The collapse of First Republic Bank is the latest chapter in the rolling banking crisis in the US. This was the second largest banking collapse in US financial history. It demonstrates yet further the case for public ownership of the banking system.
First Republic is the third bank to fail after the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature. In total, $47bn in bank assets have disappeared into smoke, the losses being taken in part by the shareholders and holders of the bonds in these banks. But there has also been a cost to public funds. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is a public body financed by contributions from all the banks. The cost of arranging and financing the cost of these bankruptcies and takeovers is estimated at $20bn (for SVB), $13bn (for First Republic) and $2.5bn (Signature). So around three-quarters of the total losses are being taken by the FDIC. The FDIC will ask for new levies from the banks, so the burden will eventually be shared, but at the expense of reducing bank lending for households and business and at higher interest costs.
One bank that is not going to lose is JP Morgan. The takeover of First Republic looks like a great deal for JPM. JPM is paying the FDIC $10.6bn, for which it is getting $185bn in interest-bearing loans and securities. In turn, JPM is taking on the deposits of First Republic and First Republic’s outstanding borrowing from the Fed. But the FDIC is providing a $50bn credit line to JPM over five years so that any further fall in deposits or defaults on First Republic loans are covered. In other words, JPM will not have to get expensive borrowing from the Fed as it has a special FDIC loan on easier terms. Small banks may wonder why the largest bank in the US gets a special cheap loan facility.
JPM will now own First Republic assets for $10.6bn. JPM’s chief Dimon says it will make about $500m a year from these assets, which it deserves for taking on the risk of First Republic’s debts. But that is clearly an underestimate – it’s more likely to be a profit of $1bn a year at current loan rates to businesses and especially the low rate that the FDIC has arranged for JPM to borrow. That’s what First Republic earned in its last quarter. So that will add 2% to annual profits from JPM. Moreover, the FDIC has agreed to take 80% of any losses on loan defaults! JPM’s stock price went up by $11bn in one day on the news. So even JPM’s payment to the FDIC has been covered immediately.
These banking collapses offer yet another powerful argument for public ownership of banking. If the three banks had been nationalised, the $35bn being spent by the FDIC to hand over the assets of these banks to larger ones could instead have been used to restructure them into public banks that would have delivered over time sufficient income to make profits for the government (FDIC), not for the likes of JPM.
The other lesson of this crisis is the failure of regulation as the alternative to public ownership. In a special report commissioned by the Fed on the SVB debacle, the blame was laid on the reduction in regulation of smaller banks under the Trump administration. The Democrat administration likes that conclusion, but the report provided no evidence that the Trump changes made any difference to preventing the collapse of any of these banks. The history of regulation, whether applied to large or small banks, has shown to be a total failure.
So now we have had three banking busts, leaving JP Morgan in an even more dominant position in the banking sector, now with 12% of all customer deposits in the US. In the 2008 financial crash, the cry was there were many large banks that were ‘too big to fail’. Fifteen years later and the big banks are even bigger – but not too big to fail as the collapse and takeover of Swiss bank Credit Suisse last month proved. Indeed it is ludicrous that the now huge Swiss UBS bank remains in private ownership, subsidised by the state, instead being publicly owned.
And as long as the Federal Reserve and other central banks keep raising their ‘policy’ interest rates, driving up the cost of borrowing and tightening credit, there remains the increasing danger of further bank collapses down the road.
The case for public ownership is overwhelming, not only of middle-sized banks like First Republic that get into trouble, but also of the big mega banks like JP Morgan, increasingly becoming powerful monopolies. Public ownership, democratically run would end banking as a wasteful, corrupt and unstable money-making machine paying grotesque salries, bonuses and capital gains for a small clique of super-rich speculators (speculating with our deposits) and instead turn it into a public service for its customers, households and businesses, with any profits going to the country as a whole.
Michael Roberts Blog 
Hi Michael, good report, but it’s just a bit painful again to read your very “idealistic” Keynesian conclusion that public ownership would be a solution.
Just take a materialist view: the issue here is not more or less State, but rather whose State. The material reality is that the State is fully owned by the capitalists, as all these decisions prove time and time again. Even if they were to be nationalized, that would not mean they’d be owned by the citizens, only that it’s the most advantageous route for the capitalists to handle it at a given point. Once state banks have been made profitable they’re invariably turned over back to the capitalists for peanuts. And the same with “public” utilities or any other state-run enterprises.
Never forget that what Marx said about the government being nothing else but the board of directors of the capitalists is as true now as it was in his time. And that you cannot understand any of what has happened in this so-called neoliberal era without the full participation of the social democrats. Traitors to the working class since 1914.
Daniel, I think you are a Marxist. Roberts, not really.
Capitalism can operate under various mechanisms. Public ownership – i.e. state ownership, where the State remains in the hands of the ruling class is not a step forward for the working class, is not a policy that the working class should pursue and is no more socialist than any other measure undertaken by the capitalist stat. Roberts makes some great analysis but steps away from the logical conclusion. REVOLUTION or RUIN.
It is dangerous to defend nationalization without the proper context, otherwise you could be defending pulling a “Margaret Thatcher”, where private companies are nationalized when they go bust, only to be re-privatized when they start to profit again.
It is equally dangerous to defend public ownership without the proper context because, otherwise an ill-intended liberal (be it on the left or the right) could argue that you’re making a case against (the negative concept of) freedom, because the public sphere configures the private sphere, making decision-making in the former a byproduct of class division manifested productively in the latter, therefore also of class exploitation (see, e.g. Hannah Arendt’s “return to the poleis” argument).
To counter both fallacious arguments, we should keep ourselves within Marx’s philosophical framework: the expropriation of the means of production (which include, indirectly, the big banks) in the form of a centralized proletarian State is a temporary phase which we usually call “the dictatorship of the proletariat”. In this context, “nationalization” can only happen in a context of withering away of the State, i.e. the State becoming apparently stronger only to become weaker. Freedom in Marx is a positive concept, i.e. the satisfaction of all of humanity’s needs, which means the withering away of the State must lead us to the abolition (overcoming) of the public-private division, not of the takeover of the private by the public, the hegemony of public property (i.e. the “return to the polis” fallacy).
–//–
The First Republic Bank’s collapse isn’t just relevant because of what it represents economically, but also symbolically: it was a bank that should represent what the American middle class perceived as the role model of “human capitalism”, i.e. a small-medium sized business that served a relatively local but cosmopolitan (read: powerful) middle class. According to the “End of History” enthusiasts, such business should never fail.
Its collapse was a direct blow to the heart of postwar America and, therefore, capitalism.
What do you mean by a centralized proletarian State? Do you mean the dictatorship of a so-called communist party, do you mean proletarian democracy, all officials (delegates) elected and recallable, or do you have some other arrangement in mind?
”In the financial crash of 2008, the cry was that there were too many big banks that were “too big to fail.” Fifteen years later, the big banks are even bigger”
In banking today, companies are getting bigger and more monopolistic (J.P. Morgan, etc.) and in other sectors as well (FAANG, etc.). Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, says in a recent interview that “for some to win in the market, others must lose.” It is the underlying economic phenomenon: the concentration of capital. Including the public company (the State). Concentration that does not occur “harmoniously” (integrating all small companies and their employees in large companies) due to various causes associated with class society. And concentration that, on the contrary, produces numerous bankrupt companies and unemployment with real people harmed. It is the harmed human subjects, in a sufficient and hegemonic number, that provoke, historically and necessarily for their own survival, the model changes. Those that will cause the change from Capitalism to the last phase of Socialism, a socialist model already started and ongoing since 1917. In other words, those that will cause the final concentration of companies in a single common company, owned by all, and with benefits for all and not just for a few.
And, of course, public ownership of the banks is not enough nor will it…happen. It already happened in Europe with the creation of a multitude of public banks (even in dictatorships like Spain and Portugal…), until the 80s. Since then, all public banks have been privatized. They are the progressive and reactionary phases of the socialist revolutionary cycle of 1917.
There are no examples of “a socialist model already started and ongoing since 1917”. the attempt at revolution failed. Stalinism was the counter revolution. You talk of “progressive and reactionary phases of the socialist revolutionary cycle of 1917” The proletariat lost, the revolution failed. The defeat may not be permanent. But it happened.
In order to prove “Stalinism” (i.e. Socialism in One Country) was a counter-revolution, you have to prove that, by 1929, international/world revolution (“Permanent Revolution”) was imminent or at least still very much possible.
My personal opinion is the international revolution was pretty much dead by November 1923. Whatever the order of the products whatever theorist idealized at the time, Germany had to be the first domino (after Russia) to fall. It successfully fended off the two attempts (1918-19; 1923), the first – and most decisive one – with the crucial help of the Social-Democrats.
It was the SPD, not Stalin, that killed the “Permanent Revolution”.
I think that, was Stalin really a counter-revolutionary, he would have seized the historical window of his victory in WWII to declare the end of Socialism in One Country, open up to the Marshall Plan and more Lend Lease (used the debt as an excuse or whatever, like your average TINA social-democrat) and installed capitalism during his final years of life (1945-1953).
By 1924 (i.e. after Lenin’s death), the only thing that legitimized Kamenev, Trotsky and Zinoviev was Lenin’s, alleged or real, personal preference for this or for that one. Neither of the three had any real organic base within the CPSU, with the exception of Trotsky among some circles of the Communist Youth. Trotsky was also very respected among the Party as an intellectual, but being respected as a scholar is different than holding real power. That Trotsky was the “heir apparent” of Lenin in the aftermath of his death is the sole reason the first triumvirate was composed of Kamenev, Stalin and Zinoviev. The second triumvirate made of Kamenev, Trotsky and Zinoviev was formed against Stalin only after they realized too late that mass support among the rank and file of the CPSU was more important than who made the most bombastic political speeches.
The fact that this or that was Lenin’s heir apparent was irrelevant in the USSR because that was not how the socialist system worked: his successor was to be decided not by dynasty, but by direct majority support of the Party (i.e. the CPSU). It was never in Lenin’s hands. This system endured until the very end of the USSR.
I appreciate your comment. His comment, although wrong, has sufficient socialist knowledge. This knowledge is not so frequent and I encourage you to continue debating in the magnificent blog of M. Roberts, probably the best on the planet in terms of socialist economy, even revolutionary, in my opinion.
Regarding the revolutionary cycles, I must tell you that the topic is especially interesting and in my point of view it represents a step forward in the study of how modes of production are created, maintained and disappear. But it is too long a topic and I have and will have little time or none for these discussions. If you are interested in the subject, in my comments over the last 4 years I have developed the theory of the revolutionary cycle quite a bit and I also suggest the Cycles chapter of Michael Roberts’ book The Long Depression and the authors who have studied the Kondratieff cycle but with revolutionary cause (Stefano Screpanti, Beverly Silver, especially). Theory that I hope to publish one day when work allows me.
Just a few small takeaways from that theory. The modes of production are built in cycles. So did Capitalism. And Socialism is doing it since 1917. There is a lot of accepted economic and political literature on cycles in general (Ragnar Frisch, Immanuel Wallerstein, Michael Roberts with his profit cycle, Kuznets cycles, Juglar and especially Kondratieff cycles) and the revolutionary cycle is one more business cycle. The revolutions of the losing subjects of a current model generate impulses almost identical to the life cycle of a product, with the particularity that the revolutionary product consists of a phase of progress and another phase of retreat in several impulses and not in just one impulse like a product cycle. Examples of revolutionary cycles?: ALL the countries that have carried out revolutions, including Russia-1917. Revolutions DO NOT FAIL. Even the lowest intensity or those that have been defeated at the beginning (Paris Commune) achieve changes in the social distribution of wealth. And the revolutions of great intensity (Russia, China, Cuba,…) achieved substantial modifications in the distribution of wealth in their countries and even extended their influence to most of the capitalist states in the 20th century. I am referring to the Welfare States and the Golden Age, very positive effects for the working class that simply would not have existed without the Russian and Chinese socialist revolutions. The product of the revolutions recedes not because it has endogenous defects but because of the resistance of the defenders of the previous economic-political-producton-model. The same happens with any other product launched on the market, although with some nuances. In the case of the revolutionary product “socialist model”, it has regressed in all countries only because of the pressure of the countries that remained in the capitalist model. Capitalist countries that, unfortunately, still remained in the majority after the socialist revolutions. But the capitalist model fails and will continue to fail to meet the economic needs of citizens. And these affected citizens, but only with a sufficient and hegemonic majority, will have to give and will certainly give another revolutionary boost to the socialist model. Impulse that in my opinion will establish the socialist mode of production as the majority. This new socialist impulse will happen around the year 2040 due to various indicators that demonstrate it, but that are impossible to explain now due to lack of time for a comment that is already too long.
@Antonio, I fully agree with you about the excellence of Michael’s blog, superb in the current economic issue analysis.
If you can read Spanish, the blog by Argentinian marxist economist Rolando Astarita is also a must:
https://rolandoastarita.blog/
There you can find thousands of really excellent articles going back many years, goes very much in depth into marxist theory and is particularly strong analyzing the capitalist periphery.
I agree I am afraid with what previous correspondents have written about Michael Roberts’ mystifying endorsement of “public ownership”. At best, it is a kind of reprise of what utopian socialists always believed as, for example, in their ideas about abolishing money while preserving commodity production; at worst, it is a downright apologia for social democracy and Stalinism. Pieces like this strengthen my conviction that Roberts is unable to engage with the social form in which the surplus product is extracted in different societies – he is preoccupied with forms of property like “nationalised” and “private” property (in this context the “democratically run” qualifier to public ownership seems to be little more than a totemic genuflection which does not touch upon the class relations involved in the extraction of the surplus product).
Well Bis and all the other Marxist experts who claim that I am some Keynesian reformist or utopian socialist, might they answer one question: are you in favour of public ownership of the banks or not? Yes or no.
Personally, I think your position is perfectly reasonable. When you write about what a socialist economy would look like, then you can go on and talk about all aspects of it, like you did in your latest book.
But if you’re asked what to do, all else remaining as is, about banks in a capitalist society, right here, right now, that would have a semblance of being realistic, then I don’t see any reply that would make more sense than nationalisation. Barred a collapse of capitalist society followed by a total rebuilding in socialist form, transitioning into a mixed economy is at least defensible.
Hi Michael,
I certainly am no Marxist expert and definitely would never claim you’re just a reformist. I truly appreciate your work and learn a lot from it! My apologies if it came out wrong.
To your question I would give the Ghandi answer when he was asked about Western Civilisation: it would be a nice idea. Because again, what does public ownership actually mean in a bourgeois democracy? All the Cajas de Ahorro in Spain that went bust in the previous financial crisis were publicly owned. Did they behave any differently than the private banks? Not at all. They were mostly run by ex-politicians from the ruling bipartisan elites, feeding the mega housing bubble and showering friends, family and cronies with easy loans. The bailout cost the State over 60 billion €, and austerity was imposed on the country via the ECB. They were all privatised, given away basically for free to the big banks. And they continue now doing the same things than when they were ‘public’.
So no, I’m not in favour of that kind of public. Are there other kinds? In the world of ideas, no doubt. In the material reality of our capitalist states… I am highly skeptical.
My answer would be that the question is undefined; is incomplete.
In isolation, public ownership of the banks can mean property of the State or a proletarian (socialist) takeover. The first case could imply into anything from keynesian liberalism to fascism, so it is very vague.
One could argue, borrowing quantum mechanics terminology, that public ownership of the banks gives us a statistical probability that we’re talking about socialism. However, the human world doesn’t work like quantum mechanics: we can know for sure the present state of our society, including a society in flux.
I’ll take that question. I am for the abolition of the banking CLASS; that’s “economic lesson” of these defaults. Once that task is accomplished we can decide what to do with the banks. Burning leaps to mind, but I’m no expert. Maybe day care centers, or dancing schools.
Until then, no I am not in favour of public ownership of banks, and neither should you be, because public ownership of banks like any other industry without that preliminary expropriation of the class will only reproduce the capitalist relations of production.
No. I am in favour of the revolutionary smashing of the capitalist state. Outside of that, nothing but worse. And obviously that revolution is not on the near horizon. But worse is.
Again the answer is no unless that public ownership means socialisation as a result of the establishment of genuine workers power as expressed by its own organs (workers councils) and the elimination of the capitalist state.
The basic antagonism between the social nature of work and the restricted ownership of property remains, irrespective of the precise legal form of bourgeois ownership of the means of production on the one hand and the changing form of the social character of wage labour on the other. Whilst classical (Western) capitalism was characterised in the nineteenth century by the individual capitalist extorting surplus value directly from his factory workers, in the twentieth century this gave way to new forms of capitalist control. State ownership of the most important means of production has not altered their capitalist nature as the property of finance capital, which is the real form of capital in the imperialist era. Nor does the predominance of national and multi-national monopolies in the form of joint-stock companies (acting as “social” capital) mean the end of capitalism’s basic contradictions but rather exacerbates and extends them by giving them an international dimension. Engels recognised this long ago when he explained that:
… the transformation, either into joint-stock companies (and trusts), or into state ownership, does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies (and trusts) this is obvious. And the modern state, again, is only the organisation that bourgeois society takes in order to support the general external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to take over the productive forces, the more does it actually become the collective capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with.
Anti-Dühring
Thus, those countries which we were told not so long ago were socialist were in fact nothing more than a particular form of state capitalism: where the state directly controlled the material means of production and held a monopoly over the market. The miserable end of the USSR only confirms this analysis developed by the Communist Left (and based on the critique of political economy, or Marxism) during the long years which separated the October Revolution from the collapse of the Russian bloc. The tragic identification of state ownership with socialism has been brought to an end now that so-called “really existing socialism” has joined with the current organisational and legal set-up of global capitalism.
Bis, do you also (ahistorically) believe that China, like the Soviet Union (“stalinism!), is disguised capitalism?
The confusion here (including my own initial surprise on reading this post) is dogmatic absence of historic contextualization. …Antonio has it right.
Hi there,
Big thanks for all of the vital research and writing that you do.
I write to ask: Are there any economists like you whose focus is on Canada?
Thanks again,
Oh yes. Murray Smith at Brock University emeritus. https://murraysmith.org/ and Geoff McCormack https://theconversation.com/profiles/geoffrey-mccormack-199409
I have to come to Michael’s aid without for a second failing to acknowledge that taking the banks into public ownership on its own amounts to no more than left reformism. However we also need to guard against sectarianism.
Let us begin with trade unions. Clearly we seek to abolish the wage relation altogether. So why support trade unions when they can be used to reinforce the wage relation under certain conditions? We support trade unions not only to defend workers, not only to win ‘fair wages’ but as revolutionaries we see them as the springboard for the fight for workers control. This is what separates us from the reformists and trade union bureaucracy. If unions are strong enough to prevent the bosses making unilateral decisions for their workforce, that consultation and agreement is first needed, then that shows that the bosses have lost a certain amount of control. Of course we never stop arguing that unions are not so much for the good times as they are for the bad times because the business cycle always ends up in crisis and it at this time that the fight for control becomes acute meaning only one side can emerge victorious.
Now let us turn to the banks. What is better during a banking crisis, banks being taken over by other banks with visible and invisible subsidies from tax payers, or when there is sufficient pressure from below for the state to take them over without compensating their owners and bond holders. I know which option I would prefer. Of course we would never argue that nationalising the banks was an end in itself, nor that it creates the opportunity to turn these banks into non-banks by using their assets for the common good. Its simply an argument against socialising losses while using it as a platform to argue that public ownership is better than private ownership. It makes it easier, not harder, for going all the way and arguing for the abolition of private property altogether because the political inertia has been broken.
Finally, in the lower stage of capitalism the banks form the scaffolding around the new structures being put in place – the planning bodies together with the nervous system linking them to consumers on the one side and the producers (production units) on the other, and until such time that the social fund is sufficiently organised to take over from banking.
You say: “…or when there is sufficient pressure from below for the state to take them over without compensating their owners and bond holders”
Also sounds like a good…idea 🙂 But even if that is done upfront, the material reality in those cases is that the state ‘subsidy’ is only deferred to the moment of re-privatization, where the previous capitalist losers can re-purchase on the cheap a now again viable company, refloated with tax money. Like in the casino, the bank always wins. Hence I don’t think such ‘choice’ question is well formulated.
Except of course Daniel we fight against all privatisation of public assets. Notably in the UK this is focused on fighting against the privatisation of our National Health Service.
“This paper contributes to the discussion by building a new dataset which is longer and more detailed than what has been used in the existing literature and by using these new data to reassess the links between state-ownership of banks and each of financial depth, economic growth, financial stability, bank performance, and lending cyclicality.”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17487870.2022.2076678
Oops lower stage of communism not capitalism
Hello Mr. Roberts
I have subscribed to your blog and read it every time with great interest. I appreciate your critical and reflective work.
While I am in the midst of understanding the Marxian critique of political economy, I keep coming across current issues that I am trying to understand with the help of the theory. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes not quite yet. For example, one question that is not yet completely clear to me is why global real estate prices, especially in larger cities, have risen so much and much earlier than the prices of other goods? Is it really just because of the greatly expanded money supply in recent years and because real estate still yields the highest returns compared to other investments? Probably, yes. In Switzerland, where I live and come from, we have also seen a sharp increase in real estate prices in recent years, especially in larger cities like Zurich, where land prices are many times higher than elsewhere. In our media you can now find liberal politicians, real estate owners and liberal economists claiming that all you have to do is increase the supply of housing/building land for prices to come down. But I can’t imagine that this is true. In my view, it is a false, simple-minded abstraction. In the medium term, surely prices would adjust to current prices even with a much larger supply of housing. I see the reason for this in the multitude of capitalists (private investors, companies, pension funds, corporations, also international ones, etc.), who mutually drive up the price through their demand, without households/families being able to join in this game. And to the question of why this is not so much the case 30 years ago, I would argue that capital accumulated and concentrated even more during that time. Is this reasoning sufficient or do you see other factors?
I am just looking forward to a short answer from you and wish you all the best.
Kind regards Fabian Rothenfluh
The switch by capital into financial and real estate investment and out (relatively) from productive investment along with very low interest rates has driven a boom in financial asset and house prices. House prices are way higher than the ‘book value’ of house ie the cost of the land and the cost of rebuilding on that land. So you are right; it would not be enough just to build more houses – assuming that was done (of course it is not being done),or, in other words, increase supply. Fictitious capital (credit for speculation in housing) would have to be ended as well. We would need to take over the credit institutions and end speculative activity in exotic real estate financial assets. Housing needs to be a public service or public good and not an area for profit-making for banks and real estate developers and rental income by private landlords. Ironically, the growing credit crises and oncoming recession is now driving down home prices and we can expect more mortgage defaults and collapses in real estate developers and the banks that lend to them.
The financialisation of housing, which requires driving up prices, depends on limiting supply. This means curbing social or municipal house building. Relative prices are highest
in countries with the lowest supply or stock of municipal housing.
To all those who think that nationalisation of the banks is a reformist solution, try reading Trotsky’s Transitional Programme. Capitalism is steadily destroying the planet, and it is clear that the only alternative is a socialist one. But how do we get there? Trotsky’s Transitional Programme considers this, the aim being to engage in the day to day struggles of the masses to win improvements, while at the same time raising consciousness. ‘Transitional demands’ act as a bridge between basic reforms within capitalism as an end result and socialist revolution, making it clear that the only long-term solution is socialism. One of these is ‘the expropriation of private banks’ and ‘the creation of a single state bank’. He also has a paragraph called ‘Against Sectarianism’ – suggest you read that too!
FWIW, not to put too fine a point on it– there’s a big difference between EXPROPRIATION of private banks, and “public ownership,” or nationalization. And there’s a bigger difference when the demand for expropriation is part of a larger program of an organization committed to dictatorship of the proletariat vs. having “public ownership” hanging out there on its own without a CLASS struggle program included.
Jus’ sayin’
Hi Holly, I have read it. Unfortunately I didn’t find it so inspiring. Had I read it as a young man I think I would have thought it the greatest thing since wonderbread. But by now I find a lot of the analysis to be pure fantasy, relating to a society that only exists in the imagination. I found it actually quite surprising in such a brilliant man otherwise, would have thought him a materialist. I cannot imagine Lenin agreeing with much of it, had he read it.
Also please understand I mean no disrespect, I just happen to think differently. In fact, like I said, I can imagine myself some time ago thinking the same. Why would that be sectarian? Best regards
Banks in China are collapsing hugely but they are covering it up. But it is causing our crisis too, not just with Chinese-American banks used to buy up property. Another CCP contagion.