen in 2008.

[chii]

it did - some people left holding the bag lost out. The banks were playing the middleman, they weren't the ones taking the risks.

It could be said that the rating agencies were complicit, since their ratings were trusted by various parties by assumption and did not do their own due diligence.

[beervirus]

Yes, the CCP changing the rules is “the free market.”

[vkou]

If I build a company with the assumption that the rules of the locale it operates never change, I'm certain that I'm the fool in the conversation.

What you describe is a known risk that anyone with a lick of sense should be accounting for, before they invest.

[NineStarPoint]

From a US government perspective, the options are either let people invest their money in China or not let people invest their money in China. To let people decide on their own if investing money in Chinese companies is worth the risk seems to me to be the more free market option than our government forbidding it. That China can then pull the rug out from under you is the risk you take due to your choice of investment, if we wanted the government to protect people from that risk it should have been done before investment happened, not after.

[selectodude]

There is significant counterparty risk when investing in China. It's a shame that people had to find out like this. Or maybe it's for the best.

[jjk166]

If they're choosing of their own free will to participate in the market, it's a free market. No one said anything about a safe market.

[emkoemko]

free market where if i want to invest into a Chinese company i have to invest into a fake company in the Bahamas? If i want to really invest into China there are crazy rules and in the end they will just take your ip...

[justicezyx]

Wait a second...

How is Evergrande's foreign debt default translate to "waging economic warfare via equity markets"? Of course China is responsible for its own domestic debt, because evergrande borrowed from state-backed banks. Are foreign debters also backed by Chinese government? Are you suggesting Chinese government should take responsibility for foreign investors?

And "for a while"? Name another case remotely matches "economic warfare".

[rp1]

Since you asked, China basically had an inside man in the Californian pension system and purchased a large amount of Chinese tech stocks. Beijing then pulled the carpet out from under them, causing 400B in US pension losses: https://www.google.com/amp/s/californiaglobe.com/articles/us...

[jessaustin]

amp links really undermine your credibility...

https://californiaglobe.com/fr/us-pension-funds-lost-400-bil...

[BoiledCabbage]

I can't tell if this is a joke or you are serious. Can you clarify?

[jessaustin]

OP makes a complicated allegation. I don't care enough about the allegation to devote the mental effort to understand it or to determine if the source cited is bogus. Generally I have more regard for the opinions of careful thinkers. Pasting an untidy URL is a sign of sloppy thinking.

[justicezyx]

Now sure how to connect the dots from your article to the claim that China "waging economic warfare through equity market".

Facts:

* US pension fund lost 400B on China investment. That's total in US not directly related to the "inside man in the CA pension system". But wait for others facts below.

* This CA pension system inside man "Yu Ben Meng" is chief investment officer of CA public employees retirement system (CalPERS). He "has long and cozy relationship with China". Because he was recruited into the "thousand talents" program.

* CalPERS invested 3.1 billion into Chinese companies. The amount lost because of them us undisclosed in the article.

Back to your statement:

> China basically had an inside man in the Californian pension system

He is recruited as thousands talent program. The relationship is claimed to be academic.

When his investment decision into Chinese companies on behalf of Cal PERS is unknown. To substantiate your statement, at least, based on the known facts, there should be a casual connection between his recruitment to thousand talent program, and later decision to invest into Chinese firm.

Further, the investment gain from this investment needs to be negative or noticeablly below market norm to actually give any doubt that such investment was not driven by sane investment assessment.

> Beijing then pulled the carpet out from under them, causing 400B in US pension losses

It's strange to paint this as a economic warfare.

Why is regulatory action with the intention to curb private corporations' influence (as western media like to portrait), being transformed into economy warfare.

Of course, it's not a stretch to claim that in this action, CCP indeed achieved the purpose of economic warfare.

But that's just usual international business. US fed has already caused global financial crisis, because of their domestic policies. For multiple times over the 20 and 21 centuries.

Did US wage economic warfare against all other nations on earth? (Because of US dollars' supremacy)

If one admit US is wagging war, then sure, China is also waging a war.

Call this whatabohtism.

But at least make it clear that this is not some Chinese specific evil. This is a universal evil.

As a Chinese myself, I don't want to be the spagagoat once US China got into an actual war. CCP is as bad as USA, thats not any Chinese fault.

And who is not investing in China? Ray Dallio? He must be a more China inside man. As he is not only investing in China, he openly claim it's still good to invest in China!

Mr. Yu Ben Meng, aside from being a Chinese, is he doing more pro China than Mr. Dallio? I cannot find any such evidence from your article.

So the reason call him a China inside man, is just because he is a Chinese?

Tell me, except the word "racism" what should I use to describe this reasoning?!

[rp1]

Sorry, that’s a lot of words that doesn’t address anything. This guy is under investigation because of his actions. Bringing up a bunch of irrelevant facts just serves as a distraction. Seriously, the U.S. causing the global financial crisis is your counter argument?

[justicezyx]

At the moment like this, I always wonder:

Should I spend time engaging with this guy who appears not reading, or cherrypicking statements, or plainly trolling?...

I think the one sentence explanation is that your statement is plainly racism.

Even in this post, you admitted that "This guy is under investigation", yet you are able to use a unsubstantiated charge, and blow it into China economic warfare, and label that person as "China inside person".

> that’s a lot of words that doesn’t address anything

Sure, tell me, which part is address nothing?