This is the sort of excellent article that so seldom reaches the main-stream press and why I like to get most of my geopolitical and financial news on-line.

I find the majority of people have no idea what goes on outside their own little world of sport, P & C societies, fashion and celebrities.

When some major financial event hits the fan, all they will do is blame the government, unions, big business or any other personal grudge that permeates their narrow perspective.

Come on Snake...that's a bit "tongue in cheek" comment...how do you conclude that the problem with China is the attitude of Australians and your view of narrow thinking, and not problems directly responsible and applicable to those factors eliminated in your mind, applicable to the Government, big business, unions etc?

Our hopes should not lie with what China does but with what Australian politicians and producers ( those still left) do. They have had a she'll-be-right attitude just because of China for too long.

This is exactly what to expect when debt laden speculators are allowed unfettered access to the domestic property market and short sellers to the equity market!

And magnified out of all proportion when the greed is good imperative and the inevitable corruption grabs the so called leaders as well?

Speculative investment in the real estate market needs to be taxed out of existence before it kills off the command and control economy!?

Short selling should be made an illegal occupation and punished more severely than trafficking in illicit drugs or humans.

The chinese economy is far too big to fail; which would have impossible to imagine, negative ramifications for the global market!
Rhrosty.

There will be no debt crisis; China can afford to throw good money after bad. For all intents and purposes it does have unlimited money to waste; they know that the worst case scenario is that they waste so much that it forces a devaluation, but that would trigger an export led recovery so China would still come out OK.

Their intervention in the stock market is unnecessary, but not dangerous. Potential investors already know that the Chinese economy is driven by political considerations. The subprime disaster only turned into the GFC because the American government failed to address it. The GFC only resulted in countries going into recession because their governments were unwilling to stimulate their economies enough. If more countries ran their economies like China does, we'd all be better off.

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Rhosty, short selling is not an occupation, and if more people had done it then the Chinese share market probably wouldn't've reached the outlandish highs that it did.

Do you really think it's the short sellers, rather than the margin buyers, who are to blame?

Thanks for the comment diver dan.

I'm not quite sure what you are saying, but what I was trying to convey was that the article was unusual in that it was warning us in our complacency that all was not well with the world and that we could expect harder times down the track. I still feel the majority here think that we have nothing to fear as they don't realise we have been relying on digging stuff out of the ground for our high standard of living these past years. They will then look for a scapegoat. Perhaps they should have put a little on one side instead of getting into too much debt ? I was just suggesting that as a nation we expect the government to provide us with everything when times get a little tough.