Asian Financial Crisis Part 2: China's Debt Bomb

Discussion in 'Economics' started by schizo, Jan 7, 2024.

  1. ironchef

    ironchef

    They are a net exporter nation.
     
    #21     Jan 9, 2024
  2. ironchef

    ironchef

    As a net exporter nation. Most of their debts are borrowed from within China.

    With a national saving rate of 40-45%, most of the local government financial vehicle debts are likely financed by the average Chinese citizens. Not difficult for CCP or local government to simply take it from their citizens to zero out their debt. It had happened once already, when the CCP first took over China: nationalized everything.

    That is why a recent surge of out migration and the rich taking their asset out of China.
     
    #22     Jan 9, 2024
    piezoe likes this.
  3. piezoe

    piezoe

    It's an exaggeration to say China is "imploding." China is experiencing a down turn in its real estate market because it is overbuilt. But its export markets remain strong, and its still healthy GDP growth plus its large holding of U.S. Debt relative to it's own dollar denominated debt is still at a healthy ratio. And there no significant problem relative to its RMB-denominated government debt of course, as this is not real debt... anymore than the U.S. government's dollar-denominated debt is real debt. China will do fine. It is going to suffer a recession in real estate/construction. This will undoubtedly spill over into other sectors, but it's nothing China can't handle as the debt associated with real estate development is largely debt held internally by Chinese Banks. Just as in the U.S., China has a mechanism for resolving insolvent banks without causing a financial calamity. To the extent that China's real external debt,i.e., it's non-RMB denominated debt, is due to investment that will produce positive returns, this is good debt.

    China is not "imploding", just experiencing a normal business cycle swing characteristic of economies driven by fractional reserve banking. But imploding?, No. Since China's economy has been going straight up for years, I suppose it is normal for people to think China's economy is totally failing when their stratospheric GDP growth rates begins to fall toward more sustainable levels. But it is wrong to think that the Chinese economy is going to collapse. It isn't. It will remain strong, but with a slower growth rate. For recent figures see: https://www.ceicdata.com/en/china/foreign-debt-quarterly/foreign-debt-us-dollar
     
    Last edited: Jan 9, 2024
    #23     Jan 9, 2024
  4. piezoe

    piezoe

    Would you say that of all the major nations in the world, at present the U.S. and Russian governments are in perhaps the most dire existential situations?: Russia for economic and political reasons, because of its invasion of Ukraine and the associated human and financial costs in combination with imposed sanctions; and the U.S. for political reasons, because its current government assumes and depends on a working two party system which it no longer has. Although the U.S. still has one intact political party, the essential second party has disintegrated into revolutionary chaos, rendering the government virtually non-functional. The U.S. is at a crossroads. It seems either the courts or the voters will step in, the leadership of the rebelling party will be arrested and imprisoned or cast out, and a stable functioning democratic republic will re-emerge, or else the nation will destroy or disband itself, as the Soviet Union did, and then re-emerge as a one-party, de facto autocracy which nevertheless sells itself domestically as a "democracy," just as Russia today does.

    The last U.S. existential crisis began with secession of Southern States and ended in civil war. The nation re-emerged from political chaos with the remnants of the previous democratic republic imposing its will on the conquered. It remains to be seen how the present day existential crisis will end.
     
    Last edited: Jan 9, 2024
    #24     Jan 9, 2024
  5. PPC

    PPC

    There have always been wars / conflicts ever since society existed, however now there is more and more irresponsible governments and dangerous dictators having access to nuclear bombs and that's a major worry.

    The following video by Ray Dalio is worth watching, he describes what is now happening with the 'world order' and how the US is losing its dominance and compares it to other countries throughout the history.

     
    #25     Jan 9, 2024
  6. Crack a history book sometime.

    Yeah that whole great leap forward was super "civilized". How many people died again?

    And if you think it didn't affect America maybe read a little about the Korean war.

    The worst that can happen is pretty damn bad. China has nuclear tipped ICBMs remember.

    Biden has screwed up every other conflict of his presidency, so we can expect him the handle a conflict with people who have oodles of blackmail material on him and his son even better.
    Picture operation eagle claw but with even more fuckups.

    He can't even handle pirates.

    The worst is unimaginably bad.
    Picture getting drafted and dying on a hill somewhere.

    So you think domestic production will remain the same in the face of declining real income and possible confiscation of existing wealth? And rising costs for raw materials?

    Maybe. Here's what my crystal ball says:

    Yes, China is a net exporter, but I'm not going to starve to death without the latest Lenovo tablet.

    Everyone sees there's risk here and they start to price transactions with China accordingly.

    Short term a crash in the value of their currency would probably help exports. But I would think of that more as a fire sale of existing inventory. They sell their inventory twice as fast, but they only get 80% of what they would previously received when measured in something like barrels of oil or bushels of wheat. For a month or two it looks good. The they realize they simply can't get more raw materials at anything close to their previous cost.
    Longer term, the more unstable things are, the less attractive it is to do business there.
    Let's say you put down $50 million on a new plant to manufacturer rubber baby buggy bumpers, now the construction company is bankrupt and your money is gone. Are you going to try again in China? Or are you going to pick another country with low labor cost that's less risky? Maybe where billionaires don't suddenly get disappearded.
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/jennif...iously-dropped-off-the-radar/?sh=6a1ff3602187
    Maybe you cut maintenance of existing plants and stop hiring.
     
    #26     Jan 10, 2024
  7. You need to get some perspective. The US hasn't even reached 1970s level of chaos yet, and basic disagreements about political goals are not a basis for arrest in a functioning democracy.

    Calling for the arrest of the opposing party is the thing that is destabilizing this country. "Why won't you people just shut up and get in the boxcars you damn insurrectionists! We says you guilty of crimes to be determined at a later date, therefore you don't get to participate in the election."
     
    #27     Jan 10, 2024
  8. For those not familiar with those days in America

    https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3637584/posts

    https://ammo.com/articles/days-of-rage-left-wing-bombings-terrorism-america-1970s

    The first link in freaking gold. It goes into detail and there a lot of this crap you couldn't make up if you tried. It's just too crazy.
    "In 1975, NWLF bombs went off in San Francisco once a week for nine months. They targeted local politicians, including Dianne Feinstein’s house. NWLF bombed a trial, country clubs, the opera. The bombings didn’t wholly stop until 1978. The reason NWLF bombings stopped: the guy who did most of them went insane and killed his girlfriend with an axe."

    "The FALN safehouse also yielded a copy of a business letter to one Maria Cueto, of the National Commission on Hispanic Affairs. The NCHA was a charitable organization affiliated with the Episcopal Church. When the FBI started looking into it, their hair stood on end. Basically, every. single. person of interest in the FBI’s FALN investigation was, or had been, on NCHA’s board of directors. Maria Cueto was FALN. She had used her position to put a half-dozen FALN members, including chief bombmaker Guillermo Morales, on the NCHA board. Let me emphasize how amazing this was: these were *paid positions.* Puerto Rican terrorists were being paid thousands of dollars by the Episcopal Church. Like cannibalizing and repurposing a nonprofit. It may be the greatest Institution in American radical history. FALN was literally using a charity run by the Episcopal Church as a front. Yeah. It gets crazier. You would think the Episcopal Church would be outraged. Horrified to be dragged into the legal proceedings. You’d be wrong. Liberal Episcopal bishops were enraged — with the FBI! Claimed govt was out to stop the church from funding progressive Hispanic groups! The institution the FALN had compromised went full-force to defend them and mobilized mainstream institutions on FALN’s behalf! Cueto and a colleague were hauled before a grand jury. The National Council of Churches (!!!) rallied behind them even as FALN went on a new bombing campaign specifically demanding the grand juries be halted."
     
    Last edited: Jan 10, 2024
    #28     Jan 10, 2024
  9. Another good section:
    "
    If you think a bunch of coked-up black radicals and feminist commies can’t come up with a plan to spring a handless Puerto Rican bomber all I can say is, you don’t know the Seventies, brother. Check this shit.

    [​IMG]

    By May 1979, Morales is as healed up as he’s gonna get. He’s down to one eye and one thumb. He’s in custody, under 24-hour guard. He has a window. But there’s a metal grate on it. And it opens onto a sheer forty-foot drop. He’s not going anywhere.

    Radical attorney Susan Tipograph, who insisted that attorney-client privilege exempted her from search, visited Morales on 18 May 1979. Mysteriously, after that, Morales had wire cutters. Tipograph was never charged.

    Laboriously, with basically no hands, Morales cut through the grate over his window. Punched out the screen. The Family had brought a ladder. But ladders look longer when you’re coked out of your gourd, or they just fucked up, because the ladder was only twenty feet long. The distance to the ground was forty feet.

    Morales had no rope. And no fingers. He had a ten-foot length of bandage. And brass balls. Somehow, this dude with no fingers lowers himself from the window on the bandage. It snaps. Morales falls 20 feet onto an air conditioner, then another 20 feet to the ground. Injured, but alive. The Family and FALN whisk him away.

    The guard on Morales’s door slept through the whole thing. Morales was not missed until an hour after dawn. Their bombmaker returned to them, FALN embarked on a new campaign of robberies, bombing, and interfering with elections.
    "
     
    #29     Jan 10, 2024
  10. I forgot how good this article was at explaining the radical terrorism of the 70's.
    One more snippet:
    "
    In 1972, a group called Venceremos, from the Bay Area, literally broke out a black convict named Ronald Beaty during a prison transport so he could train them in guerrilla tactics and lead a revolution.

    That was their actual plan. That was their entire actual plan.

    Exactly that one bit from South Park, but a bunch of ’70s white Bay Area radicals going, “Token, you’re black; you know guerrilla tactics.” (Spoiler: when Beaty got arrested again, he promptly rolled over on the white radicals.)

    But where there’s a demand, a supply will surface, and in 1973, a black inmate named Donald DeFreeze capitalized on the trend. To better explain Donald DeFreeze: imagine that Eldridge Cleaver & George Jackson are YouTube stars, ok? Well, DeFreeze is the comments.

    DeFreeze escaped prison and hooked up with a Berkeley, CA radical named Patricia “Mizmoon” Soltysik. DeFreeze and Mizmoon assembled a small cell of eight men and women. Say hello to the Symbionese Liberation Army. Slogan: “Death to the fascist insect that preys on the blood of the people!

    So their first target, of course, is Oakland’s first black school administrator, superintendent Marcus Foster!

    I know. You’re thinking, “Wait, what?”"
     
    #30     Jan 10, 2024