Hot Money for a Cold Economy

AbstractThe historical waterfront of Shanghai known as the Bund, one of the most impressive architectural landscapes in Asia, was described in the 1930s inFortunemagazine as having “the tallest buildings outside the American continent; the biggest hoard of silver in the world” and being “the cradle of new China”.1At a time when the US economy was in ruins and much of China was besieged by civil war, Shanghai's foreign concessions provided a safe haven for Chinese and foreign investors. With the influx of hot money, Shanghai experienced an unprecedented building boom. Notable among these real estate developers was Sir Ellice Victor Elias Sassoon (1881–1961, hereafter Victor Sassoon) who transferred much of his wealth from India to Shanghai and then transformed the Shanghai skyline. Inspired by American skyscrapers, Sassoon decided to build the first skyscraper in Shanghai, which would also be the first in the Eastern hemisphere, even though Shanghai's muddy ground had never supported a building of that height before. This article documents how the evolution of treaty port architecture in China owed much to Victor Sassoon. Its innovations – from the advent of skyscrapers, with their Art Deco style and mixed-use function, to the engineering methods and financial arrangements that built them – bore Sassoon's stamp. As will be seen, Sassoon's experiment paid off handsomely.

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HOT MONEY

The Lancet ◽

10.1016/s0140-6736(69)91695-x ◽

1969 ◽

Vol 293 (7606) ◽

pp. 1164

Author(s):

Beryl Curtis ◽

GretaE. Fitch

Keyword(s):

Hot Money

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Hot Money and Serial Financial Crises

IMF Economic Review ◽

10.1057/imfer.2011.10 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 59 (2) ◽

pp. 306-339 ◽

Cited By ~ 24

Author(s):

Anton Korinek

Keyword(s):

Financial Crises ◽

Hot Money

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Hot money, hot stones and hot air: crime‐money threat, real estate and real concern

Journal of Money Laundering Control ◽

10.1108/13685200910951929 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 12 (2) ◽

pp. 173-188 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Petrus C. van Duyne ◽

Melvin R.J. Soudijn

Keyword(s):

Real Estate ◽

Hot Air ◽

Hot Money

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Hot money and the politics of debt

Choice Reviews Online ◽

10.5860/choice.32-2254 ◽

1994 ◽

Vol 32 (04) ◽

pp. 32-2254-32-2254

Keyword(s):

Hot Money

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“Number One in Europe”: The Startling Emergence of the Deutsche Mark, 1968–1969

Central European History ◽

10.1017/s0008938906000033 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 39 (1) ◽

pp. 56-78 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

William Glenn Gray

Keyword(s):

Central Bank ◽

Western Europe ◽

Deutsche Mark ◽

Hot Money

The dollars—and pounds, and francs—came pouring in. Speculators and small savers across Western Europe raced to exchange their currencies for the Deutsche Mark. “Hot money” flowed into Germany at astounding rates. The reserves of West Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, shot up by DM 9.4 billion ($2.15 billion) in the first three weeks of November 1968—with DM 7.3 billion arriving in just three days of trading. Airports in Germany barred exchanges of more than one hundred francs at a time; train stations in Zurich stopped accepting French notes altogether.

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