Rough Ride!
Rags to riches has got to be the slogan for the unparalleled recent success of China. From a rudimentary background to becoming the number two economy in the world the success of this Communist country has been astounding. Or has it? Up close and personal we go to learn that everything was not coming up roses in the rather provocative yet telling documentary The China Hustle. Prepare to get the inside scoop of an economy on overdrive and perhaps not living up to the hype thanks to this Mongrel Media release now available on I-tunes. Check your local cable/tv listings.
Hollywood blockbuster producers and former Steven Spielberg collaborators Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall of Raiders of the Lost Ark fame are the driving forces behind this expose of questionable? (check that – unethical if not illegal) practices of numerous Chinese companies. Aided and abetted by a few unethical American investment banks and stock traders The China Hustle shows just that – how mom and pop everyday investors were sold a bill of goods on some 300 Chinese Companies when they were listed on the New York Stock Exchange. What a shame these people never took to heart the saying if it’s too good to be true it likely isn’t.
Over a period of a few years we see how billions of dollars was scooped up by corrupt Chinese companies. Put simply investors were told the companies were successful going concerns and did well. Naturally when a suspicious trader goes to China to inspect some of the factories and question them he sees they are virtually extremely small operations incapable of producing millions of dollars of products as the company owners claim with investors being scammed in the process big time,
Blame both corrupt Chinese companies aided by government officials, the police and American traders more than happy to bilk investors out of their money while padding their personal bank accounts.
Since there are no controls in China it’s not hard to see how this scam worked. While company officials at the top earned millions of billions was taken from the bank accounts of innocent Americans. Buyer beware never seemed so appropriate in Relation to what went on in both the U.S. And China back in the 1980s.
By Alan Samuel
