TUESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2011
Has China Just Hit Stall Speed?
The Financial Times reports that the Chinese sovereign wealth fund Huijin will buy shares in the four biggest banks in a move to goose the flagging stock market, which is at its lowest point since early 2009. This is the first time the fund has mad this sort of intervention since the onset of the crisis.
The stock market is arguably even more important in China than in the US. With yields on bank deposits chronically well below inflation (and the spread between the two rates continues to be much worse than we are now experiencing in the US), investors are almost forced into risky assets. Since there is no domestic bond market to speak of, that means, for the most part, stocks or real estate (we have also heard of the stockpiling of commodities, such as base metals).
But the stock market may well be sending an accurate signal that China’s economic model is under duress. We’ve commented repeatedly that there has never been a large economy that has had 50% of its GDP consist of exports and investment. And before you say, “China is an emerging economy, it can absorb a lot of investment” the evidence is against that. The supposedly sclerotic US took $4 to $5 of debt to generate $1 of GDP growth on the eve of the crisis. As of 2009, it was taking $7 of debt to generate $1 of GDP growth. And China has been raising interest rates to dampen domestic inflation.
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