If you’re a short-seller, that’s a cacophony of negative reinforcement. You’re basically told that you’re wrong in every way imaginable every day. It takes a certain type of individual to drown that noise and negative reinforcement out and to remind oneself that their work is accurate and what they’re hearing is not. James Chanos Read Quote
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. To put that in perspective, that’s a 5×5-foot cubicle for every man, woman and child in China. James Chanos Read Quote
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, if you will, to come in and buy at a higher price. James Chanos Read Quote
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 micro of individual companies, they look even worse. James Chanos Read Quote
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, and put up offices here and sooner or later, you put up too many. James Chanos Read Quote