Bloomberg: "China Credit Squeeze Prompts Suicides"

Heard enough about China's "growth" miracle, with its Louis XIV-style corporate palaces and its ghost cities? No? Well, then I am sure you will enjoy this neat little story from Bloomberg about the unregulated loan-shark-rates lending that many (most?) non state controlled businesses are forced (choose?) to rely on and what happens when their ability to pay is impacted by difficult economic and credit conditions:

"Hours after a creditor and his gang of tattooed thugs hustled Zhong Maojin into a coffee shop in Wenzhou, he says he wouldn’t yield to their demands.

They wanted to take over one of the pharmacies in a chain he’d built by borrowing from private lenders. Instead, he made an offer of traditional retribution in this eastern Chinese city, known for loan sharks who have sometimes meted out violence to bad debtors.

“If you like, you can cut off one of my fingers instead,” Zhong, 42, says he told them.

Giving up the store would have made it impossible to pay back another 130 creditors, Zhong said.."

To read the finger licking good tale, click here