Trapped in carnival of horrors

Wu Xiaobo, a leading financial commentator

Looking back on the bull run, which peaked on June 12, three key points stand out. The first one revolves around regulatory oversight.

During the past year, the lack of market supervision has been obvious. There have been no effective investigations into market manipulators and speculators. Barely anyone has been punished.

The market has become an uncivilized place, where wealth accumulated by ordinary people has been plundered. The absence of regulatory supervision over leveraged trading has been the major reason for the short selling of stocks, which spiraled out of control.

It is clear now that the financial regulatory authorities－which include the People's Bank of China, the China Securities Regulatory Commission, the China Banking Regulatory Commission and the China Insurance Regulatory Commission－have yet to get to grips with an ever changing capital market.

The second point I would like to make concerns the media. News and analysis from the mainstream financial media should act as a "supervisory force"－it should be balanced and well-informed.

It is the duty of the media pack to raise the alarm if there is a financial issue that needs to be brought out into the open. That did not happen. In the end, the law of the jungle prevailed, and it was the small investors who finally paid the price.

Of course, they did not exactly help their cause, and that brings me to my third point. As the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index surged to more than 5,100 points from 2,000 just a year earlier, the general public appeared to disregard logic.

Rational thought was ridiculed, and even sober-minded institutional investors declared, "there is no need to use your brain" when making investment decisions.

As the proverb goes: "God will first make you crazy if he wants you to perish." And that was exactly what happened as small investors poured into the markets and joined the stampede of the bull run.

So, it is absurd to try to attribute the crisis to foreign forces. It is also naive to think that the government should not intervene and let the market run its course.

In the end, all investors, young or old, who participated in this carnival, have to be held accountable for their recklessness.