45 Quotes by James Chanos

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.

The Macau casinos have a wonderful business, it's taking in money from Chinese businessmen elsewhere who send it through junky companies to casinos to gamble. The growth continues and they have basically western managers and western accounting, so we trust the numbers a little bit more.

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.

I call it the Rule of Three. If you read a company's financial statements three times, and you still can't figure out how they make their money, that's usually for a reason.

Chinais a world class if not the world class property bubble, primarily high-rise buildings, offices and condos.

I've seen a lot more go to zero than infinity.

What people don't realize is that China papered over its last two credit bubbles, those in 1999 and 2004. The banks were never bailed out - they just exchanged their bad loans for questionable bonds from quasi-state organizations.

What American people and what the markets want is a fair and level playing-field, where the rules are clearly elucidated, where the referees are competent, and where we know that the game is not rigged.

Bubbles are best identified by credit excesses, not valuation excesses. And there's no bigger credit excess than in China.