Financial lie of day


"China is not doing well! They are just faking numbers!"

This is the same lie as immediately after when American banks reported that they are profitable again. The reports were about 1st quarter results. Of course banks did well with 5% margin.


Singular June 12, 2009 - 9:40am
( categories: Miscellany )

Evidence #1 - Half of China's GDP is tied to the export sector which is down 50% over the last six months; and yet they post overall GDP growth that is 6% or above. How could that be possible?

Evidence #2 - The economy that behaves most similarly to China's in terms of dependence on exports, as well as dependence on US trade is Japan, where one-third of their economic activity comes from exports and is also down by approximately 50%. In the case of Japan their GDP is down -15%. So why isn't Chinas?

Evidence #3 - China is spending minted money on a wild array of make jobs projects, and this can be the only conceivable thing that is offsetting export declines and producing GDP growth. In order to accomplish this, the Government spending would need to be as much and a little more than what is being lost on the export side. This is likely the case. It is the US stimulus on steroids relative to GDP.

Evidence #4 - China touts their deficit as being something on the order of 25% of GDP, a very low level. But this counts only central bank debt. They do not include State bank non performing loan portfolios, or province lending for infrastructure spending, nor do they include a variety of political lending that has no parallel. If all these sources are considered their debt is over 100% of GDP.

So what is your EVIDENCE, beyond sloganeering?

Scotjen61 June 12, 2009 - 3:30pm

“The economy is in better shape than the officials are indicating,” said Glenn Maguire, chief Asia-Pacific economist at Societe Generale SA in Hong Kong.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aSBW4Cpqsz7E

I don't take #1-#3 seriously, but #4 is hilarious. What was that % in the USA before the collapse ? (Excluding the secret bonds issued to North Korea and Italian mafia or something like that)


--Sell Texas to China!

Singular June 23, 2009 - 5:10am

British propaganda rag is worried on China because China has started to cool down its economy (not stated in the article).


--Sell Texas to China!

Singular June 29, 2009 - 10:00pm

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