Category Archives: China

Will China Stop Taper?

That is the question today. Let’s first ask markets.

China Credit Worries Rise as Large Shadow Banking Default Looms

China faces the first big test of its shadow banking system, in the form of a pending default. How is it likely to fare?

How Serious is China’s Shadow Banking/Wealth Management Products Problem?

George Soros has caused a bit of a frisson by calling China the greatest risk to the global economy. The Chinese shadow banks are the trouble spot to watch.

Ilargi: The Taper And The China Credit Power Struggle Squeeze

Yves here. We described the funding mismatch with Chinese wealth management products during the first liquidity crunch earlier in the year, but given that most readers aren’t familiar with these structures, it’s good to have another summary as to how they work and more discussion of why they pose a risk to the Chinese economy. They are troublingly similar to structured investment vehicles, which were one of the detonators of the credit crisis in the US and UK.

Steve Keen: The International Financial Architecture

In this video, Steve Keen reviews the history of Keynes’ proposed international currency, Bancor, and why it failed to come to fruition at Bretton Woods.

Michael Pettis: Forget the Plenum

ves here. Pettis highlights the difficulties of restructuring the Chinese economy to feature more small business lending and consumption and calls them “political.” I’m not sure I agree fully.

Randy Wray: What If China Dumps US Treasury Bonds? Paul Krugman Inches Toward MMT

Our deficit hysterians love to raise the specter of China.

Your Humble Blogger Discusses the Pending Trade Deals and JP Morgan on Le Show!

I really enjoy speaking with Harry Shearer, both for his engaging manner and his thorough preparation. I also hope you’ll see fit to circulate this interview, since the more attention we can bring to this plan to legalize corporate pillage, the better.

Wolf Richter: NSA Revelations Kill IBM Hardware Sales In China

Yves here. When Edward Snowden began revealing the true scope of the surveillance state and the degree to which major American tech and communications companies were partners, Ed Harrison almost immediately recognized how damaging the news was to the cloud computing model. Yours truly, among others, wondered how quickly some countries would try to regain control of their Internet architecture, at least to keep the NSA from snooping on strictly domestic communications. That trend would also favor non-US service and equipment providers. For instance, a book I’m reading now, Spies for Hire by Tim Shorrock, mentions in passing that the NSA wanted to restrict US companies developing stronger forms of encryption because if they got too good, the NSA would not be able to crack it either. The Americans were very unhappy, and argued that that restriction would enable Europeans and the Japanese to take the lead in that field. The solution? The NSA let our domestic players go ahead as long as they got secret decryption keys. Mind you, this tidbit was public knowledge before the Snowden exposes, but remember also that aside from websites that needed encryption to allow for Internet commerce, most people didn’t give encryption a passing thought. These sort of security/privacy issues have gone mainstream, to the detriment of some US players.

Will China’s Gambit to Undermine the Trans-Pacific Partnership Succeed?

While eyes in the US have remained focused on the budget cliffhanger in Washington, in Bali, two sets of meetings were taking place. The first was the latest set of Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations. The US, led by John Kerry (Obama was supposed to make an appearance but the budget drama kept him away) met with representatives of the 12 nations it is pressing to agree to this deliberately mis-branded “trade deal”. The reason the label is misleading is that trade is already substantially liberalized; the real point of the TPP and its cousin, the pending EU-US trade agreement, is to weaken the power of nations to regulate, which will allow multinationals to lead a race to the bottom on product and environmental safety.

China’s Ultimate Debt Holders—Not the Borrowers

In China, things are not looking pretty.

China’s Most Famous Ghost City Busts

The Chinese government, as has been widely reported, is trying to cool growth, in large measure to take the hot air out of its shadow banking sector. But can it engineer its hoped-for soft landing?

South Africans Plan to Protest Obama’s Crimes Against Africa During Presidential Visit

An Obama tour of Africa is likely to provide a marker of he is perceived in the rest of the world, although any negative reports are unlikely to get much play in our lapdog media. But since Obama was shunned in the recent G-8 conference, it’s going to be interesting to see how his African hosts muster up the appearance of enthusiasm during his visit.

Hong Kong to US on #Snowden: A4 Paper, Please. And Do Remember to Spellcheck!

By MsExpat, a journalist and essayist who lives in New York and Hong Kong, and Fellow of The Mighty Corrente Building. Originally published at Corrente.

Anyone who has ever had any dealings with Hong Kong’s scrupulous bureaucracy can’t help but chuckle at today’s South China Morning Post article detailing the problems that Hong Kong’s government had with the United States’ request to detain Edward Snowden. Since the SCMP is behind a paywall here are the juicy parts:

Lee Adler: The Big Four Central Banks Muddy The Same Sea Of Liquidity, And Then There’s China

The world’s major central banks are now working at cross purposes, creating massive crosscurrents that are making life extremely difficult for investors. This isn’t likely to end soon. In fact, conditions should get worse.