hands up whos in for consolidation, page-21

Thanks, Stefan,

I couldn't help noticing the question mark you placed behind your statement "remain strong with the urbanisation of China continuing unabated".

I am assuming that you might be viewing the whole China default thinking abit askance, yes?

For my part, I do worry when the widespread conventional belief on China being the positive determinant of Australia's future prosperity - both long-term and short-term - takes on axiomatic dimension.

All I hear on China is how strong the growth is and the resulting investment returns on offer for those wanting to "play the China story". What troubles me is that I don't hear much about the risks that go hand-in-hand with those mouth-watering returns.

China is a pretty opaque gig, in many senses, yet people seem to be carrying on as if they were fully-informed and that China's growth, and our economic benefit, are taken as given.

Trouble is, whenever things get taken as given, when they thereafter get taken away, the fact that no one expects it makes it all the worse.

Heck, China might continue growing at 10%pa for the rest of my lifetime, I'm not clever enough to know. But what I am clever enough to know that if China DOESN'T continue to chug along "unabated", then that is not a good thing.

When I see companies valued in the market in several hundreds of millions, or even billions, of dollars without even having real, or tested, businesses, but just because they are "exposed to Chinese demand for our commodities", then I get this ache in my gammy knee.

Maybe I'm an investment weakling, but I'm scared of that which I don't fully understand. And I don't fully undersand China. I wonder if anyone does.

Cam

PS. How's the WHG modelling going? Did you see COU's earnings update this morning? 20% EPS growth, and that's against all sorts of currency and investment market headwinds. Recall that COU is somewhat of a proxy for WHG, although with somewhat less of an accounting component, and more of a wealth management part. Still, bodes well for the way WHG is travelling, methinks.