Category Archives: China

Chinese Banks: “These Things Aren’t Banks”

This is a terrific discussion of Chinese banking by two experts who do not mince words, Carl Walter of JP Morgan and Victor Shih of Northwestern University. Both have a great sense of history and go to some length to portray how economic and monetary arrangements for these “banks” differ from what most of us would assume. The discussion includes periodic crises and the creative means used to rescue banks, the unusually high level of financial assets for an emerging economy, the sustainability of growth, and the role of banks in the political system.

Irony Alert: If This is 72 Hours of Central Bankers Trying to Save the World, What Would Abject Capitulation Look Like? (Updated)

Reader Valissa pointed to an article at Bloomberg which looks like an effort at hagiography gone flat. Titled “Central Bankers Worldwide Race to Save Growth in 72 Hours of Policymaking,” it tries to perpetuate the myth of the overlords of the money system as all powerful, concerned with the public good, and competent. But as we know, they are increasingly politicized, hostage to ideology, unduly concerned with the pet wishes of banks, and tend to deny the existence of problems until they are acute.

Look at this impressive list of actions:

Victor Shih on the Risk of Capital Fleeing China

We’ve written about Victor Shih’s work on Chinese banks and wealthy households. He argues that the Chinese financial system and economy are at risk if enough capital moves overseas. While the release of this video is coming at a juncture when the US and Europe seem to be engaged in a beauty contest between Cinderella’s stepsisters, Chinese business have been making aggressive investments in other economies as well, such as agricultural land in Africa, so it’s worth remembering that advanced economies are far from the only targets for offshore funds.

This video gives a short, high level overview of his provocative thesis. Enjoy!

“Trade Imbalances Lead to Debt Imbalances” or Why Mercantilist Nations Shouldn’t Beef About Their “Profligate” Customers

Michael Pettis, a respected economist and commentator on China, provides an important contribution on the global imbalances theme. Many observers have pointed fingers at debtor nations like Greece, Portugal, Spain, and the US and argue that they need to start consuming less. While narrowly there is some merit to that argument, Pettis points out that the trade deficit countries (the debtors) are not the ones in the driver’s seat and it it the trade surplus countries that must take the lead in making adjustments.

Marshall Auerback: There is No Progressive Case for Deficit Cutting – The Myth of the “Virtuous” Clinton Surpluses

By Marshall Auerback, a portfolio strategist and hedge fund manager

For once, President Obama has sought to address his progressive critics, without caricaturing them as a bunch of out of touch, irresponsible radicals. At his press conference on Friday, the President made the following argument:

Satyajit Das: “Progress” of the European Debt Crisis

By Satyajit Das, the author of Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk (forthcoming August 2011) and Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives – Revised Edition (2006 and 2010)

In Oscar Wilde’s Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Bracknell memorably remarks that: “To lose one parent… may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” The Euro-zone’s need to rescue three of its members (Greece, Ireland and Portugal) with three others increasingly eyed with varying degrees of concern (Spain, Belgium and Italy) smacks of institutionalised incompetence.

Andrew Sheng Says Sustainability Means Caging Godzillas

Andrew Sheng, Chief Adviser to the China Banking Regulatory Commission, is wonderfully straightforward and realistic for an economist. He is willing to say, as he does in this video, things that are obvious yet somehow unacceptable to ‘fess up to in policy circles, like the planet simply cannot support 3 billion people in Asia living European lifestyles. He warns of the danger of creating the mother of all crises if governments cannot stem the tide of leveraged capital flows, and also discusses the role of China on the global stage.

Martin Wolf: Why China Could Fail Like Japan

The Financial Times’ economics editor Martin Wolf takes up the theme treated at some length by China-based economist MIchael Pettis: that Chinas’ economy has moved into unknown and dangerous terrain. No sizeable economy has had investment and exports combined constitute nearly 50% of GDP, and that model is not sustainable. As we have indicted, there is evidence that investment is becoming less and less productive. China is taking $7 of debt to generate $1 of GDP, when the US at the tail end of the bubble needed a mere $4 to $5 of debt for each incremental $1 of growth.

We’ve often recapped Pettis here and are glad to see Wolf take up his analysis.

Wolf does recite the optimist case on China, with the biggest factor being that China has a long way to go in improving the incomes of its citizens, and that alone can give it a very long lasting growth trajectory.

On the risks, Wolf sets aside commodities scarcity and environmental issues to focus solely on the economics case.

“Economics Upside Down” or Why “Free Markets” Don’t Exist

This is an instructive interview with Ha-Joon Chang, author of the new book “23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism.” He debunks some widely accepted beliefs, such at the existence of “free markets” or the necessity of “free trade” for the development of capitalism.

Enjoy!

Chinese Real Estate Bubble Finally Imploding?

The warnings of successful shorts like Jim Chanos, old Asia hands like Frank Verneroso, and economists like Victor Shih and Michael Pettis have failed to curb enthusiasm for the belief that the rise of China is inevitable and unstoppable. As someone who was deeply involved with Japan when it was seen as destined to replace the sclerotic US, I’ve learned to regard more or less straight line growth projections with considerable skepticism.

China has accomplished the impressive feat of bringing literally hundreds of millions out of poverty in a comparatively short time frame. It has also studied the Japanese playbook and managed to avoid some of its pitfalls (of course, it has the advantage of not being a military protectorate of the US), in particular refusing to liberalize its financial markets (some accounts of the Japanese bubble and burst give considerable weight to overly rapid deregulation and the growth of what was then called zaitech, or financial speculation). is also hostile to neoclassical economists.

China escaped much of the impact of the global financial crisis by ramping up investment even higher than its pre-crisis level. It now has investment approaching 50% of GDP, an unheard of level on a sustained basis. A big chunk of that is housing related (housing is an estimated 13.5% of GDP), and prices have long been considerably out of line with incomes, a telltale sign of a bubble. In Beijing, admittedly one of the hottest markets, an average priced new apartment was equal to 57 years of average worker savings (and if you tried to pay for it with a super-long dated mortgage, you’d be in hock even longer, since you would also need to cover the interest charges).

Another warning sign is inventory overhang; the Wall Street Journal reports tonight that Standard Chartered forecasts that level of unsold apartments in secondary cities will amounts to roughly 20 months of sales by year end (and that’s before considering that many of the apartments are being acquired as investments rather than for use).

The Journal story tonight provides evidence that the Chinese housing market is going into reverse

Will China’s bad debt problem affect employment?

The major talking point this morning has been the Chinese bad debt cleanup. Following Yves’ post on China, this post is the second of three on China from Credit Writedowns this morning. Read Michael Pettis’ take and my take on that action here. This post is going to be more about where China and the […]

China to Clean Up Toxic Local Government Debt?

This report by Reuters, suggesting that China was about to Do Something about its local government dud loans created a lot of chatter among investors:

China’s regulators plan to shift 2-3 trillion yuan ($308-463 billion) of debt off local governments, sources said, reducing the risk of a wave of defaults that would threaten the stability of the world’s second-biggest economy.

Row Over New IMF Chief Intensifies (Updated)

We wrote a couple of days ago about the young versus old economy struggle over who will be the next leader of the IMF in the wake of Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s resignation. Ever since its inception, the IMF had had a European in charge. Christine Lagarde, the finance minister of France, is the favorite, and the US and Europe have enough votes to determine the outcome.

Representatives of several emerging economies voiced their objections, pointing to a comment made by Jean-Claude Junker, president of the Euro group, in 2007: “The next managing director will certainly not be a European”.

The Financial Times reports that the unhappiness has gone beyond complaints in the media to an open rift.

Battle Over IMF Chief: Proxy War Over Power of Banks?

There’s a fight afoot over who will be the next head of the IMF. Yours truly is not making odds on this one, save that Christine Lagarde is getting far and away the most attention in the media and more generally, a big push is on to have a European take the reins. The logic is that with the eurozone mess far and away the biggest priority, the new IMF chief needs to have credibility with the major actors, and that argues for a European choice.

The contrary camp is the “the countries formerly known as emerging” who point out that it is their turn to have an IMF head from one of their countries. The IMF has been led by a European since its inception. Even though votes have been rejiggered to give younger economies more weight, the mature ones still are in control of the outcome.

But what is intriguing are the arguments that follow, which reveal what the real stakes are.

On Short-Termism and the Institutionalization of Rentier Capitalism

Andrew Haldane and Richard Davies of the Bank of England have released a very useful new paper on short-termism in the investment arena. They contend that this problem real and getting worse. This may at first blush seem to be mere official confirmation of most people’s gut instinct. However, the authors take the critical step of developing some estimates of the severity of the phenomenon, since past efforts to do so are surprisingly scarce.

A short-term perspective is tantamount to applying an overly high discount rate to an investment project or similarly, requiring an excessively rapid payback. In corporate capital budgeting settings, the distortions are pronounced: