If you want on or off the ping list send me a FReepMail.
Part Deux:
Japan hit its wall in the mid-80s. They had a declining population and a mountain of debt equal to about half their GDP. It took them thirty plus years to work it out. That's thirty years of economic stagnation and the relocation of most of their industrial plant outside Japan. It worked but the cost was high. The PRC has neither the time nor the mental/political flexibility to pull this off.
South Korea took a different turn. They invested more but they moved up the value-added chain. It worked but at the cost of an economic blood bath to companies and their management teams as they worked things out. This generated great surges of unemployment and credit risk that the government had to step in and assume some of the risk itself. Korea was only able to do this because the had a highly educated work force and the political flexibility to do it. These are things the PRC lacks.
China is already farther down the road to ruin than either Japan or Korea were when they took action. The CCP has already tried bits and pieces of both solutions. Chinese corporate debt has doubled since 2010 and it was at an unsustainable level then.
What the population of Japan and Korea had that the Chinese population doesn't have is the freedom to move their capital overseas if the local economy isn't meeting their needs. The Chinese are always looking for ways to get their money out of China. Every time they find a way the CCP changes the law. This means that the people are forced to finance this insanity. They are increasingly unwilling. The people's search for somewhere to park their money leads to massive speculative bubbles (the what is immaterial) which leaves most Chinese worse off than before. It doesn't stop them from investing in the NBT (next big thing) whatever it is. The biggest option available to Chinese investors is Real Estate.
This is why China has an ERON-style housing bubble on steroids. There is enough unoccupied/unfinished housing units to house 100-200% of the Chinese population. Hard numbers are impossible to come by here. Suffice it to say it's a lot.
At the height of the sub-prime housing crisis the US had less than 5%, probably closer to 3%, excess housing. We got out of it by bundling the really questionable loans with higher quality loans to spread the risk. The crisis lopped 5% off of GDP but we got out of it. You can see where this is going. The PRC is suffering from in excess of a 100% overbuild in a country in the advanced stages of population collapse.
Japan and Korea were able to survive largely because the difficulties didn't directly threaten the well-being of the average citizen and there was sufficient national cohesion to weather the storm. That is not the case in China. Investment in Real Estate is the primary, for many the ONLY, means of saving for old age. A broad swath of PRC population is sitting on assets that are worth, at best, a quarter of what they paid or are still paying.
When people are under economic stress they react in different ways. I want to shift gears a bit and list some things I am seeing that leave me very troubled. All of these things will make it harder for the PRC to pull out of their economic.
1. In an Investment led economy, you need for borrowing to go up or at least stay the same. Companies are NOT borrowing to take on new projects.
2. The incidence of unpaid wages to workers is accelerating. This includes municipal, county, and provincial workers. I saw one report where police were starting to get stiffed. There are an increasing number of protests against companies for unpaid wages. This includes protesting municipal workers. Commies protesting commies.
3. Stores are closing. In major cities with major shopping districts there are shuttered shops and few shoppers. Walmart has closed sixty major stores in the PRC this year alone.
4. Ticket sales for travel during the upcoming Autumn Festival, aka Golden Week, are down as is sales of gifts and food stuffs for traditional feasts. Think of it as Christmas in the US but people are shopping like it's the first week of February and their credit card statement had just come in.
5. The publishing of Public Records in just about all sectors of the PRC economy is halting. This includes things like unemployment statistics, patents, doctoral dissertations, import/export statistics, etc. How can a nation get where it wants to go if the only map they have is full of holes and what is there is untrustworthy?
On top of all this the CCP is cracking down on dissent everywhere it sees it. In 1962 John Kennedy said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." I think he nailed it. The CCP would do well to listen but I know they won't.
If anyone has specific questions, or if something I write doesn't make sense, just ask.
WWG1WGA
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)