China

What we would like to see is commodity prices falling or stagnating. And that would certainly be the case if demand destruction is already beginning as the IEA analysis suggests. Moreover, QE is ending in June. So that won't be a factor in…

You have seen a few of these videos on ghost malls and ghost cities in China. This one from an Australian broadcast is quite good. It reinforces what I have been saying about the magnitude of non-performing loans and how this constrains…

On Saturday I wrote about the Scylla and Charybdis of anchoring inflation expectations, geared toward developed economies in North America and Europe. You tighten too aggressively and you get unwanted disinflation or deflation. You remain…

By Michael Pettis I just got back from a very interesting but hectic week in New York and Washington, followed by two days at a conference in Hangzhou. During my meetings I noticed that much of the discussion, and many of the questions I…

The correct way to look at the causes of trade imbalances, in my opinion, is to look at policies that force up or down the savings rate, or the consumption rate (which is more or less the same thing since total savings is simply total…

This morning the Chinese central bank lifted the reserve requirement for banks another 50 basis points to a record 20% in order to curb speculation. The Chinese have been forced to tighten monetary policy due to inflation concerns and…

Here are some links that seem useful in the context of the Japanese Fukushima Daiichi 1 nuclear power plant situation. I also have a picture about radiation levels in Japanese below. The Haaretz link is related because it shows that some…

Ray Dalio spoke to Barron's in an interview that appeared in the weekly this past weekend. The themes of the conversation were the following: The world is on a dual track with emerging markets doing much better than developed…

A few weeks ago, the Economist put out its quarterly gauge of house price values. Australia just beat out Hong Kong as the most overpriced market in the developed world, with an overvaluation of 56%. Japan was by far the most undervalued…

By Michael Pettis Barry Eichengreen had a very interesting piece in last week’s Wall Street Journal. In it he argues that we are approaching the end of the period in which the US dollar is the world’s dominant reserve currency, and…