No wonder alarm bells were ringing in China’s central bank last week. The above chart (from China Daily) shows how total lending rebounded to $204bn in January, only 14% below the 2009 level. Total lending doubled during 2009 to $1.4bn, an astonishing amount for a country with total GDP of $4.3trn. Of course, this enabled […]
Chemicals and the Economy
China’s speculative surge nears the end
One can only feel sorry for China’s government leaders. A year ago, they faced 23m unemployed, as their export markets collapsed in the West. In order to avoid major social unrest, they opted to unleash what the Wall Street Journal called “one of the biggest credit expansions in history“. $1.4trn was lent during 2009, in […]
China’s empty city
The blog has come across an interesting example of the impact of China’s credit growth, courtesy of Merryn Somerset Webb in the Financial Times. She highlights a YouTube video (link above) which investigates the new city of Ordos. The old city has become known as “China’s Texas”, because of the recent wealth generated from the […]
China’s bank lending soars
If you want a loan, go to China. That’s the message from the chart, courtesy of Credit Suisse, which shows the staggering growth in bank lending since the start of the year. Now, even the People’s Bank of China is starting to get concerned. Lending so far this year has reached $1trn, equal to a […]
Lesson from Japan
Japan went through its “bubble years” in the 1980’s, with the Nikkei index peaking at 39000 (versus 8664 today). The blog well remembers standing in front of Tokyo’s Imperial Palace in Tokyo in 1988, when its land was said to be worth more than all of California. Since then, housing and stock market bubbles have […]
Wal-Mart sales ‘below expectations’
‘‘I despair at times at why the equity markets can’t see how serious the credit crunch is’, said one senior credit analyst at an investment bank. ‘They just trade off the day-to-day newsflow’. This interview from yesterday’s Financial Times reminds me of last July, when I noted how financial markets seemed to have become divorced […]
Interesting Quotes
Normally a 275 point fall on Wall Street, and a 600 point fall in Hong Kong, would make for some headlines. But this time, the media coverage has been very muted. Presumably everybody thinks it will be another ‘9 day wonder’, and believes with Chuck Prince of Citigroup that one simply has to keep ‘dancing’. […]
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