The world of finance seems to be an alternative universe, governed by its own rules, none of which has anything to do with morality. This is evident from the interest Jack Ma-promoted Ant Financial’s initial public offering (IPO) generated on Wall Street. The $34.5-billion (Rs 2.58 lakh crore) IPO was oversubscribed multiple times. Big Finance had no compunctions in investing in a country which has killed lakhs of people by spreading (if not birthing) the novel coronavirus, treats its religious and ethnic minorities like cattle, suppresses and represses its own people, supports the rogue states of Pakistan and North Korea, and intimidates its neighbors. The fintech company’s IPO could not debut on November 3, not because the gods of Big Finance found a moral compass but because Chinese regulators torpedoed it just two days before its listing.
The Shanghai stock exchange stopped what would have been the biggest IPO ever. It talked about some recent “major issues such as changes in the fintech supervisory environment.” The People’s Bank of China, the China Securities Regulatory Commission, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange said in a joint statement that “regulatory interviews” were held with Ant Group founder Ma, chairman Eric Jing, and president Hu Xiaoming on November 2.
Ant Group said the discussion with the regulators was focused on the “health and stability of the financial sector.” It added, “We will continue to improve our capabilities to provide inclusive services and promote economic development to improve the lives of ordinary citizens.”
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The future of Ant IPO or the state of financial regulation in China doesn’t bother us but egregious immorality does. Our concern is the absolute lack of ethics and sensitivity among the gods of Big Finance.
They are the men and women who decide the fate of trillions of dollars; the ratings they affix to the financial health of countries determine their fiscal deficits. They are beautiful people, glib talkers who dominate Davos and other such jamborees; they pontificate over global poverty, climate change, and other fashionable subjects.
And they have no qualms in investing billions of dollars in a country that has caused an unprecedented calamity. Make no mistake about it: there is no private sector in China; everything is owned or controlled by the Communist Party of China (CCP). By the way, Jack Ma is a CCP member.
Many, if not most, of Wall Street sharks are Americans, but they ruthlessly de-industrialized their own country. An article, ‘<a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/how-wall-street-hollowed-out-industrial-america/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">How Wall Street Hollowed Out Industrial America</a>', in the magazine Mother Jones on December 3, 2012 said, “In 2008, in the sunbelt town of Colorado Springs, Colorado, one-third of the city’s street lights were extinguished, police helicopters were sold, watering and fertilizing in the parks was eliminated from the budget, and surrounding suburbs closed down the public bus system. During the recent Great Recession one-industry towns like Dalton, Georgia (‘the carpet capital of the world’), or Blakely, Georgia (‘the peanut capital of the world’), or Elkhart, Indiana (‘the RV capital of the world’) were closing libraries, firing police chiefs, and taking other desperate measures to survive.”
The author of the article, Steve Fraser, went on to write: “And no one can forget Detroit. Once, it had been a world-class city, the country’s fourth largest, full of architectural gems. In the 1950s, Detroit had a population with the highest median income and highest rate of home ownership in urban America. Now, the ‘motor city’ haunts the national imagination as a ghost town. Home to two million a quarter-century ago, its decrepit hulk is now ‘home’ to 900,000. Between 2000 and 2010 alone, the population hemorrhaged by 25%, nearly a quarter of a million people, almost as many as live in post-Katrina New Orleans. There and in other core industrial centers like Baltimore, ‘death zones’ have emerged where whole neighborhoods verge on medical collapse.”
They hurt America; now are hurting the entire world by helping China, the world’s biggest rogue state..
