Tuesday, November 26, 2013

"China is based on lies and violence. So it will crash."

Responding to How Much of Chinese Banks' $24 Trillion in Loans Are Bad?, a correspondent writes,

Here's a hint of how it will end badly: In the Japanese bubble in the 80s, America was overcome with Japanophilia and business leaders and schools were talking about how to be more like Japan to benefit like they were. One major suggestion was the fusing of public and private interests in cooperative organizations (fascism).

Eventually, the bubble collapsed and people stopped worrying about how to emulate Japan.

The same thing has happened with China. It was all the rage in 2010/2011 when the bubble there was really gathering steam, for people high up in the US government and in major US educational institutions to marvel at the "Chinese Miracle" and they were all discussing how to emulate the Chinese Method. State Capitalism seemed so... successful... over there. And again, there was a clamoring for public-private partnerships.

We'll see what kind of mea culpas come out of this one.

Anyway, this is a classic Keynesian scenario-- China is so wealthy with empty lodgings the only real problem is how to distribute it equitably. Right?
Another correspondent writes,
"China is based on lies and violence. So it will crash. We should plan for that and exploit it in a way that does not count on its courts."

4 comments:

WSM said...

CP, I am a long-time reader of the blog, and was wondering if we could correspond via email regarding professional networking. If so, please email me at:
waltmiller3 [at] gmail [dot] com
Thanks.

Portlander said...

Interesting. The blog 28 Sherman yesterday wrote a post on China playing the "long game."

I wrote in comment (pending approval at the moment), that China is a huge paradox: massive stockpiles of foreign reserves, hard assets, and investments while at the same time massive corruption, bad loans, and a demographic time-bomb.

It almost seems like China is fully expecting, or perhaps more properly will be outright instigating, a world wide hyper-inflationary event. (Either that or they're like stupid, old generals preparing for fighting the last war.)

Gold manipulation and the price smack-downs this year have been pretty notable. I think the typical conspiracist perception is to want to blame the Fed or JPM or some such. What if it's China? If it were, and the Fed and US Govt knew, what could they do, or even say about it?

It's a pretty interesting scenario. Well, at least to me, but then I thought of it. ;)

CP said...

They have $3.7 trillion in reserves but maybe $10 trillion in bad loans in their banking system?

Anonymous said...

I think one difference between perception of Japan in the 80s and China today is that adoration of the latter's system is already accompanied by very strong suspicions about its truthfulness and efficacy. Much as sino-skeptics might like to view themselves as a lonely minority, they can find echoes of their views in the pages of the FT, NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and so forth. As I recall, this was somewhat less the case in the 80s. That's not to say things won't end badly--chaos is the great fear and justifier of repression in China, but chaos is exactly what they have with regional and even some national authorities complicit in the creation of an alternate economy--but just that that bad end might be less of a surprise to those both within China and without.