The China Hustle

This is about yet another financial scandal. It's a perfect follow-up to The Big Short. After the crash of 2008-2009, some clever guys, both Chinese and American, worked out another way to scam the markets. Some smaller banks, especially Roth Capital, which threw lavish conferences featuring entertainment by the likes of Billy Idol and Snoop Dogg, and Rodman and Renshaw, captained by the former Democratic presidential candidate Gen. Wesley Clark, pushed reverse mergers.

You've never heard of reverse mergers? Chinese companies could not be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, so they "merged" with defunct American companies which had previously been listed, and presto change-o, now Chinese companies were on the exchange. There was no penalty for making outrageous claims about the assets of their businesses, and many Americans were only too eager to buy into this new opportunity. Neither the SEC nor Congress was concerned about the fraud involved. The "heroes" of our movie investigated some of these companies in China, a dangerous matter, published their research, and shorted the companies' stock, betting that the value of their stock would fall when the truth was revealed.

The China Hustle does a good job of explaining the financial matters so that the average viewercan understand. Neither the SEC, big law firms like Loeb & Loeb, the big accounting firms, nor Congress come out looking very good in this one.

Jed Rothstein does a bang-up job in bringing to cinematic life a recent but underreported massive fraud perpetrated on U.S. stock investors by unscrupulous Chinese companies and equally shady American brokers, auditors and lawyers. It is a timely documentary in this era where Republican domination of the federal government, and there absurd anti-regulation crusade merely encourage more such fleecing of the public.

Principal whistleblower here is a Pennsylvanian by way of Flint, Michigan (famed as the home of veteran movie muckraker Michael Moore) named Dan David, who declares at the outset of the show that there are no good guys depicted, himself included. He headed up an investment firm that helped push several new Chinese companies on the Big Board, only later to discover that their profits and vast growth were fictional.

The gimmick started with Reverse Mergers, whereby a company would merge into an SEC registered company of old that was inactive, say a 19th Century mining corporation. That trick circumvented the due diligence necessary for a new company to gain a stock listing, and creepy folks here in the U.S. took it from there.

Location footage shot secretly in China show how phony the supposdly booming companies actually were, and interviewees take us through the potentially dry financial machinations that come alive under Jed's direction. Dramatic highpoint occurs when former presidential candidate Gen. Wesley Clark walks off the set during his interview, rightfully realizing it will put him in a bad light as ex-CEO of one of the misbehaving investment banks.

Ultimately I suspect the ongoing wave of Republican party and right-wing propaganda will overwhelm this film or any other's message, in favor of advancing the shibboleths that ending government supervision (read: "interference") with the free market will solve all ills. Just as Trump so easily gets away (so far) with every outlandish denial or contradiction of the truth on a daily basis, such eye-opening exercises as this fact-filled documentary require a public willing to listen, something currently not in the cards.

The big players in the financial industry are never satiated. Right after the 2008 crisis where the whole industry was bailed out by taxpayers they start a different scam. Using dirty legal tricks they manage to get billions out of "dumb money" (aka your 401/pension/savings). The regulators don't care. Nobody does due diligence. And people exposing the scam face harassment and even prision. Both in USA and China.

It's amazing how this house of cards keeps on going.

Sadly this documentary has big 2 flaws. It doesn't have enough material to fill the full length and it lacks in production.

The least guilty part in this scam story, are the Chinese companies without a doubt.

Some smart *** wall street d*** heads, found some low life companies in China, and make them an offer for a merge, to able to get into US stock market. And all the rednecks, who have been manipulated and lost money, are crying out loud, by blaming China. ahhahaha

Guys, sorry but, if you offer the same thing, to any miserable, worthless company, in whole world, they would accept to get into this scam, without thinking twice.

The real bast***s to be damned in this story, are the wall street j*rks unfortunately, not China, or Chinese companies. Simply, US people are scamming other US people. Pathetic as hell.

Great story potential but the direction of the documentary ran off into weird areas and kind of lost the plot. Also, the attempt to simplify the story so a 10 year old could understand it meant everything took a very long time to explain. I'm a stockmarket fanatic but I couldn't finish this one. Really disappointing as I was interested in the methods being used to monitor the Chinese companies and all I got was CCTV footage showing a lack of trucks - kind of understandable though considering that monitoring private companies in China is a jailable offence. I wanted more than just claims that capitalism is a flawed system and that Americans can be greedy, I knew all that before watching.