Superb analysis out of SocGen analysts this morning. Dylan Grice says the Chinese economy has many similarities to the Japanese economy before it imploded in the 90’s. He cites 8 reasons why the Chinese economy is likely to be an even larger implosion than the Japanese economy:
Studying the lessons from Japan’s lost decade(s) is key for anyone seeking to understand today’s post-bubble world. But a closer reading of Japan’s financial history illuminates today’s China far more. In the early 1980s, on the eve of its financial liberalisation, Japan was the rising power from the East set to overtake the West. Younger and growing rapidly, it was still a decade away from its climactic and catastrophic bubble peak. This is where China is now.
Japan’s deflationary experience since its bubble burst haunts policy makers and investors, who are confronted with a bewildering range of theories explaining what has gone wrong and how a similar scenario can or can’t be avoided.
But the real cause of Japan’s deflation is probably more demographic than debt-related. If so, maybe we should be more worried about the side-effects of an ongoing stimulus overdose aimed at reviving the dead, rather than fighting a more ordinary bout of flu.
Japan has been the first industrial economy to begin demographic contraction. Indeed, thanks to Deng Xiaoping’s 1979 one child policy, China will soon face the same problem.
But it is unlikely China will suffer the same immediate fate. In fact, further reflection on the similarities between China and Japan leads one to realise that many of the challenges confronting China today have already been faced by Japan, demography being only one.
From the strained currency diplomacy to the accusation of favouring exports over domestic demand, from the Western marvelling at Confucian capitalism to the sense of inevitability about the rising of a great power in the East ? all were as true for Japan 30 years ago as they are of China today.
And Japan 30 or so years ago might be a more fruitful analogy altogether. There is a clear historic coincidence of manias and geopolitical shifts. In the 1980s, Japan’s developing financial bubble reflected a shifting of the balance of power in its direction.
But the geopolitical shift towards China now underway dwarfs that seen in Japan in the 1980s, and probably anything yet seen in the history of the modern…
As goes the US consumer so goes Chinese manufacturing. Here is a long but educational video produced by Vanguard on several Chinese manufacturing cities and what the economic downturn has meant for them. It’s well worth a play.
Yet the myth of Chinese decoupling still persists.
Some day China will be far less dependent on the US but that day is not in the immediate foreseeable future. The videos are proof enough. Moreover, a strong case can be made that Obama Risks Global Trade War With Misguided Tariffs.
For now, stock are rising along with the biggest global reflation in the history of the world, by central bankers in nearly every country in the world, including China.
However, such stimulus is not infinite and is not without cost. Nor can temporary increases in demand caused by massive give-away programs be cause for permanent celebration. At best, stimulus programs shift demand forward stretching out the recovery period.
At worst, such programs add to malinvestments in housing, commercial real estate, and other areas. Government programs seldom, if ever, allocate resources effectively. The wildly popular cash-for-clunkers program actually destroyed productive assets, a repeat on a small scale of misguided efforts by FDR in the great depression to drive up prices of goods.
Yet for all these efforts unemployment is still rising, and even Fed officials admit the outlook for employment and consumer spending is far from rosy. Please see The Problem with Janet Yellen’s Recovery Outlook for details.
Stephen Roach doesn’t mince words. He calls monetary policy during the bubble years “reckless and irresponsible” and he thinks politics is thwarting any meaningful regulatory reform, a view I also hold. I think the point of Roach’s attack is that a lot of finger-pointing has been directed at Wall Street and even Main Street. But, policy makers share much of the blame. This is a point I tried to make in a post “Forget about Goldman” from this past summer.
Moreover, as Roach indicates, the concept that a central planner (which a central bank most certainly is) can allow bubbles to form and then clean up after the mess- is on it’s face absurd. But, clearly the Federal Reserve and other central banks are doing their level best to re-create the conditions which led to a near-financial collapse.
The money quote comes just about 4:45 through the eleven minute clip below:
Central bankers say trust us. We know what we’re doing. I don’t trust them one bit. They got us into this mess in the first place.
As for Asia, Roach sees a bright future. However, he warns that it has risen on the back of an unsustainable export-led macro-policy by selling things to people in the West who can’t afford them. With continued private-sector deleveraging in the west likely, this dynamic has ended.
(video embedded below)
As an aside, Roach also correctly adds that the recent protectionist tariff administered by President Obama was not the result of tire manufacturers’ lobbying. Four of five of the Chinese importers are subsidiaries of U.S. firms. Obama did this to gain credibility and support from unions, a key Democratic constituency in the health care debate and in the run-up to the mid-term elections.
I should also point out that much of the U.S. trade deficit comes from such arrangements, where a U.S. company imports goods from its own foreign subsidiary.
Everyone knows that the American government is gaming the market for treasury bonds to some extent.
For example, the government has itself bought some U.S. Treasuries.
Some writers, such as Rob Kirby and Ellen Brown, go much further, alleging that Bernanke and the boys have also used hedge funds in the Cayman Islands to secretly buy huge sums of U.S. treasuries using dollars printed by the Federal Reserve, while pretending that independent "Caribbean banks" are doing the buying. See this, this and this. I have no idea whether or not they are right.
Perhaps most dramatically, Keith Fitz-Gerald (Contributing Editor to Money Morning, Investment Director of the Money Map Report and editor of the New China Trader) - who has seemed like a very level-headed guy in the past - is now claiming that the U.S. government has recently changed the rules so that the Fed can itself buy U.S. treasuries but claim that the buyers are foreign:
The U.S. Government wants the public to believe that China, Japan and Europe are still happily buying U.S. debt to fund the American economic turnaround. The only problem is - they’re not…
The reality is that the Treasury changed the way U.S. debt is accounted for when purchased on the open market. U.S. debt selling on the open market can be considered as having been sold to "foreigners" even if the purchaser was the Federal Reserve! Voila! A sleight of hand by the U.S. Government, and China and Japan can appear to be buying debt while at the same time selling debt.
If Fitz-Gerald is right, then the story that China was a net sellerof U.S. Treasury bonds for the first time ever in June takes on added significance. And the claim that China’s bond purchases have increased recently loses credibility.
It is obviously important to quickly either debunk or verify Fitz-Gerald’s claim. Can anyone at Treasury or one of the relevant market makers tell us one way or the other?
Juts what the doctor ordered…… As i´ve feared last week the "conditions" for world trade are not getting better…… Lets all hope that the tensions don´t escalate……. Just inChina to request WTO consultations with US over tyre dispute - Commerce Ministry China says: - US tyre decision violates WTO rules. - Wants dialogue with US on tyre tariffs. Source: RTRS
The downward spiral in global trade volumes has abated, and the most recent month for which we have data (June) shows a modest uptick. Nonetheless, the collapse of global trade, even now, remains dramatic by the standards of the Great Depression.
Sept. 14 (Bloomberg) — China announced dumping and subsidy probes of chicken and auto products from the U.S., two days after President Barack Obama imposed tariffs on tires from the Asian nation.
Chinese industries complain that they’re being hurt by “unfair trade practices,” the nation’s Ministry of Commerce said on its Web site yesterday. The dumping investigation relates to poultry alone, a spokesman said in Beijing today. The ministry didn’t specify the value of imports of the products.
Rising protectionism may hamper world trade and undermine the global economy’s recovery from recession, the European Central Bank ( see end of the post for details )said last week.
The U.S. placed tariffs starting at 35 percent on $1.8 billion of tire imports from China, backing a United Steelworkers union complaint against the second-largest U.S. trading partner.
China Reacts Quickly and Badly to Tire Tariffs Naked Capitalism
It would be better if we were not proven correct on this one, but when the US imposed stiff tariffs on imported tires from China late on Friday, we noted, “This could get interesting in a bad way.” The Chinese responded quickly over the weekend to announce they were investigating US auto parts and chicken, which together account for roughly as much as the disputed tires ($1.2 billion versus $1.3 billion for tires).
But protectionism is driven by the desire to protect jobs. Unemployment has not peaked in the US, and some analysts suggest that China’s job losses are far worse than the 20 million often bandied about, more on the order of 30 to 50 million. So political pressure is set to intensify.
The New York Times treats the Chinese reaction as a surprise. But the tire…
A lot of people, via emails, letters and phone calls, have been asking me how I can be so pessimist about consumption growth in China given the spectacular consumption growth figures coming out of China – 15.4% year to date. An editor who asked me for a piece, after reading it also wondered if my view – that China’s GDP growth would be constrained by its consumption growth – was such a worrying thing given China’s 15% growth rate of consumption.
The problem is that these are not consumption growth figures. They are retail sales figures. Fair enough, you might think, but the retail sales growth rate should still be a reasonable proxy for consumption growth. It isn’t. Among lots of other noise retail sales figures include government purchases and shipments to retailers even before these shipments are sold to consumers. That makes it a very bad proxy for consumption.
Take a look why. I took the following chart from the September 14 issue of Jim Walker’s excellent Asianomics report. This shows retail sales for the past decade. As you can see, first of all, for all the excitement there has not been much of a surge in retail sales. Secondly, retail sales have been supposedly growing between 13% and 24% for the past six years, which even on an inflation-adjusted basis (I assume it is inflation that explains the late 2007 and early 2008 surge) significantly exceeds GDP growth. But if retail sales were really a decent proxy for consumption growth, it would be hard to tell from this graph that consumption has plunged as a share of GDP.
But it has. Consumption has been growing over the past several years by about 8-9% a year, while GDP has been hurtling forward by 10-12% a year and, not surprisingly, this implies arithmetically that consumption is declining as a share of GDP.
This is supposed to be a short entry, but before closing I should discuss the recent 35% tariffs on Chinese tires imposed by the Obama administration, especially since that seems to have been one of the hottest topics of conversation today. For nearly two years I have been arguing that the global crisis is…
That’s a question that Westerners have been asking for, oh, several millennia now. Or at least since Marco Polo aimed his ponies down the old Silk Road in 1271.
Now as then, China keeps its own counsel. We know what they want us to know, plus what we can surmise from rumor and reading between the lines. But lately, we’ve been able to add presumption to news and come up with something that looks very significant.
Specifically, there’s been a flood of tantalizing stories out of the East that, taken together, strongly suggest a growing preoccupation with a form of money that was ancient even in Signor Polo’s time. And it ain’t silk. It’s gold.
We already learned, back in April, that China has been salting away bullion for the previous six years, out of sight of international gold watchers. To the tune of 14.6 million ounces. Now the evidence suggests that that was merely the prologue.
Let’s take these tidbits one at a time:
Sovereign wealth fund dumping $$ for gold? This one is still at the rumor stage, but highly-respected website Mineweb.com is supporting it (http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page67?oid=88400&sn=Detail). What we know for sure is that the country founded its primary sovereign wealth fund, China Investment Corporation (CIC), two years ago, with the stated aim of rapidly deploying some of its $1.5 trillion forex surpluses – $200 billion initially, with another $100 billion recently added to the kitty – into investment in non-Chinese enterprises. This it has been doing in spades, acquiring businesses around the globe. Extractive industries are among them, including Teck Corp., the diversified Canadian mining giant.
Might it also be buying up gold? We don’t know that for sure, but it seems likely. And, in addition, rumors sneaking off the mainland indicate that within the CIC, a lot of effort is being poured into prospective investment deals in the oil and precious metals sectors. The more it produces, the more it can keep.
The Chinese have made no secret of their disdain for current American economic policy and what they see as the inevitable destruction of the dollar. That they would be moving to diversify out of the greenback shocks precisely no one, and gold is one logical landing place for all those bucks. We suspect that’s exactly what is happening, behind the scenes as well as center stage.
On Wednesday, in a dispute over the price of steel pipe, the US Fires Opening Salvo In Trade Wars With China. Late Friday evening, trade wars heated up again as Obama Fired the US’ Second Shot In Trade War With China.
U.S. President Barack Obama slapped steep additional duties on tire imports from China on Friday in a move that pleased domestic labor groups but drew a strong rebuke from Beijing.
The United Steelworkers union, which represents workers at many U.S. tire production plants, filed a petition earlier this year asking for the protection. It said a tripling of tire imports from China to about 46 million in 2008 from about 15 million in 2004 had cost more than 5,000 U.S. tire worker jobs.
An additional 35 percent duty will be placed for a year on Chinese-made passenger vehicle and light truck tires, the White House said in a statement.
"For far too long, workers across this country have been victimized by bad trade policies and government inaction. Today, President Obama made clear that he will enforce America’s trade laws and stand with American workers," United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard said.
The ITC had recommended starting with a 55 percent tariff that would fall to 45 percent in year two and 35 percent in year three. The steelworkers asked initially for a quota of 21 million that would grow by 5 percent each year.
Analysts expect Friday’s action to encourage other labor groups or domestic manufacturers to seek relief under Section 421, which does not require petitioners to prove unfair trade practices are responsible for a surge in imports.
No American tire manufacturer supported the case and one, Cooper Tire, publicly opposed it.
"We are certainly disheartened that the president bowed to the union and disregarded the interests of thousands of other American workers and consumers," said Marguerite Trossevin, counsel to the American Coalition for Free Trade in Tires.
Obama is slapping tariffs on Chinese tires. The Chinese are furious.
Is this finally the beginning of a trade war?
In today’s globalized economy, protectionism is generally a terrible idea. It hinders trade and is full of unintended consequences. Politically, however, it’s wildly popular, so politicians can’t resist it.
Hopefully this is just a shot across China’s bow and not the beginning of a war. If it’s the latter, get ready more hard times ahead.
Jonathan Weisman, WSJ: The Obama administration will put steep import duties on Chinese passenger and light truck tires, responding to what the U.S. International Trade Commission determined to be a surge of Chinese tire exports that has rocked the domestic U.S. tire industry and displaced thousands of jobs, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk announced Friday night.
China’s government responded quickly to the announcement, saying in a statement that it "strongly opposes" what it called "a serious act of trade protectionism." China "reserves the right to make further response," the Ministry of Commerce statement said.
The U.S. announcement of 35% import tariffs, which would decline to 30% in the second year and 25% in the third, comes at a sensitive time. The heads of state of the 20 largest economies arrive in Pittsburgh in less than two weeks for a summit of the Group of 20, amid rising trade tensions and looming economic disputes. The United States needs China to help float a U.S. deficit expected to reach $1.56 trillion this year. President Barack Obama is also likely to seek new sanctions against Iran to combat its nuclear program, and China’s vote on the United Nations Security Council is pivotal.
This represents my personal opinion, not the views of the SEC or its staff.
I am not going to spend time here talking about how the price of gold is off-the-wall, that it is not just a bubble in the making, but a bubble waiting to burst. I don’t want to waste your time on that point.We all know it is a bubble.
George Soros has said “The ultimate asset bubble is gold”. Many of the top asset managers, such as Tudor and Paulson, are piling on; Paul Tudor Jones recently said gold “has its time and place, and now is that time.” The banks are echoing this view with their research. Goldman has a research piece that looks f...
We know you are busy, we also know you are hell bent on intercepting IOI manipulation as per Mr. Jon Kroeper's recent media appearances. Which is why we kindly request that you get back to us at your earliest convenience with information on how many of the IOIs disclosed below are, in fact, "natural." We will make this a recurring topic on Zero Hedge until such time as you respond to our information request. You can contact us at outsourcefinra@zerohedge.com
Small Caps and Tech continued their good form. Technicals continue to support the move higher for Small Caps (Russell 2000) with new highs for the MACD and +DI line. The Russell 2000 would have to give up 25 points (or 4%) just to test breakout support at 650.
The prior underperformance of the semiconductors was undone with today's 2% gain.
As I always do before options expiration I reviewed our Buy List, which, this quarter, is a list of 37 stocks we've been playing since late December and, sadly, after reviewing 37 of our favorite investments very carefully this week - I could only conclude that cashing them out was the only decision I could be comfortable with this week. Of 66 trades we had on our 37 stocks, 64 are winners with an average return since 2/8 of 28% - since most of the trades were designed to make 40% for the year - it just seems silly not to take the money and run now, on March 19th.
You are not supposed to have 64 out of 66 winners in 6 weeks, you are not supposed to make 3/4 of what you anticipate for the year in 6 weeks - that is NOT how the markets are supposed to work! When the ma...
Tuesday was good and bad for the Oxen Report. Our short sale of the day worked very well for us. I chose Ultrashort Proshares Oil and Gas for our short sale of the day due to my expectation...
BPOP - The ‘popular’ bank popped up on our screens this afternoon after a large-volume risk reversal was established on the stock. The massive trade was likely the work of an investor with knowledge of commercial banks as approximately 60,000 contracts were exchanged on BPOP amid a more than 12% rally in shares of the underlying to $2.60. It appears the trader purchased 30,000 now in-the-money October 2.5 strike calls for an average premium of 33 cents apiece. He funded the purchase of the calls by selling 30,000 puts at the January 2.5 strike for 43 cents each. The investor received a net credit on the transaction of 10 pennies per contract. The motivation is perhaps that this individual is swimming with the rising tide of financial names today and expects a far larger...
Let's take a look at Insider Buying and Selling over the last week or so. These are screen shots from Finviz - the significant buys against a green background first and significant sells against the pink background second. All the buys fit into my screen shot but the sells did not. Click here to see all the sells.
Note that the largest buy in the group, for KITD was at a price of 9.73 (KITD is currently at 11.54). The buy was part of an Equity Offering rather than an open market purchase. Tuzman Kaleil Isaza's (KITD's Chairman and Chief Exec. Officer) history of buys is http://www.insidercow.com/more from Insider
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Superb analysis out of SocGen analysts this morning. Dylan Grice says the Chinese economy has many similarities to the Japanese economy before it imploded in the 90’s. He cites 8 reasons why the Chinese economy is likely to be an even larger implosion than the Japanese economy:
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For example, the government has itself bought some U.S. Treasuries.
Juts what the doctor ordered…… As i´ve feared 
China Reacts Quickly and Badly to Tire Tariffs
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
(