The China Hustle Page #2

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or eight or ten reasons,

we think we're gonna grow

revenues 75 percent next year."

China has gone,

in the last few years,

from interesting to important.

And then it turns

into entertainment time.

Snoop Dogg, Billy Idol,

dancers,

ice sculptures,

Trojan theme night, buses,

trains, planes--

and then baijiu,

which looks like motor oil

in a can.

You drank and you drank.

You ganbei,

you cheers to somebody,

and then they have

to cheers to somebody else,

and it goes on and on and on.

The Chinese wanted to see

what kind of a person

you were,

and some of them felt like

the more drunk you got,

the more of your natural persona

would come out.

The master of ceremonies

at these conferences

was often the bank's

stage-diving chairman,

Byron Roth.

I wanna rock and roll

All night

Get him up!

And party every day,

I wanna rock and roll

You know, this is a guy

who started out

in the commodities business

when he was 16 years old.

His dad had a feedlot business,

and they'd bid on cows at

auctions and stuff like that.

I mean, this is not

an unsophisticated man.

We just do things that are--

that are different.

And that's kind of

the way we are

as an investment banking firm.

For Byron Roth

and Matt and Dan,

it was time to party.

Between 2006 and 2011,

Roth hosted over a dozen

conferences and raised

billions for Chinese companies.

Byron, get over here. I want a hug.

Whoo!

Narrator:

Roth wasn't the only bank

cashing in on the China boom.

In New York, a small operator

named Rodman & Renshaw

ran investment conferences

with a slightly different feel,

centered

on the political star power

of its chairman,

General Wesley Clark.

In the Balkans, he helped

negotiate a peace

between bitter enemies

and led a multinational force

that stopped

a campaign of terror.

Wes Clark's life is simply

an American story,

but he will make

an extraordinary American president.

First I want to ask you

to just tell us who you are,

and tell me a bit

about your background.

Yeah, I'm retired general

Wes Clark.

Graduated from West Point

in 1966.

Went to Oxford, went to Vietnam,

came home on a stretcher.

Signed as a NATO

Supreme Allied Commander.

I ran for president

in 2003, 2004.

Went into investment banking.

Rodman & Renshaw

had a troubled past.

After years

of management turmoil,

they declared bankruptcy

in the late '90s.

But with a luminary

like General Clark

as their public face,

they'd reemerged

as a respectable-looking bank,

hosting parties

and selling Chinese stock.

They would typically invite

presidents,

ex-presidents, Colin Powell,

Diana Ross, Henry Kissinger.

For an hour or two,

having Henry Kissinger

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