China's economy is getting sick. Will it infect America?

cnn ^ | 7-26-2015

[Citizen Zed]

China's economy is at risk of catching a nasty flu -- and infecting the rest of the world in the process.

After years of explosive expansion, China is cooling off. Growth has fallen to its lowest level since 2009, and investors believe it might be even worse because Beijing may be fudging the official numbers.

China is now the second biggest economy in the world. The fear is that China will pull other major economies -- including the U.S. -- down with it. That would be scary given how slowly the global economy is currently growing and how little ammo governments have left to jump start business.

"We need all the growth we can get. A slowdown in China wouldn't help," said David Joy, chief market strategist at Ameriprise Financial.

Investors around the world went on high alert when China's stock market began to crumble in late June and early July. While Chinese equities have stabilized for now, it's rattled investors, causing prices for oil, gold and copper to tumble.

[dangus]

What will be scary is when China starts to sell off the US so they can cash in their retirements.

[glorgau]

... it might be even worse because Beijing may be fudging the official numbers.

The "official numbers" are what the central government says they should be.

[central_va]

They should build a few more ghost cities to stimulate their “fauxonomy”. They could use the older ghost cities for target practice for their developing military.

[Sam Gamgee]

The administration will try to spin some story that it doesn’t affect us that much, and Wall Street will happily repeat that fiction to keep more dumb money in the market.

[Sam Gamgee]

Some people criticize India for its strict caste system that is still in place in some respects. Still China is far from perfect either. At least, as far as I know, India doesn’t utilize prison labor to compete with US manufacturing.