...China itself must ultimately be a victim of this warped structure as well, and that is where we are in late 2011. Act III of the global denouement is unfolding. The world will have to lance the debt boils of Asia as well before clearing the way for another cycle of global growth.
The facts are simple. China dodged the Great Contraction of 2008-2009 by unleashing credit on a massive scale.
Zhu Min, the IMF's deupty chief and a former Chinese official, said loans had jumped from 100pc of GDP before the crisis to around 200pc today -- if you include off-books financing from letters of credits, trusts, and such like.
To put this in perspective, a study by Fitch Ratings found that credit in America rose by just 42pc of GDP in the five-year period before the housing bubble popped. It rose by 45pc of GDP in Japan from before the Nikkei cracked in 1990, and 47pc before the Korean crisis in 1998.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Credit Markets • Currency Markets • Euro • European Central Bank • The Banking System/Sector • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China • England / UK • Europe • --European Sovereign Debt Crisis of 2010
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