The China Hustle

The documentary highlights a little-known scam on the US stockmarket: the fraudulent sale of so-called "high growth" Chinese stocks through reverse takeovers of so-called shell companies. In itself that story would have been worthy of consideration. However, the producers and director have elected to weave this into a critical narrative of capitalism and the US economic institutions which distracts from the main story. One of the highlights of the movie is when they document how little US banks, regulators, stockbrokers, investors, etc. knew about China in the first place. This story was not so much about the corruption or weakness of US institutions against the alleged malevolence of scheming Chinese (and American) stock-pushers, but about the ignorance of Americans about the rest of the world. I'm holding my breath about the sequel to come about the next wave of sham investments about India, Africa, or another place Americans know little about.

This is about yet another financial scandal. It's a perfect follow-up to The Big Short. After the crash of 2008-2009, some clever guys, both Chinese and American, worked out another way to scam the markets. Some smaller banks, especially Roth Capital, which threw lavish conferences featuring entertainment by the likes of Billy Idol and Snoop Dogg, and Rodman and Renshaw, captained by the former Democratic presidential candidate Gen. Wesley Clark, pushed reverse mergers.

You've never heard of reverse mergers? Chinese companies could not be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, so they "merged" with defunct American companies which had previously been listed, and presto change-o, now Chinese companies were on the exchange. There was no penalty for making outrageous claims about the assets of their businesses, and many Americans were only too eager to buy into this new opportunity. Neither the SEC nor Congress was concerned about the fraud involved. The "heroes" of our movie investigated some of these companies in China, a dangerous matter, published their research, and shorted the companies' stock, betting that the value of their stock would fall when the truth was revealed.

The China Hustle does a good job of explaining the financial matters so that the average viewercan understand. Neither the SEC, big law firms like Loeb & Loeb, the big accounting firms, nor Congress come out looking very good in this one.

I have been living here in China almost 2 decades and i know for a fact that some so called Chinese companies estimated growth and user base numbers are highly exaggerated and fake, it sickness me from time to time.

The big players in the financial industry are never satiated. Right after the 2008 crisis where the whole industry was bailed out by taxpayers they start a different scam. Using dirty legal tricks they manage to get billions out of "dumb money" (aka your 401/pension/savings). The regulators don't care. Nobody does due diligence. And people exposing the scam face harassment and even prision. Both in USA and China.

It's amazing how this house of cards keeps on going.

Sadly this documentary has big 2 flaws. It doesn't have enough material to fill the full length and it lacks in production.

An eye opening account of what is going on Globally circling the China growth story. How the American wealthy, and the President is trying to cover up one of the biggest hustles in the history of capitalism. This should be seen by everyone everywhere, even those who don't directly invest in capital markets.