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Chanos calls China syndrome John Daly Published Thursday, Sep. 29, 2011 2:56PM EDT Last updated Thursday, Sep. 29, 2011 5:30PM EDT China is in the midst of the biggest real estate bubble in human history—“Dubai in 2007 times 1,000.” And Sino-Forest, the less-than-meets-the-eye Canadian forestry play in China? That fits a pattern: Promoters “find a different investment hype, a story, to get people excited. In the 1990s, it was the Internet, and now it’s China. Unbridled growth.” More related to this story Why should we believe this prophecy of imminent calamity in the market that we were all counting on...

In a recent interview on CNBC with Ron Insana, one of the "old-timer" funds manager, Julian Robertson, predicted "utter global collapse" as a consequence of the bursting of the world-wide property bubble. Often called "Never Been Wrong Robertson", the former head of Tiger Management (once the largest hedge fund in the world), is extremely worried about the speculative bubble in real estate. Specifically, he is very worried about a world that is sustained by American consumer spending which is in turn 1/4 sustained by a property bubble. He predicts that 20 million people could lose their homes once the property...