Ponzi schemes, everywhere.

China's Lehman Brothers moment? Investors mob HQ of failing Chinese property conglomerate with $300BILLION of debt to demand their money back - amid fears giant company could collapse and hit the world economy.
- Protesters mobbed a failing Chinese property company in Shenzhen yesterday
- The anxious investors demanded their money back after bankruptcy rumours
- The conglomerate is sinking under a mountain of debt totaling over $300billion.

By LAUREN LEWIS FOR MAILONLINE and AFP
PUBLISHED: 08:47 BST, 14 September 2021 | UPDATED:
10:33 BST, 14 September 2021

Investors demanding their money back have mobbed the headquarters of a failing Chinese property company with huge $300billion debts amid fears it is about to collapse and devastate the Chinese economy.
Around 100 anxious investors yesterday forced their way into the lobby of the Shenzhen headquarters of the property giant Evergrande after it said it was facing 'unprecedented difficulties'.
The Hong Kong-listed developer is sinking under a mountain of liabilities totalling more than $300 billion after years of borrowing to fund rapid growth.
An estimate by Capital Economics says that Evergrande has some 1.4 million properties that it has committed to complete - around 1.3 trillion yuan ($200 billion) in pre-sale liabilities, as of the end of June.
Its plight has raised fears of a contagion across the debt-laden Chinese property sector - which accounts for more than a quarter of the economy - with a knock on for banks and investors.
Some analysts have questioned if China faces a 'Lehman Brothers moment' in reference to the collapse of the Wall Street investment bank that triggered the 2008 credit crunch.
Security personnel formed a human wall to protect staff at the embattled firm as protesters shouted for executives to repay loans.
Executives have insisted the firm will avoid a bankruptcy that many fear could have a huge impact on the world's number-two economy, but have conceded the conglomerate is under 'tremendous pressure'.
The Hong Kong-listed developer is sinking under a mountain of liabilities totaling more than $300billion after years of borrowing to fund rapid growth.

General Manager and Legal Representative of Evergrande's wealth management division Du Liang spoke to protesters and provided a two year repayment plan.
But investors reportedly rejected the offer amid fears the firm will file for bankruptcy before it can repay the loans.
Demonstrations have also taken place online in recent months, in forums hosted by the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party. Anxious investors there have called on the government to step in.
The group was downgraded by two credit rating agencies last week while its shares tumbled below their 2009 listing price, as a battery of bad headlines and speculation of its imminent collapse ran out across Chinese social media.
The company today issued a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange, saying it had hired financial advisers to explore 'all feasible solutions' to ease its cash crunch and warned that there was no guarantee it would meet its financial obligations.
The firm blamed 'ongoing negative media reports' for damaging sales in the pivotal September period, 'thereby resulting in the continuous deterioration of cash collection by the Group which would in turn place tremendous pressure on the Group's cashflow and liquidity'.
Shares in the firm fell nine per cent Tuesday, and are down almost 80 per cent since the start of the year.
An estimate by Capital Economics says that Evergrande has some 1.4 million properties that it has committed to complete - around $200billion in pre-sale liabilities, as of the end of June.

Its plight has raised fears of a contagion across the debt-laden Chinese property sector - which accounts for more than a quarter of the economy - with a knock on for banks and investors.
'Evergrande's collapse would be the biggest test that China's financial system has faced in years,' said Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital economics.
Yet 'markets don't seem concerned about the potential for financial contagion at the moment,' he said, adding 'that would change in the event of large-scale default', which would likely prod the central bank to step in and buttress the teetering developer.
'The most likely endgame is now a managed restructuring in which other developers take over Evergrande's uncompleted projects in exchange for a share of its land bank,' Williams said.

The pictures of angry investors outside the firm's Shenzhen HQ could also cause alarm in Beijing, where leaders are keen to keep a lid on any form of social unrest.
Some creditors have demanded immediate payback of loans, Bloomberg News reported earlier this month.
Evergrande has already sold stakes in some of its wide-ranging assets and offered steep discounts to offload apartments, but still reported a 29 per cent slide in profit for the first half of the year.
It is also struggling to sell its Hong Kong headquarters, even at a loss.
The developer was founded in 1996 by Xu Jiayin, who went on to become China's richest man during the country's property boom of the 1990s.
He poured money into mass developments in new cities, raising $9 billion in its 2009 IPO in Hong Kong.
A year later Xu bought a struggling football team and renamed it Guangzhou Evergrande, lavishing millions of dollars on salaries for its stars and scooping titles. Evergrande started to falter under the new 'three red lines' imposed on developers in a state crackdown in August 2020 - forcing the group to offload properties at increasingly steep discounts.