Glocal Finances in China

Writing from Shandong Province. It is the home of Taoism. Destined by govenment design to become the new "cultural center" of China.

Yesterday was a long day. Quick overnight in Shanghai and then trip to airport. One and one half hour flight to Jinan and then four hour drive to our location. Once arriving we went to work.

Found something amusing in the China Daily. For those of you who may not be aware it is a nicely packaged paper for foreigners complements of the Xinhau News Service. While certainly slanted to give the official position on most everything it is revealing to see the ever increasing openess even they are allowing.

A front page article was titled "Govt may have lost $80b in equities." To summarize "It appears the government agency wanted to diversify into equities early in 2007 and, rather than being deterred by the subprime crisis, it continued to buy."

The report comes after Premier Wen Jiabao said last week he was a "little bit worried." The government has lost over $80 billion on holding of about $160 billion in overseas equities.

Now for the humorous part. The investments were made by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange or-----SAFE.

Just goes to show us. In this world there is nothing SAFE. Think they might need to change those initials to NSSAFE or "Not so safe"

So for all of you who have looked at your portfolios recently and seen a drop don't feel too badly. Even the most brilliant minds at home and overseas may not have done any better.

Interesting times in this glocal world. Why are the Chinese so interested in home prices in Southern California? They owned your mortgage!