CHENGDU -- The Shanghai stock market has been one wild ride for the last few months. The world has watched as stocks soared for months before a precipitous plunge in recent weeks. Millions of "novice investors" got involved in the markets when prices dramatically increased last year, the Associated Press reported.
So what do normal Chinese people think about the roller coaster markets, now that they're in a meltdown?
To find out, we surveyed a few people in the southwestern city of Chengdu. Best known for its spicy food and beautiful women, Chengdu isn’t exactly the epicenter of rabid financial speculation. Here’s what Chengdu residents had to say about the raucous Shanghai stock market.
Lin Liuzhi, 55, retired
Do you or your family play the stock market? I’ve never bought stocks but my daughter bought a few. She lost money but not that much. Have you been paying attention to news about the stock market? Not very much. My daughter might pay more attention. Will the stock market recover? That’s really hard to say. Will the turmoil in the stock market affect your life? It won’t really affect me because I don’t buy stocks and my daughter didn’t buy that many stocks.
Li Zheng, 60, retired
Do you or your family play the stock market? I never get involved with the Chinese stock market because of the way people play it. Ordinary Chinese people are just gambling on stocks. They don’t look at the real value of the companies when they invest. When things look good they rush in, when things look bad they run away. Have you been paying attention to news about the stock market? Yea, I’ve been watching it a bit. Will the stock market recover? Right now this situation has nothing to do with the real value. They talk about capital markets, but I’ve been observing it for 10 years and I don’t know what the real value is. Will the turmoil in the stock market affect your life? It won’t affect me. I’m already retired. I just need my pension to go up a bit every year, and that isn’t connected to the stock markets. This year, salaries have been going up, but that’s because the economy is growing, not because the stock market is growing. The stock market was only growing because of the strategies people used. It’s separate from the real economy.
Mr. Jiang, 33, small business owner
Do you or your family play the stock market? I don’t, but my mom does. She’s played the markets for a long time, but she sold all of her stocks before it crashed. It was really lucky. She made around 200,000 RMB (about $32,000). Have you been paying attention to news about the stock market? Yep. Will the stock market recover? I don’t know, but if it does my mom will get back in. Will the turmoil in the stock market affect your life? It doesn’t influence me personally, but it influences my family.
Xiao Jinhua, 32, manager at Peter’s Tex Mex
Do you or your family play the stock market? I don’t have stocks, but some of my friends do. Some have been playing for a couple years. Have you been paying attention to news about the stock market? Recently it’s been falling, so I started to wonder why it dropped. But overall I’m not that interested. Will the stock market recover? I don’t really have much concept of the market. All I have is a feeling because I’ve never really gotten involved in buying and selling. According to some friends it’s not going to go up much in the short term, but I don’t know why. Will the turmoil in the stock market affect your life? Yes, it will. If people don’t have money then they won’t spend it at places like this. I think there will be some impact.
Hu Wei, left.
Hu Wei, 23, salesman
Do you or your family play the stock market? Never. But I’ve noticed that lots of girls play the stock market. Have you been paying attention to news about the stock market? No. I don’t understand it so why would I pay attention? Will the stock market recover? I have no idea. Will the turmoil in the stock market affect your life? Not at all. Out in this city we won’t feel the effects.
After decades of judging and shaming mothers for "abandoning" their kids while they went off to work to commit the horrible and selfish act of providing for their families, Americans are now overwhelmingly OK with working mothers, according to a paper published in the latest edition of Psychology of Women quarterly.
The study, from researchers at San Diego State University and the University of Georgia, looked at nationally representative survey data from the 1970s through 2013, and found big cultural shifts. In 1977, 68 percent of U.S. adults believed "a preschool child is likely to suffer if his or her mother works," compared to 42 percent in 1998 and 35 percent in 2012. (A recent study found that, actually, having a working mother can have a very positive impact on a child.)
Younger adults were even more supportive of working mothers. The new study found that just 22 percent of high school seniors surveyed from 2010 to 2013 said they believe a child suffers when his or her mother works.
So that's cool. But the thing is, public policy and most private employers haven't caught up to changing attitudes. The U.S. still remains the only democratic nation on the planet without any paid parental leave.
"The reality is, most women with young children are in the workplace," said Jean Twenge, the author of "Generation Me" and a psychology professor at San Diego State University who worked on the new research paper. "Yet among industrialized nations, we don't compare very well in terms of the support we give working families for daycare and preschool."
Nothing much has changed at the federal level since the U.S. passed a law requiring employers to offer 12 weeks of unpaid leave for caretakers in 1993. "I don't feel like we've made any progress [on family leave] since then," Anne Weisberg, a senior vice president at the nonprofit research group the Families and Work Institute, told The Huffington Post.
A very young-looking Bill Clinton signs the Family and Medical Leave act in 1993.
One of the big objections to paid leave traditionally comes from businesses, which tend to argue that offering workers paid leave increases costs. But a mounting pile of evidence doesn't support that theory. Nearly 90 percent of California businesses reported no cost increases due to the state's now 10-year-old leave law, according to one survey. In fact, 43 percent of businesses in the state reported a cost savings, because they were able to hold on to more workers (decreasing training costs) and reduce spending on benefits.
Other companies, like Google, have also increased employee retention by increasing paid leave.
Oh, and paid leave saves the government money and disproportionately helps lower-income women. In New Jersey, women who took paid leave were around 40 percent less likely to receive public benefits like food stamps or welfare, according to a Rutgers study cited by Claire Cain Miller in The New York Times.
So what's taking policymakers and business leaders so long to catch up?
First, not all attitudes have shifted, said Weisberg. "We still have a lot of ambivalence about gender roles. Even though most people say they believe women should work outside the home, we know for a fact that there's a lot of maternal bias when it comes to hiring women, promoting women."
Despite what the new study found about shifting attitudes, a 2013 survey from Pew found a majority of Americans still believe it's better for children if the mother stays home. "They don't say the same thing if the dad stays home," Weisberg said.
She also noted that most Americans view having children as a "choice" -- not a societal good. That prevents us from supporting parents at the policy level. Yet if we don't, Weisberg said we could wind up like Japan, a country that offers little policy support for working mothers. Increasingly, young women there are choosing not to have children. The country's birth rate is currently below replacement levels, which could have devastating consequences for Japan's economy.
Of course, there's also the classic American aversion to taxes and spending money on social reform. And there's the issue of who's in charge of making change. Though women make up a huge part of the workforce, they're still largely missing from the corner office -- and from the political sphere.
"Very few members of Congress, I suspect, have dropped a child off at day care," Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said recently, speaking of paid family leave. "Very few members of Congress know exactly how much day care costs, because they didn't pay those bills. And so for a lot of members of Congress, they don't relate to the issue -- either because they have enormous wealth so they have unlimited caregivers, or they're men whose wives chose to stay at home and they had the resources to do that."
Still, some progress is happening. Gillibrand's Family Act, which proposes financing paid leave through a small payroll tax, isn't totally dead yet. California, New Jersey and Rhode Island now offer paid parental leave. Other states are considering it.
Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has affirmed her support for universal pre-K.
Businesses also are waking up to the idea that their workers have needs outside the office. Companies are increasingly offering more and better paid leave, on-site childcare and other support for employees. Still, those benefits are typically for higher-paid, white-collar workers.
Only 13 percent of employers in the U.S. offer paid leave to full-time workers, according to the most recent data from the Labor Department. Women in low-wage jobs, a fast-growing group, suffer disproportionately from a lack of support for paid leave.
And for them, the stakes are getting higher. "We are really reaching a breaking point," said Weisberg. "Stress levels are increasing, especially among working women." She pointed out that life expectancy for women has actually been falling in recent years, and she speculated that stress among lower-income women could play a role.
After decades of judging and shaming mothers for "abandoning" their kids while they went off to work to commit the horrible and selfish act of providing for their families, Americans are now overwhelmingly OK with working mothers, according to a paper published in the latest edition of Psychology of Women quarterly.
The study, from researchers at San Diego State University and the University of Georgia, looked at nationally representative survey data from the 1970s through 2013, and found big cultural shifts. In 1977, 68 percent of U.S. adults believed "a preschool child is likely to suffer if his or her mother works," compared to 42 percent in 1998 and 35 percent in 2012. (A recent study found that, actually, having a working mother can have a very positive impact on a child.)
Younger adults were even more supportive of working mothers. The new study found that just 22 percent of high school seniors surveyed from 2010 to 2013 said they believe a child suffers when his or her mother works.
So that's cool. But the thing is, public policy and most private employers haven't caught up to changing attitudes. The U.S. still remains the only democratic nation on the planet without any paid parental leave.
"The reality is, most women with young children are in the workplace," said Jean Twenge, the author of "Generation Me" and a psychology professor at San Diego State University who worked on the new research paper. "Yet among industrialized nations, we don't compare very well in terms of the support we give working families for daycare and preschool."
Nothing much has changed at the federal level since the U.S. passed a law requiring employers to offer 12 weeks of unpaid leave for caretakers in 1993. "I don't feel like we've made any progress [on family leave] since then," Anne Weisberg, a senior vice president at the nonprofit advocacy group the Families and Work Institute, told The Huffington Post.
A very young-looking Bill Clinton signs the Family and Medical Leave act in 1993.
One of the big objections to paid leave traditionally comes from businesses, which tend to argue that offering workers paid leave increases costs. But a mounting pile of evidence doesn't support that theory. Nearly 90 percent of California businesses reported no cost increases due to the state's now 10-year-old leave law, according to one survey. In fact, 43 percent of businesses in the state reported a cost savings, because they were able to hold on to more workers (decreasing training costs) and reduce spending on benefits.
Other companies, like Google, have also increased employee retention by increasing paid leave.
Oh, and paid leave saves the government money and disproportionately helps lower-income women. In New Jersey, women who took paid leave were around 40 percent less likely to receive public benefits like food stamps or welfare, according to a Rutgers study cited by Claire Cain Miller in The New York Times.
So what's taking policymakers and business leaders so long to catch up?
First, not all attitudes have shifted, said Weisberg. "We still have a lot of ambivalence about gender roles. Even though most people say they believe women should work outside the home, we know for a fact that there's a lot of maternal bias when it comes to hiring women, promoting women."
Despite what the new study found about shifting attitudes, a 2013 survey from Pew found a majority of Americans still believe it's better for children if the mother stays home. "They don't say the same thing if the dad stays home," Weisberg said.
She also noted that most Americans view having children as a "choice" -- not a societal good. That prevents us from supporting parents at the policy level. Yet if we don't, Weisberg said we could wind up like Japan, a country that offers little policy support for working mothers. Increasingly, young women there are choosing not to have children. The country's birth rate is currently below replacement levels, which could have devastating consequences for Japan's economy.
Of course, there's also the classic American aversion to taxes and spending money on social reform. And there's the issue of who's in charge of making change. Though women make up a huge part of the workforce, they're still largely missing from the corner office -- and from the political sphere.
"Very few members of Congress, I suspect, have dropped a child off at day care," Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said recently, speaking of paid family leave. "Very few members of Congress know exactly how much day care costs, because they didn't pay those bills. And so for a lot of members of Congress, they don't relate to the issue -- either because they have enormous wealth so they have unlimited caregivers, or they're men whose wives chose to stay at home and they had the resources to do that."
Still, some progress is happening. Gillibrand's Family Act, which proposes financing paid leave through a small payroll tax, isn't totally dead yet. California, New Jersey and Rhode Island now offer paid parental leave. Other states are considering it.
Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has affirmed her support for universal pre-K.
Businesses also are waking up to the idea that their workers have needs outside the office. Companies are increasingly offering more and better paid leave, on-site childcare and other support for employees. Still, those benefits are typically for higher-paid, white-collar workers.
Only 13 percent of employers in the U.S. offer paid leave to full-time workers, according to the most recent data from the Labor Department. Women in low-wage jobs, a fast-growing group, suffer disproportionately from a lack of support for paid leave.
And for them, the stakes are getting higher. "We are really reaching a breaking point," said Weisberg. "Stress levels are increasing, especially among working women." She pointed out that life expectancy for women has actually been falling in recent years, and she speculated that stress among lower-income women could play a role.
Greeks headed to the polls on Sunday to cast a "yes" or "no" vote in a crucial referendum over a bailout agreement with the country's international creditors.
Follow our live updates on the vote:
live blog
Oldest Newest Share + Today 1:58 AM EDTGreek Finance Minister Resigns
Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis announced his resignation on Monday. In a blog post, he wrote:
Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted ‘partners’, for my… ‘absence’ from its meetings; an idea that the Prime Minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement. For this reason I am leaving the Ministry of Finance today.
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + 07/05/2015 9:17 PM EDTFinal Results Are In
The "No" camp won Greece's referendum with 61.31 percent of the vote, the Associated Press reports. The "Yes" side got 38.69 percent.
More from the AP:
A total of 6.16 million Greeks voted in Sunday's referendum, or 62.5 percent of eligible voters. The poll needed a minimum 40 percent turnout to be valid.
The president of the eurozone finance ministers' group said on Sunday he regretted the outcome of Greece's referendum.
The Associated Press reports:
The president of the eurozone finance ministers' group, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, calls the outcome of Sunday's referendum "very regrettable for the future of Greece."
The Dutch finance minister has over the past five months of negotiations resisted Greece's attempts to get easier terms for its bailout program. He says that "for the recovery of the Greek economy, difficult measures and reforms are inevitable. We will now wait for the initiatives of the Greek authorities."
He says the 19 finance ministers will discuss the outcome of the Greek referendum on Tuesday, the same day a summit of the eurozone leaders will be held.
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + 07/05/2015 7:06 PM EDTHuffPost Splashes From Around The World
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + 07/05/2015 7:00 PM EDTNo-No Or No-Yes?
Greece's Editor-at-Large Pavlos Tsimas weighs in on the implications of today's result:
The people of Greece have shown their confidence in this government. The question now is how the government will interpret this and how it will use its victory.
Two different negations lie within the referendum's "no." A "no-no" (no to the proposed bailout deal and no to any deal that Europe might offer Greece today and consequently no to the euro). And a "no-yes" (no to an austerity deal, but yes to the euro, through a fairer deal). Everything points to the fact that this second interpretation of "no" has probably prevailed. Alexis Tsipras's first reaction in his festive speech seems to also adopt this very interpretation. It's a first sign.
People celebrate in front of the Greek parliament as the people of Greece reject the debt bailout by creditors on July 6, 2015 in Athens, Greece. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
A woman holds a placard as people celebrate in front of the parliament on July 5, 2015 in Athens (IAKOVOS HATZISTAVROU/AFP/Getty Images)
People celebrate in Athens on July 5, 2015. (LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/AFP/Getty Images)
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + 07/05/2015 6:14 PM EDTGreece Divided By Dilemma Once More
Ioannis Karamagalis argues in a piece for HuffPost Greece that Sunday's referendum have left Greek politics and society deeply divided.
The referendum, before being conducted, unfortunately released the darkest aspects and features of Greek political socialization. It reinstated divisive reasoning in the public sphere, and divided society into two camps with no diffusion and without any room for common ground.
Read the full blog here.
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + 07/05/2015 6:03 PM EDTLines At ATMs
Queues forming at cash machines here in Athens, fears banks could run dry by tomorrow #GrReferendum pic.twitter.com/CvobPlu2TB
Greek news outlet Times of Change reports that a skirmish between police and about 100 protesters broke out around 11.30 pm local time. According to the website, the protesters pelted police with rocks and Molotov cocktails.
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + 07/05/2015 5:55 PM EDTSchulz Calls For Humanitarian Aid
The head of the European Parliament said on Sunday night that European leaders should discuss a humanitarian aid program for Greece.
The Associated Press reports:
Schulz says in a statement that Athens should make "meaningful and constructive proposals" in the coming hours to get the talks with the other 18 eurozone nations going again. He says: "If not we are entering a very difficult and even dramatic time."
Schulz says ordinary citizens, pensioners, sick people or children in kindergarten should not pay a price for the dramatic situation the country is in, which he blamed the Greek government for. He says the country needs a humanitarian program immediately.
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + 07/05/2015 5:24 PM EDTEU Council President To Hold Referendum Tuesday
European Council President Jean-Claude Juncker has announced that he will hold a summit on Tuesday to address Greece.
BREAKING: Germany, France call for eurozone summit to discuss Greek financial crisis. (Corrects that Germany, France called for EU summit.)
— The Associated Press (@AP) July 5, 2015
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + 07/05/2015 5:15 PM EDTMemes Of The Referendum
Huffington Post Greece rounds up some of the best memes and cartoons from the Greek vote. Read it here (in Greek).
#Greece is Grease via @EuroStability pic.twitter.com/N2MHSV7YIY
— Velina Tchakarova (@vtchakarova) June 10, 2015
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + 07/05/2015 5:04 PM EDTGreek Prime Minister Calls 'No' Vote A 'Brave Choice'
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras took to Twitter to weigh in on the result of Sunday's referendum:
The Greek people made a historic and brave choice. Their response will alter the existing dialogue in Europe. #Greece #Greferendum
Greece's 'No' voters took to Twitter on Sunday to as the results indicate their side has won a decisive victory. Some are asking what the results would have been if fear-inducing elements of the crisis such as bank closures didn't exist:
"With the banks closed and the TV on, still people did not get scared...the 'no' of our lives," @AGiamali wrote.
Με κλειστές τις τράπεζες και ανοιχτά τα κανάλια και πάλι ο κόσμος δεν φοβήθηκε... Τα #OXI της ζωής μας... #Greferendum
— Αναστασία Γιάμαλη (@AGiamali) July 5, 2015
"If the banks WEREN'T closed, what percent would have voted no?" @blacktom1961 asked.
Αν οι τράπεζες ΔΕΝ ήταν κλειστές, τι ποσοστό θα έπαιρνε το #OXI;
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras addressed the nation on Sunday, as referendum results indicated that a "No" vote would win by a large margin. The vote is seen as a victory for Tsipras, who campaigned hard over the last week for citizens to reject the bailout proposal put forward by Greece's creditors.
Tsipras said that Greece will negotiate tomorrow with the goal of restoring the nation's banking system, reports Reuters. He also reaffirmed his stance that the referendum was not about exiting the eurozone but about rejecting the harsh terms of austerity.
"The mandate you have given me is not a mandate against Europe but a mandate to find a sustainable solution," Tsipras said.
BREAKING: Leaders of Germany, France call for an EU summit on Tuesday to discuss Greek financial crisis.
— The Associated Press (@AP) July 5, 2015
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + 07/05/2015 4:28 PM EDTECB May Be Willing To Keep Funding In Place
The European Central Bank may be willing to keep emergency funding for Greek banks in place, Reuters reports. If confirmed, the decision would give Greek financial institutions a crucial lifeline in the coming days.
European Central Bank policy setters are likely to maintain emergency funding for Greek banks at its current restricted level, people familiar with the matter said on Sunday, following Greece's rejection in a referendum of bailout conditions.
Such a move would give Greek banks little time before they use up all of the roughly 89 billion euros of funding available and ensure that they remain closed for at least the coming days.
But it would avoid the drastic option of withdrawing existing support, a measure that would trigger their immediate collapse.
Read more here.
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + 07/05/2015 4:23 PM EDTKrugman: A Victory For Europe
Economist Paul Krugman argues in the New York Times that Sunday's referendum does not only present a victory for Greek Prime Minister Tsipras, but for Europe as well.
I know that’s not how most people see it. But think of it this way: we have just witnessed Greece stand up to a truly vile campaign of bullying and intimidation, an attempt to scare the Greek public, not just into accepting creditor demands, but into getting rid of their government. It was a shameful moment in modern European history, and would have set a truly ugly precedent if it had succeeded.
The leader of Greece's main opposition party Antonis Samaras announced that he is stepping down, as results continue to pour in indicating a "No" victory in the country's referendum. Samaras was formerly prime minister of Greece until he was ousted by Alexis Tsipras in January's elections.
Despite the loss he remained as leader of the New Democracy party. New Democracy initially opposed the referendum, and campaigned for a "Yes" vote.
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + 07/05/2015 4:07 PM EDTA Breakdown Of How Greeks Voted
Here's a breakdown of how Greeks voted, by occupation and age, from Metron Analysis of behalf of the television station Ant1.
The self-employed and farmers tended to vote "yes," while the unemployed and students tended to vote "no." Interestingly, since the government fought so hard not to cut their income, pensioners were divided, as were housewives.
By Occupation:
Who voted yes: Self-employed 55% Farmers 41% Pensioners 60% Housewives 46% Unemployed 32% Students 25%
Who voted no: Unemployed 64% Students 75% Housewives 46% Pensioners 35%
By Age:
Who Voted Yes:
From 18 to 29 years: 26% From 30-44 years: 45% From 45-59 years: 39% From 60 years and older: 50%
Who Voted No:
From 18 to 29 years: 69% From 30-44 years: 54% From 45-59 years: 59% From 60 years and older: 37%
German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel told the Tagesspiegel daily that it was hard to imagine talks on a new bailout program with Greece after the country clearly rejected bailout terms in a referendum.
"With the rejection of the rules of the euro zone ... negotiations about a program worth billions are barely conceivable," said Gabriel, leader of the Social Democrats (SPD) who share power with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives.
"Tsipras and his government are leading the Greek people on a path of bitter abandonment and hopelessness," he said, adding Tsipras had "torn down the last bridges on which Greece and Europe could have moved towards a compromise".
Read the full story here.
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + 07/05/2015 3:51 PM EDTGreeks Can't Tap In Safe Deposit Boxes
Reuters reports:
Greeks cannot withdraw cash left in safe deposit boxes at Greek banks as long as capital restrictions remain in place, a deputy finance minister told Greek television on Sunday.
Greece's government shut banks and imposed capital controls a week ago to prevent the country's banks from collapsing under the weight of mass withdrawals.
Deputy Finance Minister Nadia Valavani told Alpha TV that, as part of those measures, the government and banks had agreed at the time that people would also not be allowed to withdraw cash from safe deposit boxes.
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + 07/05/2015 3:41 PM EDTGerman Vice Chancellor Says Greece Has Torn Down Last Bridge
BREAKING: German Vice Chancellor Gabriel - Tsipras has torn down last bridge of compromise. #GreeceReferendum #GreekCrisis
— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) July 5, 2015
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + 07/05/2015 3:38 PM EDTVaroufakis: 'No' Is A Yes To Democratic Europe
Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis spoke out in the wake of Sunday's vote:
BREAKING: Greek Finance Minister says today's 'No' is a big 'Yes' to democratic Europe. #GreeceReferendum
— Reuters Live (@ReutersLive) July 5, 2015
BREAKING: Greek Finance Minister says - As of tomorrow, with this brave 'No' vote, we will call on our partners to find common ground.
"I think there is not a Greek that is not proud. Because regardless of what they voted, Greeks showed that, above all, this country respects democracy. The government now has a strong mandate, a strong bargaining chip, to bring an agreement that will open up other roads, "Labor Minister P. Skourletis said as he entered the prime minister's mansion.
