China versus Us

[tvashtarkatena]

China: 300 mph train

Us: $30K 'game changer' assault rifle

 

GO TEAM!

[j_b]

hey, the world needs a policeman too ..

[ivan]

don't think barney fife can be trusted w/ them thar bullets

[ivan]

hey, the world needs a policeman too ..

thought israel n' south africa had already cornered the market there?

[KaskadskyjKozak]

China: 300 mph train

Us: $30K 'game changer' assault rifle

 

GO TEAM!

 

China has great environment protection policies. Fuck yeah! Keep building shit - at any cost!

[Fairweather]

China: 300 mph train

Us: $30K 'game changer' assault rifle

 

GO TEAM!

 

Don't forget 3500+ (reported) executions--and the nearly 1 billion "other" (rural) citizens still living in abject poverty without so much as the right to vote.

 

Gotta love it when 'tards like TTK go off on their China quests. Says a lot about their own dark places.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

China: 300 mph train

Us: $30K 'game changer' assault rifle

 

GO TEAM!

 

Don't forget 3500+ (reported) executions--and the nearly 1 billion "other" (rural) citizens still living in abject poverty without so much as the right to vote.

 

Gotta love it when 'tards like TTK go off on their China quests. Says a lot about their own dark places.

 

Dude, China fucking rocks!

[Fairweather]

The communist government there has set up a wonderful recycling program:

 

 

 

[Fairweather]

If you want to see how real urban/rural sectionalism works just take a look at TTK's utopia.

 

Here's how TTK's commie friends handle secessionists:

[KaskadskyjKozak]

If you want to see how real urban/rural sectionalism works just take a look at TTK's utopia.

 

Here's how TTK's commie friends handle secessionists:

 

Yeah, but they got 300 mph trains!

 

And, anyways, we have Gitmo. It's morally equivalent.

[Fairweather]

Only in the world of TTK, JoshK, j_b, and Prole. Not sure if she received a military or civilian trail. I suspect neither.

 

 

[stevetimetravlr]

Fairweather, ever been to China? or do you just like to eat spoon fed bullshit?

[Fairweather]

Oh geeez, another angry tard who doesn't like his world view tested. A "time traveler" no less. Ever been to Guantanamo Bay, or do you just like to eat spoon fed bullshit?

[Crux]

You failed to mention that we paid for that 300mph train with our "stimulus spending" on Chinese manufacturing.

[Fairweather]

It's not my thread, or my claim for you to refute. Take it up with your buddy TTk. But the stimulus spending is wholly an Obama/Pelosi boondoggle--don't even try to wiggle that one.

[Crux]

Harry Pi say thank you for train. Please say, what mean you wiggle TTk, no wiggle boondoggle?

 

Thank you for allow to post.

[prole]

 

Let's hear for that American can-do attitude. The country should be getting back to work in no time!

 

Taking Sides in a Divorce, Chasing Profit

NYT 12/4/10

 

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Michelle Pont and her husband amassed millions of dollars in properties and investments from a freight-hauling business that they started with a single stake-bed truck in 1991. They bought a four-bedroom home, then a second home, a vacation home, a motor home and half a dozen cars.

 

But when Ms. Pont decided to seek a divorce last year, she quickly ran out of money. She had no job. Her husband controlled the family’s investments. A few months of legal bills maxed out her credit cards and drained her retirement account.

 

She wrestled with accepting a smaller settlement than she considered fair. Then a lawyer referred her to Balance Point Divorce Funding, a new Beverly Hills lender that offers to cover the cost of breaking up — paying a lawyer, searching for hidden assets, maintaining a lifestyle — in exchange for a share of the winnings.

 

In October, Balance Point agreed to invest more than $200,000 in Ms. Pont’s case.

 

“It’s given me hope,” Ms. Pont said. “I don’t view it as a loan; I view it as an investment in my future. They are helping me to get what is rightfully mine.”

 

With some in the financial world willing to bet on almost anything, it should be no surprise that a few would see the potential to profit from the often contentious and emotional process of ending a marriage.

 

So far, the number of companies investing in divorce is small — Balance Point is one of the few that do it exclusively. But other businesses are gearing up. A New York start-up, Churchill Divorce Finance, also is planning to enter the business. The company’s chief executive previously co-founded a publicly traded Australian company, ASK Funding, that has invested tens of millions in divorce cases there.

 

While this business is in its infancy, Balance Point is part of a bigger trend — the growing industry that invests in other people’s lawsuits, arming plaintiffs with money to help them win more money from defendants. Banks, hedge funds and boutique firms like Balance Point now have a total of $1 billion invested in lawsuits at any given time, industry participants estimate.

 

Lawsuit lenders initially focused on personal injury cases, but over time they have sought new frontiers, including securities fraud cases brought by disgruntled investors, whistleblower claims against corporations and property development disputes.

 

Stacey Napp, a lawyer by training who has spent her career in finance, founded Balance Point last year with money from her own divorce. Since then, she has provided more than $2 million to 10 women seeking divorces. She says she is helping to ensure both sides can defend their interests.

 

“Everybody knows somebody where at the end of the day, the divorce was not equitable,” she said. “We want to help those people, the underdog, to make sure they get their fair share.”

 

Divorce cases may be a promising niche for lenders because costs can mount quickly — some top lawyers in Los Angeles charge more than $500 an hour — and because state laws uniformly require plaintiffs to pay lawyers upfront, rather than promising them a contingency fee, or a share of any winnings, as is common in other civil cases.

 

The state laws were written to make people think twice before pursuing a divorce. But Madeline Marzano-Lesnevich, a New Jersey lawyer who serves as a vice president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, which sets ethical standards for divorce lawyers, said she welcomed the use of divorce financing as a workaround because, in her view, society also has an interest in helping people who are determined to separate.

 

“It furthers the concept of putting both spouses on an equal playing field,” she said.

 

Ms. Napp developed the idea for Balance Point during an eight-year legal battle with her former husband, which she paid for with loans from family and friends. She filed to divorce David Napp in 2001 after 13 years of marriage. Mr. Napp, an investor in mobile home parks, agreed to pay $500,000 and allow her to keep the family home. But shortly after the deal was finalized, Ms. Napp was stunned to discover that Mr. Napp was about to sell his stake in the parks for $5.7 million. She asked the court to reopen the settlement, setting off a legal dispute that lasted until the spring of 2008, when an Arizona judge ruled in her favor.

 

“Somewhere along the way a light bulb went off,” Ms. Napp recalled. “I said, ‘I’m kind of a perfect storm. I know how to find assets, I understand litigation, I have resources — what happens to people who are missing even one of those elements?’ ”

 

She decided to seed a business with some of the money she had won in Los Angeles, the city of fleeting marriages. Balance Point has since raised additional money from private investors. Ms. Napp said she expected the first case to be resolved later this fall, providing her first profit.

 

Her customers fall into a pattern. They are women. They generally do not have jobs. They often are raising small children. And their husbands run their own businesses, making it tough to obtain financial information.

 

A stay-at-home mother with three children spent 16 months trying to compel her husband to produce current financial statements for his solo law practice. She was running out of money when Balance Point agreed in August to provide financing.

 

A woman who signed up in January has used the backing to build a case that she is entitled to share the value of 17 properties her husband put in a trust for the benefit of his children from a previous marriage. Both women declined to be identified.

 

Then there is Ms. Pont, who is battling her estranged husband, Jeffery D. Pont, over the value of their trucking company. The couple met in 1990. The next year, he bought his first truck with Ms. Pont’s tax refund of $2,300, she said. He started a small business carrying ink and printing supplies. Mr. Pont and his lawyer did not return calls for comment. By 1996, the couple had married and the company had rented an 1,100-square-foot warehouse. Ms. Pont said she answered the phones while nursing their first child.

 

By the late 1990s, there was enough money flowing in for Ms. Pont to stay home with the child. And the company has continued to prosper. The main warehouse is now 150,000 square feet.

 

But she moved out in the spring of 2009 and filed for divorce. The estranged couple has since spent several hundred thousand dollars on lawyers, accountants and investigators. The judge overseeing the case has warned that the total could exceed $1 million if the two sides cannot reach a compromise.

 

Ms. Pont said the money from Balance Point would allow her to sustain the case for as long as necessary. Balance Point does not charge interest; instead, clients pay the company a percentage of their winnings.

 

Lawyers who finance other civil cases generally keep at least a third of the winnings. Ms. Napp said Balance Point required a “substantially smaller” share from clients, though she declined to be more specific.

 

The company wants to focus on people with marital assets between $2 million and $15 million, a bracket Ms. Napp described as “the lower end of the high end.” She said that investing in smaller disputes was not worthwhile. Wealthier people, she said, seemed to resolve divorces more easily — perhaps because they still felt wealthy in the aftermath. “Anything south of $15 million, when you divide that in half and take out the legal fees, you’re not in the same house, you’re not taking the same trips — your life is different,” she said. “You can’t maintain that same quality of life that you’re used to.”

 

Ms. Napp says she urges clients to set aside emotions and negotiate a settlement. Indeed, she says she will not take clients who seem unwilling to compromise, fearing that their pursuit of justice will undermine Balance Point’s pursuit of profit. She cannot compel clients to settle.

 

But Ms. Napp concedes that clients are attracted to Balance Point in part because she did not settle her own case. Most lawsuit lenders avoid any role in the management of cases, seeking to disarm critics who worry that lenders seeking profits will corrupt the pursuit of justice. Ms. Napp, by contrast, sells the benefit of her own experience.

 

Ms. Napp said that as she decided to create Balance Point, she realized that she could not settle her own case. “I had to win,” she said. “Because I don’t know that, if you don’t have a happy ending, that people are going to think it’s such a fantastic idea.”

[G-spotter]

[stevetimetravlr]

Fairweather friend, I'm not angry, just laughing at your perception of the world. Now if you really insist on calling me a "tard" we can step outside and settle it the old fashioned way if thats what youre into.

I've taken the old train between Beijing and Shanghai, and it sucked. Not that fast, and the crapper was a room with a hole in the floor of the train. I've also taken the bullet train between Pu Dong International Airport and Shanghai and where as a taxi or bus takes a hour, the train takes about 5 minutes, if that. May I suggest you learn to speak Chinese.

[Fairweather]

Fairweather friend, I'm not angry, just laughing at your perception of the world. Now if you really insist on calling me a "tard" we can step outside and settle it the old fashioned way if thats what youre into.

I've taken the old train between Beijing and Shanghai, and it sucked. Not that fast, and the crapper was a room with a hole in the floor of the train. I've also taken the bullet train between Pu Dong International Airport and Shanghai and where as a taxi or bus takes a hour, the train takes about 5 minutes, if that. May I suggest you learn to speak Chinese.

 

Tough guy tard. I Love it!

 

Not sure what your business is/was in the PRC, or why you feel the need to boast about your travels in this forum. Lots of folks have been to China--it's no big deal. You speak Chinese? Congrats. I speak Spanish and a fair amount of German. Nobody cares. In any event, I can assure you that touring with a group of your fellow whities and a government liaison in a micro-bus or a cobalt-blue Landcruiser doesn't amount to squat vis-a-vis your earlier 'spoon-fed' comments. Fuck off.

 

 

BTW: Do you speak Bod Skad?

http://friendsoftibet.org/main/execution.html

[Crux]

Fairweather friend, I'm not angry, just laughing at your perception of the world. Now if you really insist on calling me a "tard" we can step outside and settle it the old fashioned way if thats what youre into.

I've taken the old train between Beijing and Shanghai, and it sucked. Not that fast, and the crapper was a room with a hole in the floor of the train. I've also taken the bullet train between Pu Dong International Airport and Shanghai and where as a taxi or bus takes a hour, the train takes about 5 minutes, if that. May I suggest you learn to speak Chinese.

 

I really don't think it would take 5 minutes.

[Fairweather]

Um, he's a time traveler, Crux. Don't you get it? And unless you can say it in Chinese, you have no business questioning this fine man of the world.

[ivan]

I speak Spanish and a fair amount of German. Nobody cares. In any event, I can assure you that touring with a group of your fellow whities and a government liaison in a micro-bus or a cobalt-blue Landcruiser doesn't amount to squat vis-a-vis your earlier 'spoon-fed' comments. Fuck off.

i'm sure you'd come off as an asshole in any language you could manage to speak

[billcoe]

Tough guy tard. I Love it!

 

Not sure what your business is/was in the PRC, or why you feel the need to boast about your travels in this forum. Lots of folks have been to China--it's no big deal. You speak Chinese? Congrats. I speak Spanish and a fair amount of German. Nobody cares. In any event, I can assure you that touring with a group of your fellow whities and a government liaison in a micro-bus or a cobalt-blue Landcruiser doesn't amount to squat vis-a-vis your earlier 'spoon-fed' comments. Fuck off.

 

 

BTW: Do you speak Bod Skad?

http://friendsoftibet.org/main/execution.html

LOL Ivan!

 

I suspect that Steve has forgotten more about China than you've ever learned or ever will learn Fairweather. Why you so openly lay out your ignorance, stupidity and prejudices about someone you know NOTHING about is astounding. So I'll clue you in, you are talking to an expert on that country. It doesn't mean he knows everything about the country, just that he most likely knows more than anyone else who posts on this site. Possibly as much as anyone outside of the CIA knows. It's his business to know. Your insults to him only shows your own stupidity.

 

You should apologize to him immediately.

[prole]

China's skyscraper boom buoys global industry

AP 12/5/10

 

BEIJING – The 121-story Shanghai Tower is more than China's next record-setting building: It's an economic lifeline for the elite club of skyscraper builders.

 

Financial gloom has derailed plans for new towers in Chicago, Moscow, Dubai and other cities. But in China, work on the 2,074-foot (632-meter) Shanghai Tower, due to be completed in 2014, and dozens of other tall buildings is rushing ahead, powered by a buoyant economy and providing a steady stream of work to architects and engineers.

 

The U.S. high-rise market is "pretty much dead," said Dan Winey, a managing director for Gensler, the Shanghai Tower's San Francisco-based architects. "For us, China in the next 10 to 15 years is going to be a huge market."

 

China has six of the world's 15 tallest buildings — compared with three in the United States, the skyscraper's birthplace — and is constructing more at a furious pace, defying worries about a possible real estate boom and bust. It is on track to pass the U.S. as the country with the most buildings among the 100 tallest by a wide margin.

 

"There are cities in China that most Western people have never heard of that have bigger populations and more tall buildings than half the prominent cities in the U.S.," said Antony Wood, executive director of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.

 

China is leading a wave of skyscraper building in developing countries that is shifting the field's center of gravity away from the United States and Europe.

 

India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia have ultra-tall towers under construction or on the drawing board. In the Gulf, Doha in Qatar and Dubai — site of the current record holder, the 163-story Burj Khalifa — each has three buildings among the 20 tallest under construction, though work on all but one of those has been suspended.

 

The shift is so drastic that North America's share of the 100 tallest buildings will fall from 80 percent in 1990 to just 18 percent by 2012, according to Wood. He said by then, 45 of the tallest will be in Asia, with 34 of those in China alone.

 

"So 34 percent of the 100 tallest buildings will be in a single country. That has only happened once before, and that was with the USA," he said.

 

In China, skyscrapers are going up in obscure locales such as Wenzhou, Wuhan and Jiangyin, a boomtown north of Shanghai. It is building a 72-story, 1,076-foot (328-meter) hotel-and-apartment tower that will be taller than Manhattan's Chrysler Building.

 

China's edifice complex is driven by a mix of demand for space in a crowded country with economic growth forecast at 10 percent this year and local leaders who want architectural eye candy to promote their cities as commercial centers.

 

Dozens of midsize Chinese cities are building new business districts to replace cramped downtowns. They look to the model of Shanghai's skyscraper-packed Pudong district — China's Wall Street — created in the 1990s on reclaimed industrial land.

 

"Governments are encouraging these iconic buildings in order to give a very clear message to the outside world: Please pay attention to our city," said Dennis Poon, managing principal of Thornton Tomasetti, the Shanghai Tower's structural engineers. The New York-based firm also is working on the 115-story Ping An International Finance Center in Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, and other Chinese projects.

 

China has four of the 10 tallest buildings under construction, versus two for the United States — and work on one of those, the 2,000-foot (610-meter) Chicago Spire, has stopped.

 

The Shanghai Tower will be China's tallest office tower, surpassing the neighboring Shanghai World Financial Center in Pudong. The 2-year-old WFC passed the Jinmao Tower, also in Pudong, for the title.

 

China accounts for 65 percent of Gensler's worldwide revenues from projects that involve buildings 35 to 40 stories and above, according to Winey.

 

The firm is working on some 50 projects in China that total 80 million square feet (8 million square meters), the equivalent of San Francisco's entire stock of commercial office space, he said. China revenues are rising by 30 to 35 percent a year and its staff of 140 people in offices in Beijing and Shanghai should expand to 500 in the next seven years.

 

The boom has drawn a Who's Who of star architects and given Chinese firms their first shot at designing a skyscraper.

 

Shenzhen's Ping An tower was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox; the New York firm's other projects include the 116-story East Tower of the Chow Tai Fook Center in Guangzhou, also near Hong Kong. Chicago-based Skidmore Owings & Merrill designed Beijing's tallest building, the 75-story China World Tower III, and the 76-story Tianjin World Financial Center in Tianjin east of Beijing, due to be completed next year. Jiangyin's Hanging Village of Huaxi was designed by China's A+E Design.

 

Tianjin, a port and oil-refining center with ambitions to be a finance and tech hub, is building four towers of at least 75 stories. One of them, the Goldin Finance 117, will be 117 stories and nearly 2,000 feet (600 meters) tall.

 

Instead of Western-style single-use office or apartment towers, many developers diversify their revenue sources by making buildings a mix of hotel and office space, with a shopping mall in the base and luxury apartments at the top.

 

The new space is hitting the market just as Beijing tries to cool a boom in construction of luxury housing and shopping malls. Regulators warn that a supply glut could leave lenders with unpaid loans if developers default.

 

But demand for high-end office space is so strong that the skyscraper market should face no such problems, said Danny Ma, director of China research for real estate consulting firm CB Richard Ellis. He said the new buildings should fill up quickly because many are the first in their cities to offer high-quality facilities required by foreign and major Chinese companies that are expanding there.

 

"More and more tenants are keen to move to such buildings," Ma said. He said developers are signing up tenants in advance for 50 to 60 percent of the space in new projects, enough in many cases to make them profitable.

 

China is helping to propel development of skyscraper design and urban planning as developers face government pressure to make buildings environmentally friendly and integrate them into busy cities.

 

The Shanghai Tower will have a double-layer glass exterior to insulate it and cut heating and cooling costs, an advanced feature that might be rejected as too costly in the U.S. or other Western markets, Winey said.

 

"You can do a lot more experimentation here," he said. "It's an amazing place to be, because you can do things here that you can't do anywhere else in the world."