Joe Nelson, a graduate student at NYU's Leonard N. Stern School of Business, emails:
Nice work! It’s great to see EPJ, Mises.org and Austrians of all stripes are now too big to ignore even by those in the most rarified of ivory towers [such as Paul Krugman]....
-Joe
P.S. I was in Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Macau a little over a week ago. While I was in Hong Kong I had dinner with a gold trader at a very large bank in HK. We got to talking about China, the ghost cities, empty airports and bridges to nowhere. I asked about what his view given he was much closer to the action than I am. He told me, point blank, that while there is a real functioning economy in China, there is a tremendous amount of hot air and we’re about to find out how much. His sentiment pretty much echoed that of everyone else I spoke with and the business papers and TV stations are swimming in stories about the impending collapse.
If any of your readers are interested in moving to Hong Kong (and it is an absolutely amazing place; NYC looks like a town full of pikers in comparison), they may get a break on real estate prices as a result of the Chinese collapse. For kicks, I popped in on a few brokers and was told the mainlanders have been the primary bidders in the SARs of southern China and as a result property in Hong Kong has been bid to the moon. That’s easing and was evident even during my trip. A year from now, there could be some real bargains.
Update: Joe adds about gold in Hong Kong:
I forgot to add one thing EPJ readers might like. Physical gold in HK can be bought for as little as 0.25% over spot. I'm sure some EPJ readers have seen Simon Black's reports about how cheap gold is in HK. I'm pleased to confirm his report.
