About James Chanos: James S. Chanos is an American hedge fund manager, and is president and founder of Kynikos Associates, a New York City registered investment advisor that is focused on short selling.
Bubbles are best identified by credit excesses, not valuation excesses. And there's no bigger credit excess than in China.
The Macau casinos have a wonderful business, it's taking in money from Chinese businessmen elsewhere who send it through junky companies to casinos to gamble. The growth continues and they have basically western managers and western accounting, so we...
Our concerns about what we saw in Australia: an economy clearly tied to China has hitched its wagon to the tail of the tiger. In terms of the general complacency, what we heard over and over from investors and clients and potential clients is, 'yes, ...
It's almost sickening now that the regulators 'on the beat' while the biggest credit collapse in modern financial history unfolded are now patting themselves on the back for their 'brave' stance on short-selling!
So you know, everyone points out Greece's default record, but the history of a lot of sovereign nations is not a good one when it comes to lending them money.
I've learned there's a big difference between a long-focused value investor and a good short-seller. That difference is psychological and I think it falls into the realm of behavioral finance.
What people don't realize is that China papered over its last two credit bubbles, those in 1999 and 2004. The banks were never bailed out - they just exchanged their bad loans for questionable bonds from quasi-state organizations.
The Chinese banking system is built on quicksand and that's the one thing a lot of people don't realize. Everybody seems to think it is a free and clear open checkbook. It's not. The banking system in China is extremely fragile.
The investment we're all looking for is actually saving labor... Look at what the internet is doing to retail.
Dubai was a property bubble. Plain and simple. Go to Dubai and see what happened. It was... what I call it the 'Edifice complex' - it's just, we can grow by putting up lots and lots of buildings and trying to attract people to come here, stay here, a...
Derivatives in and of themselves are not evil. There's nothing evil about how they're traded, how they're accounted for, and how they're financed, like any other financial instrument, if done properly.
The marginal people on the trading desks, there's no skill set. If they don't trade derivatives, I don't know what they can do. The next stop is driving a cab.
I'll always understand the Schadenfreude aspect to short-selling. I get that no one will always like it. I'm also convinced to the deepest part of my bones that short-selling plays the role of real-time financial watchdog. It's one of the few checks ...
The interesting thing about the China story, getting back to the macro and micro, and as dire as I think the macro story is - due to bad credit and credit extension that makes Greece and Spain and the U.S. look like child's play - when you get to the...
What we define as a bubble is any kind of debt-fueled asset inflation where the cash flow generated by the asset itself - a rental property, office building, condo - does not cover the debt incurred to buy the asset. So you depend on a greater fool, ...
Healthcare is growing now at about 10 per cent per annum in the U.S. top line, versus 3 per cent for the economy. As someone with a sharp pencil and an eye for this kind of thing, this can't last.
What American people and what the markets want is a fair and level playing-field, where the rules are clearly elucidated, where the referees are competent, and where we know that the game is not rigged.
While short sellers probably will never be popular on Wall Street, they often are the ones wearing the white hats when it comes to looking for and identifying the bad guys!
In China, remember, the the banks are arms of state policy. They loan because the local party official or regional party official tells them we need a new stadium. They are instruments of state policy.
There's almost 70 billion in square feet under construction in high rises in commercial, residential and light manufacturing. And we estimate about 30 billion square feet, and that's with a 'B,' is commercial, that we would just consider office space...
