On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox Business Network’s “Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street,” Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Chairman Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) argued that there are “startling parallels” between the investments in subprime mortgages in 2008 and American investments in China and argued that businesses are not sufficiently disclosing or factoring in the risk of being in China.
Gallagher stated that during the committee’s field hearing earlier this week, “we tried to impress on our friends in New York…the startling parallels we’re seeing, Wall Street pushing trillions of risky securities onto unwitting Americans, using financial engineering to skirt the rules, and lobbying to fight all regulation. But instead of subprime mortgages in 2008, this time, it’s Chinese securities that often use obscure things like VIE structures to strip shareholder rights and corporate governance from investors.”
He added, “[B]usinesses should be forced to disclose the risk entailed by their exposure and their presence in China. I don’t think it’s adequately being factored in right now. … And here’s the other thing, as we’ve talked about before, Maria, I used to think that Wall Street wanted into China for the same reason Dillinger robbed banks, because that’s where the money is, but it’s not even clear to me that these are good investments…when compared against the S&P 500 over the last decade, a lot of these ETFs linked to China haven’t really performed that well. So, even if you’re just calculating the cold financial incentive, China seems like a bad investment right now.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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