Beijing get when you dont pay our. Was this man really responsible for a one trillion dollar loss on wall street or was he a convenient scapegoat for taking on big investors. And the story of the world over Migrant Workers stranded in thailand without jobs and no money for rent or food. The worlds 20 largest economies agreed to give 76. 00 of the poorest a Debt Repayment holiday but china has yet to publicly offer any support at a time many nations need the extra financial headroom to tackle the coronavirus pandemic beijing has been rapidly rolling out its belt and road initiatives to build infrastructure and increase its influence in mostly developing nations its large as has come a huge cost for many of the 138. 00 nations that have signed up to the program you may remember sri lanka couldnt keep up with payments on the ports and eventually had to hand over the facility on a 100 year lease many nations have been rethinking their involvement amid accusations china was over pricing road and rail links. Trying to understand just how much money beijing has lent the world has been a challenge for many but the kill in situ for the World Economy has managed to cut through the opaque lending practices it says between 2 12017. 00 the worlds debt obligations to china rose from 500000000000. 00 to a staggering 5 trillion dollars thats about 6 percent of the worlds economic output most of that has been bought on International Debt markets beijing and its subsidiaries have lent 1. 00 trillion dollars directly to 115. 00 nations that makes china the worlds biggest creditor overtaking the i. M. F. And Even World Bank or beijing has also made unreported loans worth 200000000000. 00 which is worrying as other investors and International Lenders cant make accurate Investment Decisions over recent years washington has grown reluctant to bail out ations time to chinas initiatives through the i. M. F. And world bank lets bring in the author of that report 1st of christoph trash good to have you with us 1st of all one kind of lend is beijing is it fair to describe it as private trying. I wouldnt use the word i think. It was just let me where china can be characterised in 3 main ways 1st it states driven meaning that it is the Government Entities who are almost all of the and then being overseas 2nd it is all. Meaning that china and its entities only do not share details on where it lands and at what terms and 3rd is as a market the basis that so spike is being a state lender the loan term slow corrupt there like private law in terms of yet restraints are comparatively higher maturity is a comparative short this is u. S. Dollar in debt and there are Strings Attached for example collateral clauses that would guarantee china repayment in case of a default for example by our oil export proceeds do some of those details difficult widely from what other world powers might offer for example and what you make of beijings line that really at the heart of all of this is a lot of resistance from other world powers who dont want to see china take its rightful place on the world stage. So i would say what china is doing at the moment is very reminiscent of what rising powers have done in the past so i dont see many differences there to the rise of say the u. K. In the in 1000 century or the rise of the us in the 20th century. Those rising powers extend their footprint globally by trade by our finance and by the military and china is doing just the same so its no surprise that china is extending more and more low winds and is integrating economically and financially with the rest of the world especially making markets so is taking money from beijing more of a problem then compared to taking money from other institutions if not all the world powers know the world bank so i wouldnt call it a problem i would say the its a very different deal that you get from from say a loan by the world bank of china china usually lens as part of a package where you might get an infrastructure. Construction project that is financed. By a chinese loans and implemented by chinese for Chinese Workers and the terms there are market oriented right so. There are to be high Interest Rates whereas the world bank does not offer these package deals that in my request political conditions but the Interest Rates are usually low and the lending is concessional some maturity so long as all these are loans that are easier back than the ones that china or i well in addition to that there is the concern over chinas hidden debt why is that an issue. It is an issue because for a risk pricing say im going bester and i want to buy a sovereign bonds of the african nations then 1. 00 of the fundamental things i want to know is whether you know what the debts stop looks like and how much debt is coming due in the coming years and that information is lacking for many countries with regard to the large chinese debts so market risk pricing of sovereign bonds is impaired by the lack of transparency in our view and also sustainability analysis mako risk analysis they want to judge the likelihood of a financial distress fault then i need to know what how that debt and the debt you are looks like and that information is that king for the chinese and thats a major problem is the situation compounded by chinas holdings of german euro bonds u. S. Treasuries except for. I would say thats a bit of a different story so. I mean theres also not much transparency with regard to the holdings of Chinas Central Bank so we dont know how much exactly of advanced countries that they have been you know purchasing in the past but thats a very different set up because those are market based instruments and germany knows very well you know how much debt it has it has sold to the market which was then purchased on secondary market by chinese entities. That the real problem is with the developing country loans that are not picked up by you know any market based institutions say they fall to the cracks the rating agencies. Bloomberg dont have them you know basically there is no way to get this information whereas for southern bonds of the bronze countries theres much more point have the chinese been willing to renegotiate a debt to forgive debt. So in the past day they have done so in multiple cases more than 100 cases since fact. But the approach was case by case so they would really go she ate with individual debtor countries they did not take part in these coordinated debt relief initiatives which other government lenders took part in are the i. M. F. Or the or bank took part in china it was kind of a side did its own deals and most of these deals were actually maturity extensions so a you know. Lengthening of the debt. Maturity but not actual Debt Forgiveness like weve seen for the parents but governments so it remains to be seen whether you know they will change that approach and be part of the more global coordinated initiative and whether they will agree to face value that right balance thats been the question of these debts in dollars because theres a question if they if they are how theyve been able to remain hidden and avoid us scrutiny. So they are in u. S. Dollars think that the u. S. Government you know has not. To my knowledge at least tracked these these many confuse themselves or what scrutiny has come from the academic side so they have been very important attempts by you know teams in the United States 8 or size cari where researchers have invested years and years of putting together all these lending information on chinese activities and loans abroad. And that has you know added a lot of transparency and our study goes in that same direction in trying to shed light in this very on this very hard. Lending activity that china is engaging in and given the large volume thats very important so scrutiny has has really come from the economic side all right thanks so much for your thoughts. Professor christoph trouble thank you very much. A 2nd the raimi an all time has entered venezuelan waters carrying much needed fuel the United States has imposed sanctions on both countries and says its more trying the situation venezuela and iran have warned washington not to interfere with deliveries stories about reports. The Iranian Oil Tanker fortune is quoted by the Venezuelan Military in the caribbean sea. Its just one of the 5 tankers carrying over 1500000 liters of gasoline its heading towards the refinery in the state of qatar a war. President says hes country has a right to import gasoline to the most literal we have the right to trade freely in the seas of the world in the skies of the world between us between iran and venezuela to Exchange Products to buy products from us to sell products to us but not everyone agrees especially the United States washington has already imposed sanctions on both countries and is considering new ones gasoline is cars in venezuela due to a near complete breakdown of its refining Network Years of mismanagement and lack of investment have had a devastating effect into what once was one of the biggest Oil Exporters in the world. The venezuelan government imposed a Strict Lockdown almost 2 months ago to deter the spread of call that 19 most gas stations in caracas are closed and in the ones that are open people have to line up for hours and local means they come here every month and it takes us one night i came at 5 and i have to stay until the next day i only get 20 liters so as i was and i believe i will get gasoline from iran we will only last for a while it wont change anything there are political reasons social economic we depend on the off the richest to give us gas and letters move it will last only for a few months. Iran has become a Strategic Partner for venezuela see as well chavez came to power in the past months venezuela relied on Companies Like russias haas nafta for gasoline but the situation has changed in the past year iran if not the. Rosneft stop being interested in venezuela mostly because of the sanctions it has to do with Strategic Decisions they will have to invest lots of money and there are so many troubles in venezuela that people are not attracted to iran is a desperate measure for a country that has been collapsing for years. And desperate measure that will give their government some area in the months ahead but that wont solve the endemic troubles venezuela is facing today now in may the 6th 2010 an unexplained glitch rattled the s. And p. 500. 00 temporarily wiping one trillion dollars off its value its fair to say that to this day no one has been able to figure out what exactly went wrong almost 5 years later u. S. Authorities and finally caught up with the man they blame for triggering the crash of a time 36 year old live in this day trading out of his parents west london home unknown to his family he had amassed a 70000000 dollars fortune the arrest was met with incredulity while most insiders thought High Frequency trading and the rise of algorithms were to blame. Well my next guest financial journalist and author liam vaughan has written a book called flash crash hes examined the claims the window was sentenced in january to a year in the home detention why lets serve bring in then mr von why dont we start by asking you what you thought of him so even dissing surround is a kind of a fascinating character he grew up in a fairly modest house in hans loaches below the heathrow flight half he was about as far removed from the kind of world of high finance will she is as you can get he got his break in trading by applying to an ad for in a newspaper which literally said wanted futures traders he started out what was then called a trading arcade where basically there is a fund one of the traders to see if they could make it buying and selling Financial Futures as a say a long way from the likes of j. P. Morgan or the world quite finance but never was just an incredibly gifted trader a real natural at the job he had amazing and mental arithmetic skills. Focus that there was some extreme that he would literally train for hours and hours at a time without a branch and he also had this amazing ability to completely disregard the value of money. So he would bet increasingly large sums without really caring too much either way whether he won or lost and those combination of characteristics combined you know to sell and to be extremely successful well how did he make his money there was it all down to long hours and intelligence and ability to read the markets or something else. Yes my book sort of tracks the journey of nav from those of Humble Beginnings where he starts working in this arcade with all the other young kind of one of these really and he progresses very quickly his specific style of trading is not try and predict which way you know Interest Rates are going to move or whether a companys likely to do well and he focused on a very short term start of trading which is known scalping which is really just about looking at alders coming into the meeting the market and trying to use that data to predict which way the market is about to lose on a very very short basis and so nerves kind of sense of actual very well suited to that style of trading and so you made ahead of our money doing that the between 2003 when he started in 2009 he made 15000000 pounds a lot of that in his bedroom in his parents house announced that the way the book is interesting and when the subject matter starts to become really fascinating is that in around 2007 or 2008 the market started to be increasingly infiltrated by a new type of Market Participant known as High Frequency traders the which are essentially kind of autonomous preprogramed robots that reacts afresh information incredibly quickly and these robots essentially squee each human beings like now theyre out of the market. And they kind of twist of fate where the story turns is that rather than quitting which is what a number of plays. You know pay group did now have made a fateful decision that he would fight back and he built his own machine he called it the nav. And what it did is it fire falls orders into the market and then quickly cancel them but in doing so he would trip the algorithms about which way the market was about to move and he would capitalize on that short term move. And it was a bit of a pass as a thing or was any of that illegal. Well yes and that was the only downfall in the whole thing it was a legal i mean one of the discussions in the book is what point does it become illegal the rules around what he was doing which is known as the thing came into force in 2011. You know your eagle eyed viewers will note that the flash crash happened in 2010 so there was some argument made that you know what he was doing wasnt illegal at the time but he was also charged with fraud so yes it was but i think what made nab such a compelling character is that lots of people believed that the marketplace that he was operating in was itself increasingly kind of dominated by entities that they used nefarious practices. And you know theres a famous book by Michael Lewis who flash boys which goes into that and the controversies around High Frequency trading so now have argued not just when he was arrested thats rather a spirit that he was operating in a rude market and therefore he was doing was a form of fighting back and what came out as you were sized down was going to be my next point with that what does the evidence show were bigger firms doing exactly the same thing he was or something very similar anyway at the time i mean it you know if you want to question in terms of sleuthing. A number of High Frequency trading firms have been charged you supposing since nabs arrest so that so that is a fair point but what i think is a trade is do is often closer to the you know is within the line of the law but if you were to explain it to other people you would argue that it may be. You know ethically it raises other questions so for example High Frequency traders will look for holders coming into the market by say a very Large Pension Fund and they were used to typical analysis and high Speed Computers to determine which way the markets about to move and then jump ahead of it so what ends up happening is that that pension fund will get a slightly worse price in trading and you know critics will say that doesnt actually provide any social good and is actually a form of front running the activity firms themselves would argue actually it provides a service to the market and provides liquidity and you know ultimately its legal but its certainly a moral gray area even if its not a legal one. Side of the moral gray area when we are this is the argument that big trading houses have employed similar if not the same tactics but they get a dental slap on the wrist because when you know when theyve got wayward traders on their boats because they have great influence because they have the argument goes cushy relationships with the markets because markets regulate themselves so any truth to that i mean its definitely true the largest trading houses have great relationships with the regulators you know for example who was on stuffing themselves only came in in 2011 some of the biggest advocates for those rules were the High Frequency trading firms and the reason for that is because if they cant predict which way the markets going to move actually than a hard make shoes amounts of money that theyre used to making and then you have someone like now have you literally you know is operating in his bedroom is playing markets like a Computer Games but no access to lawyers or compliance offices. You know and theres a sort shoosh gulf between those 22 things are the only thing i would say is that now have didnt necessarily always make life easy point self so for example when the regulators started kind of snooping around what he was doing so he had this kind of slightly answer there a tear in street which maybe didnt help his cause in the end or or what happened to them when theres money in the end thats really a story in itself isnt there. Yes so one of the twists and turns of the book and now into story is that he was a quiet you know humble guy didnt really spend any of the money that he may and in fact the parents didnt even know what he was doing. 70000000. 00 when the f. B. I. Turned up and when he was taken to prison his bio were set at 5000000. 00 pounds which should have been an easy something to get his hands on base and she moaned. But unfortunately he had intrusted his money to a kind of literally socalled Investment Advisers and when nash lawyers started funding them up and trying to get hold of the money to get him out of prison it quickly materialized at the money wasnt available to him. And you know there was this great irony i guess that this guy who was accused of being a criminal mastermind was potentially himself the victim of so much more unscrupulous investment types so incredible story isnt it thanks so much for coming in and sharing your insights about the story about the vendor thank you so much time ends 4000000 Migrant Workers are more vulnerable than ever after recent layoffs due to the covert 19 pandemic with most borders closed thousands of stranded and relying on handouts scott highly reports from some would suck on. About an hour south of bangkok a summit stuck on the hub for thailands seafood industry and home to the largest population of Migrant Workers in the country primarily from e. M. R. Up now because of the covert 1000 shutdown many are without jobs and are relying on food handouts to prevent the spread of the virus pile and sealed it borders with neighboring countries back in march stranding tens of thousands of Migrant Workers mostly without any assistance from the Thai Government. Mar momo had been a garment factory worker here for 9 years she lost her job when the shutdown started to take hold any. The accommodation amador this crisis is probably the worst one that ive experienced there are no jobs in the market and i couldnt find work i havent paid my rent for the past 2 months she only has another few weeks to pay which she owes before she and her family are kicked out they want to go home to mandalay in myanmar but cant the average daily salary for my coworkers here in some province is only 10 dollars that goes for those who are working on fishing boats the factory workers now theres growing concern that jobs like this could become a few are once thailand fully reopened for business. Says thousands of workers have called her Migrant Worker Rights Network seeking help the organisation has been providing food bags for a family but to me admits even if the markets are able to get to their home countries theyll end up coming back to thailand once theres work she says theyll return even more vulnerable than before the pandemic. Im worried that the workers will be forced to work for longer hours for a small low wage theyre quite vulnerable unlike thai workers who have more rights and power i think fewer workers will be employed but have to work harder. The Thai Government has opened a selected border checkpoints for a limited number of workers to return home each day but many dont have the money to travel. A few fortunate ones are able to get some work but most remain stuck on land facing mounting debt they will have to be paid back when they do finally find a job. And thats our show for this week but remember you can get in touch with us via twitter use the hash tag a j c d c when you do drop us an email account in the cost of aljazeera dot net is our address theres more for you online at aljazeera dot com slash c t c thatll take you straight top page which has individual reports links and entire episodes for you to catch up on. Thats it for this edition of counting the cost time sammys a ban from the whole team here thanks for joining us the news and aljazeera is next. On the streets of greece anti immigrant violence is on the rise there or you have to go from loved this and that this is a plus is a and increasingly migrant farm workers are victims a vicious beatings. Is helping the Pakistani Community to find a voice the stories we dont often hear told by the people who live them undocumented and under attack this is 0 on aljazeera. Holding the powerful to account as we examine the u. S. Is role in the world on aljazeera. If the mission indicates to you have or associated to it. At least has the potential to be biased in a number of different ways there are too many opportunities for the computer to get. Those offices to commit those they took entries is wrong to be saying that your son this is wrong to. Kill becoming a suspect before the actual crime and indepth examination into preventative policing precrime on aljazeera. This Police Fire Tear gun and stun grenades to disperse Peaceful Protesters to clear the way for donald trump to stand in front of a church. And while its been another night of demonstrations martin times by violence against police brutality. And we shall carry this is al jazeera live from doha also coming up. An iranian scientist jailed in
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