Is China's Super-Bus a Scam?

It looked like the future: a wide, elevated Chinese bus that would speed atop tracks straddling the road while multiple lanes of traffic flowed below. And the future looked surprisingly near. In early August, a prototype of the Transit Elevated Bus -- or TEB -- was tested in northern China.

Just as international excitement began to build, however, the TEB story went off the rails. According to China's state media organs, previously big boosters of the project, the TEB was little more than a publicity stunt -- one of the dozens of peer-to-peer lending scams that have duped retail Chinese investors in recent years by promising unreal annual returns.