Friday, December 17, 2010

China's Ghost Towns from Satellite

Click on the link below for the pictures.

The ghost towns of China: Amazing satellite images show cities meant to be home to millions lying deserted
These amazing satellite images show sprawling cities built in remote parts of China that have been left completely abandoned, sometimes years after their construction.
Some estimates put the number of empty homes at as many as 64 million, with up to 20 new cities being built every year in the country's vast swathes of free land.

This could just keep going on, possibly. But this level of waste feels like already the third round of full bore desperate policy to avoid a reckoning and it can't possibly go on even another year.

What brings this behemoth market down? Interest rates finally break the backs of speculators? Inflation destroys the consumer and makes even empty city building impossible, leaving unemployment skyrocketing? (That Real Estate sector is 60% of GDP, keep in mind.) Or in a true fit of irony, Vancouver and Australia's markets start to decline and in the race to sell, China's real estate gets triggered for a fall as well? Gods love irony, I'm going with the last in combination with the others.

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