[lurk]

64.5 million empty living spaces.

Hmm. That’s not far from the number of people Mao killed during his glorious reign.

[VegasCowboy]

Wow. The sound of that bubble popping is going to shake the windows here in America.

[PGR88]

Sounds bad, and in a free-market it would be (and it would never have been allowed to get so high)

But in China, the Gov’t owns the banks. No one knows how much bad debt they have. The banks can just sit on it forever and get cash injections from the bank (just like TARP!). Capital controls are closed, so no will crash the RMB and money won’t be allowed to leave (at least not quickly)

So rather than burst/crash, they will go through a decades-long, slow unwinding, just like Japan and their property debt bubble.

[UCFRoadWarrior]

How’s that Free Trade with COMMUNIST China working now?

I wonder what excuse the Free Trade COMMUNISTS will use now? Blame it on Smoot HAwley? I am sure the Anti-American Free Traders will come up with something

[AdmSmith]

If the figures in the article is correct we can expect a crash in China. That will propagate outside China, add the tax increase Jan 1, 2011 by Obama and we will have serious problems.

[TopQuark]

"Quantity bubble."

The author assumes that the use of the "bubble" instead of "oversupply" makes him think knowledgeable. There is no such thing as a quantity bubble. The author illustrates the fact that one typically applies to a journalism school only after all other graduate schools have rejected the application.

[TopQuark]

"Real estate is prone to price bubbles because unique factors restrict its supply response. "

Both parts are factually incorrect. With the exception of the recent bubble, there are no price run-ups on record that qualify as bubble.

He also suggests, incorrectly, that every inflation is a bubble. What has attracted your attention to this cr-p? The author presents no new factual information, referring only to a "floated" media articles, and no economic analysis. What he does say is completely incorrect and grossly misleading (as is common on MarketWatch). What has attracted your attention to this article?

[Publius6961]

Who writes this crap?
Panic based on electric meters registering zero?

Bypass the meter.
If construction is adequate and the weather mild enough, electricity can be dispensed with altogether. We are taling about a population, a large portion of which is accustomed for thousands of years to live primitively.
Chickens and campfires in high rises...

[blam]

China Shows How To Do A Stress Test: Tells Banks To Imagine 60% Property Collapse

" China’s banking regulator told lenders last month to conduct a new round of stress tests to gauge the impact of residential property prices falling as much as 60 percent in the hardest-hit markets, a person with knowledge of the matter said."