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.

Great story potential but the direction of the documentary ran off into weird areas and kind of lost the plot. Also, the attempt to simplify the story so a 10 year old could understand it meant everything took a very long time to explain. I'm a stockmarket fanatic but I couldn't finish this one. Really disappointing as I was interested in the methods being used to monitor the Chinese companies and all I got was CCTV footage showing a lack of trucks - kind of understandable though considering that monitoring private companies in China is a jailable offence. I wanted more than just claims that capitalism is a flawed system and that Americans can be greedy, I knew all that before watching.

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.

NOTHING China does surprises me.

This documentary put a lot of people in the hot seat- as it should. The only way to beat them is to expose them. Keep up the good fight!

It's downright criminal how they robbed people. How is this not like robbing a bank?

I definitely recommend this. It should be mandatory in our schools.

Z3

The least guilty part in this scam story, are the Chinese companies without a doubt.

Some smart *** wall street d*** heads, found some low life companies in China, and make them an offer for a merge, to able to get into US stock market. And all the rednecks, who have been manipulated and lost money, are crying out loud, by blaming China. ahhahaha

Guys, sorry but, if you offer the same thing, to any miserable, worthless company, in whole world, they would accept to get into this scam, without thinking twice.

The real bast***s to be damned in this story, are the wall street j*rks unfortunately, not China, or Chinese companies. Simply, US people are scamming other US people. Pathetic as hell.