HSBC Curbs Mortgage Options to Chinese Nationals Buying U.S. Real Estate

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Two days ago, I published a post explaining how the super high end real estate bubble had popped, and how signs of this reality have emerged across America. Here’s an excerpt from that post, The Luxury Housing Bubble Pops – Overseas Investors Struggle to Sell Overpriced Mansions:

The six-bedroom mansion in the shadow of Southern California’s Sierra Madre Mountains has lime trees and a swimming pool, tennis courts and a sauna — the kind of place that would have sold quickly just a year ago, according to real estate agent Kanney Zhang.

Not now.

Zhang is shopping it for a discounted $3.68 million, but nobody’s biting. Her clients, a couple from China, are getting anxious. They’re the kind of well-heeled international investors who fueled a four-year luxury real estate boom that helped pull America out of its worst housing slump since the 1930s. Now the couple is reeling from the selloff in the Chinese stock market and looking to raise cash to shore up finances.

In the Los Angeles suburb of Arcadia, where Zhang is struggling to sell the six-bedroom home, dozens of aging ranch houses were demolished to make way for 38 mansions built with Chinese buyers in mind. They have manicured lawns and wok kitchens and are priced as high as $12 million. Many of them sit empty because the prices are out of the range of most domestic buyers, said Re/Max broker Rudy Kusuma, who blames a crackdown by the Chinese on large sums leaving the country.

Well, I have some more bad news for mansion-flipping Chinese nationals.

From Reuters:

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How Chinese Oligarchs Used Fake Trade Invoices to Launder Almost $1 Trillion Globally

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Our estimates show that the developing world lost US$991.2 billion in illicit financial flows in 2012, over ten times the amount of official development aid received by these countries in that year, and greater than the amount of net foreign direct investment received. From 2003 – 2012, US$6.6 trillion left developing country economies illicitly.

Illicit outflows from developing countries increased at a trend rate of 9.4 percent per annum in real terms over the time period from 2003 to 2012. Though growth rates of IFFs tended to be higher before the financial crisis, their volume continues to climb. Over this time period, illicit financial flows were equivalent to 3.9 percent of developing world GDP on average.

Save for a brief slowdown during the financial crisis, illicit financial flows have been allowed to grow unchecked over the past decade. In 2012, illicit outflows reached a staggering new peak of US$991 billion.

– From the Global Financial Integrity Report: Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2003-2012

While the U.S. government loves to target and imprison small time so-called “money launderers” such Bitcoin pioneer Charlie Shrem, the real money launderers, the ones who help drug cartels and pump criminally sourced money into foreign real estate thus pricing out domestic populations worldwide, face no consequences whatsoever. I’ve explored this hypocrisy on many occasions, most recently in the post, Some Money Launderers are More Equal than Others Part 2 – CEO of BitInstant is Arrested. Here’s an excerpt:

Last May, I wrote an article titled: Some Money Launderers are “More Equal” than Others, which likened the U.S. government to the pigs that ruled the roost in George Orwell’s classic novel Animal Farm. In that article, I decided to compare the way the “authorities” used money laundering laws against Liberty Reserve, versus the way they tip-toed around massive money laundering for Mexican drug cartels that HSBC engaged in. Since I wrote that article, JP Morgan has been fined tens of billions of dollars for a cornucopia of criminal activities. Meanwhile, we have yet to see a single executive arrested or put behind bars. Why?

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How the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission is Selling Residency to Chinese “Investors” at $500k a Pop

Screen Shot 2014-12-02 at 11.14.20 AMA major theme here at Liberty Blitzkrieg over the past year has been the creative ways in which corrupt Chinese oligarchs and government officials are maneuvering their way into the United States. To be clear, I am not anti-immigration by any stretch of the imagination. My mother was an immigrant. This is about being against corrupt and morally compromised individuals being welcomed here with open arms just because they have cash. We have enough domestic criminal oligarchs as it stands. These people have collectively captured the American political and economic system and control it to their own ends. Do we really need to import more of these types from abroad?

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Chinese Homebuilders Expand in America as U.S. Auto Loans Hit Record Levels

Just a little tale from the streets of America
Sparkled promises paved with pathos and hysteria
Trenchant, weary native sons
Step back, step back
And see the damage done
Meander to the horizon 
The streets of America

– Bad Religion, Streets of America

Late last week I published a post titled, Your Wall Street Slumlord Arrives in Europe – Goldman and Other Financial Firms Launch “Buy to Rent” in Spain, in which I highlighted the fact that U.S. financial oligarchs had recently turned their sights toward Spanish real estate after feasting on the American market for several years and driving home prices to unaffordable levels for much of the native population.

Interestingly, today I came across an article in the Wall Street Journal that noted Chinese homebuilders are beginning to make a more aggressive push into the U.S. market. One of the main reasons for this phenomenon appears to be:

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