Analysts are still sorting through the interbank lending costs that are putting a squeeze on all debtors, especially “wealth management products” (see this description of WMP from a friend). Thanks to Marshall and Sinocism for a few of the links:
- Name Mix-Up Helped Snowden Leave Hong Kong from The Wall Street Journal (oops, gotta cross your t’s and dot your i’s)
- Chinese Media Calls For Boycott of Cisco from Slashdot (bill bishop has noted that this may be one of the reasons why there was a big push against allowing Huawei sell routers/networking equipment to specific US institutions the past few years, because they knew what backdoor capabilities Cisco has, thus Huawei may have them as well for the PLA)
- Mundell: Strange Crunch for China from The Wall Street Journal (michael pettis wrote about this issue in his latest newsletter published on the 25th, not on his site yet)
- Concrete Floors! No Working Toilet! Just $200K In Shanghai from NPR (yet there is continual demand in part because of the enormous pressure on husbands to own a home in order to get married)
- China’s housing slaves need lifetime to pay off mortgages from Financial Post (wouldn’t want to be a fang nu, ever)
- China’s Credit Crunch Could Create Opportunities for Private Equity from The Wall Street Journal (quite true, and with PE money comes PE oversight, accountability and transparency which could clean up various segments and purge misallocation)
- China’s JD.com Claims Retail Sales Of CNY100 Billion By 2015 from China Tech News (could be a rosy estimation, hard to say if their is a real “downturn” but certainly possible if there isn’t one)
- Credit Crunch Spells More Trouble for Chinese Businesses from The Wall Street Journal (precisely the point made by Mises nearly a century ago, unproductive activity cannot be sustained at subsidized interest rates — misallocation of capital that can only take place under a centrally managed financial system)
- The “Diaosi” social class: presage of impending social changes in China from Ministry of Tofu (i have my doubts about anyone claiming impending social changes, lots of politically connected special interest groups, don’t think Diaosi has that big of pull)
- China stocks crater as banks warned over credit from CNN|Money (buy on the dips? what listed companies are bargain buys at the moment?)
- Rise of Asthma in China Sparks Renewed Debate about Pollution and Place from Tea Leaf Nation (best day in Shanghai is 2x-3x as bad as the worst day in LA… and Shanghai is half as bad as Guangzhou and Beijing)
- Australia Mines China Education Boom from The Wall Street Journal (but it is significantly more expensive for a student to study in AUS than it is for them to study in the US or the UK, lower AUD exchange rate may help educational firms though)