This posting is from the January 30 issue of my newsletter, and so ignores recent events in Chongqing, but of course those events make my discussion of the political debate entry all the more relevant, I think. Before getting to the policy debate, I want to mention that in late January Caixin, one of my favorite magazines, had …
Read More…Category: Policy
The PBoC can’t easily raise interest rates
A lot of people have asked me to write about the recently “leaked” CBRC report on dodgy local government debt. Here is what the article in Monday’s Bloomberg had to say about it (and note especially that delicious second paragraph): Mainland banks may struggle to recoup about 23 per cent of the 7.7 trillion yuan …
Read More…Beijing’s stop-and-go measures
As I have said many times before, I suspect we will see a lot of discontinuity in policymaking this year – amid lots of panicking – and recent events show just how. In the past few months Beijing seems to have become so worried about signs of overheating that, after trying unsuccessfully many times to …
Read More…The myth of China’s blithe consensus
This will be an unusual entry in that rather than focus on economic analysis I want to address one of the too-widely-repeated myths common outside China which, I think, may distort some of our understanding of China’s growth trajectory. One of the more absurd claims often made by foreign observers with little knowledge of China …
Read More…Yet another discussion on the Asian savings glut hypothesis, and why it matters
The Shanghai stock market was up 4.5% in very nervous trading today but down 16.3% since its recent peak at 3478 on August 4, and still trading at more than 30 times earnings. All this turmoil is triggering all sorts of worried comments about the sustainability of the fiscal stimulus package and whether it has …
Read More…Trade – it’s not just the currency
One of the reasons why trade-related discussions can seem so off-the-mark, I think, is because the conditions governing international trade are much more complex than we often realize. The determinants of the international balance of trade basically include anything that affects domestic consumption and domestic production, which pretty much means nearly everything in economics. Among …
Read More…Trade, CPI and other numbers came in this week
Deflation and debt On Monday CPI and PPI numbers for February came out. CPI was down 1.6% year and year and PPI was down 4.5%, in line with or slightly below expectations and, according to Bloomberg, the highest rate of deflation among the 78 countries they follow. Some of this may be caused by one-off …
Read More…Yes, trade policies do matter
One of my blog readers, Kalasend, responded to Thursday’s entry by asking about the composition of US-Chinese trade, and I think the question is interesting enough to be discussed in a separate entry, rather than in the comments section. In his response he pointed out that “China’s exports are mostly light manufacturing goods like toys, …
Read More…The NPC meets, and Krugman refers to the savings glut
With the tense start of China’s parliamentary season this afternoon – and with the National People’s Congress meeting Thursday – there isn’t much incentive to try to figure anything new out in China since we are likely to be given a lot more information and proposals over the next few days. What are the major …
Read More…The US government frozen in the headlights
Often enough I find that when people want to “prove” to me that China will continue growing well this year they simply quote government statements saying that China will grow by at least 8% in 2009. There is a touching faith, especially sometimes in China, in the strong connection between expert projections and the final …
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