The China Hustle

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.

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.

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.

An excellent movie to watch. While the film does make some ridiculous generalisations ("there is no rule of law in China"), it is extremely revealing how nondescript Chinese companies that Chinese investors would not have touched with a barge pole were sold as "the next hot thing" to unsuspecting US based investors.

Of course, they could have done some homework and only invested in the 210 massive stable Chinese companies that are listed in the Hong Kong stock exchange or the 40 largest private companies like BYD listed in HKEx, greed seems to have got the better of them. In that case, retired people are no different from wall street bankers, except that the former tend to lose all they have while the latter get richer with 1 in 100 going to jail for seven years.

The documentary features excellent interviews with the wayer who represented these firms Mitchell Nussbaum, whistleblower Dan David (who is likable but at times emerges looking like a wannabe Michael Blurry from The Big Short) and Retd. general Wesley Clark who spoke at many of "investment seminars" held from 2008 to 2016 by the lead firm that sold those c#@ppy stocks and is the focus of the film (Roth Capital).

An excellent useful use of 2 hours of your life :)

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.