VICE (HBO) Great Show

M

Maverick74

I don't how many of you guys are watching this show, but you should. Surprisingly it's produced by Bill Maher. I've never been a fan of Maher despite watching his show for the last decade. But I will give him credit, this show is solid. The last episode they did was on China and their real estate boom. I know we've all read the articles about this bubble but sometimes it's better to see this visually to truly get a grasp of how cataclysmic this is going to be when it pops. This is basically our 2008 credit crisis times three. There is a great interview with notorious china short Jim Chanos as well.

Basically China has built dozens of these ghost towns in the surrounding burbs around the larger cities. And when I say ghost town, I mean cities the the size of LA. That are COMPLETELY empty. The Chinese government calculates their GDP not based on actual output like the rest of the world, but on actual cost. Which is absurd. So if they spend 2 trillion building a ghost town, that two trillion is positive GDP for China. And the real kicker here is this phony ponzi real estate accounting trick makes up 75% of their economy! And the even bigger joke is our economists over here are talking about how they expect a short term uptick in China's growth, which of course comes from bullshit construction on ghost towns. Anyway, I'll get off the soap box. Check out this show if you have HBO.

http://hbo.vice.com/episode-six

There is a short trailer for that China episode.
 
This was also a great episode on what's going on with the youth in Greece and Spain. The financial news media likes to talk about the DAX making new highs everyday and how the central banks have everything under control. Well, the central banks have nothing under control. This is going to get really bad and it's coming over here.

http://hbo.vice.com/episode-four/ep-4-seg-2
 
Lol, I was actually thinking the same thing when I watched the latest episode yesterday. I don't like Maher, and every time I read what the upcoming episode is about I'm not interested - yet I end up watching the show anyway, and after every episode I'm like 'damn, this show is good'. Yea, the Greece bit was one of the better ones.

The latest is about the lost boys and a fat camp (to gain weight) in Africa, a bit lighter than some of their other bits, but equally good.

I think the reason I like the show so much is they do a good job of choosing who to interview - they're all charismatic in their own way, makes the story more interesting. It's also surprisingly funny.
 
Quote from Soon2Bgreat:

Lol, I was actually thinking the same thing when I watched the latest episode yesterday. I don't like Maher, and every time I read what the upcoming episode is about I'm not interested - yet I end up watching the show anyway, and after every episode I'm like 'damn, this show is good'. Yea, the Greece bit was one of the better ones.

The latest is about the lost boys and a fat camp (to gain weight) in Africa, a bit lighter than some of their other bits, but equally good.

I think the reason I like the show so much is they do a good job of choosing who to interview - they're all charismatic in their own way, makes the story more interesting. It's also surprisingly funny.
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I think they should have come up with a better name for the show. I missed all the earlier episodes because I thought it was going to be come cop show. LOL. It's funny because the only reason I discovered the show is that I tivo Real Time and for some reason, it always records VICE right after it as if it's one show.

There was a light piece on the China one child policy where there are basically 100 million more men then women in China and so in order to get married, men have to hire brokers, publicists, or literally perform in a town square to get noticed by a woman. And the mothers of the daughters go to the giant meetup like event in the town square where they read various resumes from men to see if they are good enough for their daughter to marry. Truly a bizarre situation they have over there.

But the China real estate issue is downright frightening. There is actual real money behind those properties and if that rolls over, the very few people who constituted the wealthy class, which is only 1% of their population will get decimated.
 
It's a very interesting show. I've all of them -- I guess three -- and they are all interesting. I've spoken to people I know that are in touch with Spain and Greece regularly and the level of stress in those societies is so much greater than American media reports; it can't be by accident. We are being shielded from reality to a greater and greater degree by the media and the outright lies about what is really happening out there are numerous.

Austerity may be fine in principal but the hurt on the street can erupt in ways that we have not seen in Western society in an awful long time. Vice is certainly worth watching. I almost missed it as well because of the title.
 
Quote from Maverick74:


There was a light piece on the China one child policy where there are basically 100 million more men then women in China and so in order to get married, men have to hire brokers, publicists, or literally perform in a town square to get noticed by a woman. And the mothers of the daughters go to the giant meetup like event in the town square where they read various resumes from men to see if they are good enough for their daughter to marry. Truly a bizarre situation they have over there.
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Yea, I like how they framed that issue - something to the effect of 'you can try social engineering but in the end mother nature will find a way to fuck you'.

I didn't realize VICE has actually been around since the mid 90s, I guess they started as a magazine and have put out a variety of documentaries too.
 
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