A bubble in China is NOT a bullish event for the world... The NEWS LAST WEEK
followed the sun. It began with doubts about Ireland's solvency...then moved to
fears that California would default...and ended on Friday with doubts about
China, writes Bill Bonner in his Daily Reckoning . Word on the street is that
the Middle Kingdom wants to dampen down inflation. They were going to raise
rates and tighten credit. The Chinese blame Ben Bernanke for increasing the
supply of Dollars and causing inflation in emerging markets and commodities.
Bernanke points his finger at the Chinese. Replying to charges of reckless
endangerment, "They made me do it," he says. The Chinese wouldn't raise the
Yuan...so he has to lower the Dollar. That's what's nice about paper currencies
– you can manipulate them. Which is exactly what the US is doing...trying to
manipulate its Dollar downward...while simultaneously charging China with being
a "currency manipulator". Which just goes to show how little honor there is
among central bankers. Maybe it was the China story. Maybe not. We decided to
get to the bottom of it. Friday, we had a Chinese businessman in our office. He
had come to see us about starting up a venture together in China.
"Nobody...nobody...knows for sure what it going on," said he. "On the one hand,
there are plenty of excesses and bad investments in China. There must be. We've
been growing so fast. And there must be a lot of bad debt hidden in the banking
system, for example. "But on the other hand, China is booming. There have never,
ever been so many people working so hard to make money. It's a bit like the US
probably was a hundred years ago. Only bigger. Faster. And with more government
involvement. "There might be plenty of problems...business
failures...bankruptcies...and financial blow-ups. But I doubt that the China
story will end any time soon." We don't think the story will end. We think it
will become more and more fascinating...and more exciting. You can't grow at
such a breakneck speed without breaking someone's neck. And any time the
government is heavily involved in planning an economy, you can be sure the plans
will be bad ones. They will control too much...and then they will lose control.
Our friend Dylan Grice, analyst at Société Générale, has more on this story:
"Is it possible they've...(sharp intake of breath) already lost control? And if
so, who's to say what will happen if the asset inflation goes into reverse?
Maybe when the authorities engineer the slowdown they desire and tell investors
it's safe to buy again, those investors won't want to buy. In which case a hard
landing shouldn't be beyond the realms of imagination. "Forget US de-leveraging,
this represents the largest deflationary risk to the world economy. "So long as
China's credit growth continues at its current pace, aided by the liquidity the
Fed is flooding world markets with, and encouraged by artificially low interest
rates, the primary risk that Emerging Markets face today remains that of a
bubble. "This might sound a very bullish note on which to end. It isn't. And let
me be crystal clear about why: a bubble is not a bullish scenario. It's not
bullish for the EM economies themselves, their citizens or for the world as a
whole. The fact is all bubbles end in tears." Tears. Did you hear that, dear
reader? Tears. Let's be sure they're not our own. Buying Gold today?
