The China Hustle Movie Script

I... The stock was always going to plummet.

Are you bullish on China at all or is it just... What is capitalism?

Is it an economic system?

Or is it an apparatus that we can use to make more money for ourselves and take more money from others?

At its heart, it rewards those who work hard, but it also rewards those who are willing to take advantage of others.

When we describe a fraud like this one, we use terms like "white-collar crime" to distinguish it.

But really, it's just theft, in its way, as violent as being mugged in the street.

It can be traumatic to chart the trail of personal loss.

How much was stolen from each pension fund, each retirement fund, each of us.

The real story is the aggregate value.

It's the investors who, by the end, were mostly retail investors.

These were mostly just people playing the American stock market, who looked at the financials and believed them.

That money is money that belonged to individual mom-and-pop investors who thought, "Hey, I want to be a part of the China growth story." And they were also shares that belonged to mutual funds, like Vanguard, that manage money for, for example, The New York Times, right?

The employees.

My pension fund money.

We sold ourselves on a myth of China as a really compelling market.

A nation that wanted the leveling effects of free trade.

You should have known better.

Well, what I would pay, if I have my money in Fidelity, isn't that... why do I pay these guys?

I don't know. I don't pay 'em.

I don't give 'em any of my money.

It's like a game of musical chairs, when the music stops, if you're left holding the paper, if you're left holding the shares, you are the victim.

Okay, um, my name is David Yee, and I live in Atlanta, Georgia.

My name is Ray Snader.

I'm a print and broadcast journalist in Newport, Tennessee.