Free Republic

It’s been obvious for years that China has a Potemkin economy, kept alive by slave labor, market bubbles, and government underwriting. it can’t last forever. The latest grim forecast about the economy comes from Peter St Onge, an economist with a much deeper fund of knowledge about and understanding of the Chinese economy than I could have in a thousand lifetimes.The biggest hint that the Chinese economy was in trouble was the demise of Evergrande, a massive property developer in China. The bankruptcy was huge, with the company’s assets valued at a probably inflated $245 billion and debts of $300...

The Obama administration is spending billions of dollars to modernize the nation’s power grid, with the goal of changing the way Americans use energy. Your electric bill will go way up, unless you allow the utility to control your energy load at times of peak demand. “Smart grid” technology involves a wireless, two-way flow of information between individual homes and the power plant. This allows the utility to charge more for electricity, depending on when it is used; and it enables the utility to manage energy for the consumer, to reduce the impact on the grid.

SHANGHAI (AP) - Officials scrambled Tuesday to resolve severe gasoline and diesel shortages in China's south and east amid complaints that government price controls are worsening supply problems. Drivers in the southern province of Guangdong were waiting for hours for gasoline in lengthy lineups, sometimes leaving with empty tanks when supplies ran out, state media reports said. In the southern city of Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong, more than half of all gas stations closed Monday as shortages worsened, the Hong Kong-based newspaper South China Morning Post reported. Although disruptions to tanker traffic due to recent typhoons were one factor,...