SocGen’s Dylan Grice: China Is A Decade Away From Japan Style Doom
by ilene - September 14th, 2010 2:32 pm
SocGen’s Dylan Grice: China Is A Decade Away From Japan Style Doom
Courtesy of Gregory White at Business Insider
Dylan Grice of Societe Generale has released another of his scathing reports, this time targeting the rise of China and why it might soon become the new Japan, only much, much worse.China is currently experiencing a tremendous amount of cash inflows, as it has been labeled the best of the emerging markets kings, the BRICs. But all that money could be funding a massive bubble.
But the bubble story, which is well heard of, is only part of the comparison. Grice notes that China also has a similar population problem, brought on by the one-child policy, that will eventually lead to a demographic crisis similar to Japan’s.
First, on Japan’s lost decade, from Grice (emphasis his):
Something else happened in Japan in the early 1990s which receives less attention but provides a simpler explanation for its post-bubble experience: demand is deflating because the workforce is shrinking (see the first chart on page 3). The table below shows that while Japanese real GDP growth has indeed significantly lagged behind that of the US over the past 20 years, per worker GDP has broadly kept pace, even outpacing it over the last five.
Grice then notes the five things the two economies, Japan pre-bubble and China, have in common:
- Absence of democracy
- State-directed capitalism
- Currency manipulation and reserve accumulation
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DiggMarket Still Deluding Itself That It Can Escape The Inevitable Dénouement
by ilene - September 13th, 2010 9:09 pm
Market Still Deluding Itself That It Can Escape The Inevitable Dénouement
Courtesy of John Mauldin, Outside the Box
One of my favorite analysts is Albert Edwards of Societe Generale in London. Acerbic, witty and brilliant. Emphasis on brilliant. The fact that he is a Doppelganger for James Montier (who long time readers are well acquainted with) is a coincidence (or he would say vice versa). I only kind of have permission to forward this note to you, but better to ask forgiveness… So, this week he is our Outside the Box. And a short but good one he is.
I am in Amsterdam and it is late, but deadlines have no time line. Tomorrow more work on the book. It is getting close to the end. Most books are finished when the authors quit in disgust. How many edits can you do? I am close.
I wonder late at night, with maybe a few too many glasses of wine, why I feel like a book is so much more than an e-letter. Really? The last ten years of what I have written are on the archives. Good (ok, sometimes really good) is there. But some are an embarrassment. What was I thinking?
But somehow in my Old World brain, a book is more than a weekly letter. It is somehow more permanent than an “online” letter. Which may be archived forever. The book is “paper” and may be around for a few years. But the online version is here for a long time.
I know that is stupid. Really I do. But what is a 61 year old mind to do? A strange world we live in.
It is really time to hit the send button. More than you know! The conversation tonight has been too deep!
Your trying to figure out the purpose of life analyst,
John Mauldin
Market still deluding itself that it can escape the inevitable dénouement
By Albert Edwards
The current situation reminds me of mid 2007. Investors then were content to stick their heads into very deep sand and ignore the fact that The Great Unwind had clearly begun. But in August and September 2007, even though the wheels were clearly falling off the global economy, the S&P still managed to rally 15%! The recent reaction to data suggests the market is in a similar…
Tim Backshall On Europe: “Default Now Or Default Later” As EuroStat Complains That Greece Is Still Withholding Critical Data
by ilene - September 8th, 2010 5:57 am
Tim Backshall On Europe: "Default Now Or Default Later" As EuroStat Complains That Greece Is Still Withholding Critical Data
Courtesy of Tyler Durden
There is one major problem with putting houses of card back together – they tend to fall…over and over. And while abundant liquidity in May and June served as an artificial prop to return European core and PIIGS spreads to previous levels merely as mean reversion algos took holds, the second time around won’t be as lucky. CDR’s Tim Backshall was on the Strategy Session today, discussing the key trends in sovereign products over the past few months, noting the declining liquidity in both sovereign cash and derivative exposure (we will refresh on the DTCC sovereign data later after its weekly Tuesday update). Yet the most interesting observation by Backshall is the declining halflife of risk-on episodes, which much like the SNB’s (now declining) interventions, are having less of an impact on the market, as ever worsening fundamentals can only be swept under the carpet for so long before they really start stinking up the place, and indeed, as Tim points out at 5:30 into the interview, even the IMF now realizes that soon the eventual second domino will fall, and it is better the be prepared (via the previously discussed infinitely expanded credit line), than to have to scramble in the last minute as was necessary in May. In other words, the storm clouds are gathering and only fools will invest in risk asset without getting some additional clarity on what is happening in Europe. The bottom line as Backshall asks is: "do they default now or default later." And that pretty much sums it up. Buy stocks at your own peril.
Incidentally all this is happening as we read in an exclusive Bloomberg piece that "four months after the 110 billion- euro ($140 billion) bailout for Greece, the nation still hasn’t disclosed the full details of secret financial transactions it used to conceal debt" and that EuroStat still has not received the required disclosure about just how fake (or real) the Greek debt situation truly is. When one steps back and ponders just how bad (and unknown) the situation in Europe is, and that stocks are unchanged for the year, one must conclude, as Dylan Grice does every week, that the lunatics have truly taken over the asylum.
Disaster, By the Numbers
by ilene - June 25th, 2010 2:29 am
Disaster, By the Numbers
Courtesy of Michael Panzner at Financial Armageddon
I’ve leveled many criticisms at the so-called experts in the financial community. Apart from being blatantly conflicted, many wouldn’t know how to analyze their way out of a paper bag even if their lives depended on it. Generally speaking, they are good communicators but lousy thinkers.
But as with most generalizations, there are exceptions to the rule. Some eloquent experts do know what they are talking about, including David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff, Albert Edwards and Dylan Grice of Societe General, Paul Kasriel of Northern Trust, and John Hussman of Hussman Funds.
Based on what he has to say, another person who should probably be added to that very short list is the individual interviewed in the following Yahoo! Finance Tech Ticker report, "America’s Ticking Debt Bomb: Like Greece, ‘Only Worse,’ Pento Says":
America’s debt bomb is ticking and is likely to detonate in five years or less, says Michael Pento, senior market strategist at Delta Global Advisors.
"It could be much sooner when we hit the debt wall," Pento says. "My opinion doesn’t matter: Math tells me we’re in a serious problem."
The math Pento refers to is the Treasury Department’s recent estimate that total U.S. debt will top $13.6 trillion this year and rise to 102% of GDP by 2015. Moreover, the publicly traded debt (debt excluding intra-governmental obligations) will rise to $14 trillion by 2015, up from "just" $7.5 trillion in 2009.
At $14 trillion, the interest payments on the public debt will total about $1 trillion in 2015, he continues; even assuming solid growth and low inflation, that would equal about 30% of total government revenue. "What do you think that does to our bond market?," Pento wonders. "It leads to a dollar crisis and a bond market crisis. That’s why gold refuses to go down. "
Demand for U.S. Treasuries and the dollar currently remain high, especially in the wake of the euro’s slow-motion implosion. Pento admits timing this debt crisis is difficult but predicts we’ll be "like Greece, but worse," in four years or less, unless we make a sudden turn toward austerity.
CHINA WILL BE A BIGGER BUBBLE THAN JAPAN
by ilene - September 16th, 2009 2:25 pm
CHINA WILL BE A BIGGER BUBBLE THAN JAPAN
Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist
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
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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
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