짜증 bias 피하면서, 눈은 뜨고 보자. 결국 부동산버블, 중국의 고민

오랜만에 블룸버그 글을 올려본다

매일 읽지 않음은 물론이고, 사실 보기도 싫지만

근래, 눈을 뜨고 지켜보고자 하는

그럴수록 더 꾸준히, 기계적으로라도 지켜보자는 마음으로 임한다

 

중국의 부동산버블, 시진핑이 결국 우려의 칼을 갈고 있는

그래, 모든 원인은 우리네 근심걱정이고, 우리네 탐진치일 것이다

월가의 소수 머리좋은 악한들이 설계한것, 그것만이 전부는 아닐 것이다

결국은 우리네 성정이 그렇게 유도해서 그런것이리라

 

그런 현실, 그것이 객관적 상황인데 이를 도외시할 수는 없으리

아프더라도, 

짜증나더라도 지켜보자 싶다

 

Evergrande Isn’t Lehman. For China, It May Be Worse

When playing word association with China’s economy right now, some phrases spring to mind that may seem unfair: pyramid scheme, house of cards, Jenga tower with half the pieces missing, intoxicated teenager on stilts. But two terms that do not come to mind, and absolutely should not, are “stable” and “sustainable.” 

If you’re a New Zealander or Canadian or American, you might think your housing market is wild. And it is. But for sheer deadly froth, nothing matches China. Not only have prices been soaring, but real estate makes up nearly 30% of GDP, compared with 19% for the U.S. in its housing bubble, writes Noah Smith. Worse, housing makes up 78% of Chinese assets, compared with 35% for the U.S., writes Niall Ferguson. Popping this bubble would hammer China’s economy in a way that could make the Great Recession look like a spoiled gender-reveal party.

Making this frothier is the fact that possibly a quarter of China’s housing is just sitting there empty, as Lara Williams pointed out this weekend. We’ve all heard of China’s ghost cities, but it turns out there are also ghost towns, ghost suburbs and ghost duplexes. And with China’s population growth slowing, ghosts may be the only residents ever to inhabit these places. Too much supply plus too little demand equals goodbye, bubble.

That brings us to China Evergrande Group. We’ve established that this massively overleveraged developer won’t be the next Lehman Brothers. Of course, we still don’t really know what banks are exposed to it and similar Chinese firms, or by how much, writes Bloomberg’s editorial board. This might be a nice thing to fix before another crisis happens. Just spitballing here! Worse, there are many more Chinese firms that rely too much on complex supply-chain financing as Evergrande did, warns Anjani Trivedi.

But hopefully we can count on Beijing to grease the financial gears and avoid a repeat of that day in 2008 when all of the money suddenly caught on fire. At the same time, Beijing has conflicting desires that won’t make its job any easier. It wants to unwind the leverage in its system, while also shucking its reliance on fossil fuels, writes David Fickling. These are admirable goals, but they also happen to attack the two pillars of China’s economic growth for the past few decades. How will it replace these load-bearing structures? 

Arguably less admirable is Xi Jinping’s reassertion of Communist Party dominance over the economy, Niall Ferguson writes. This, as much as any bubble or decarbonization, may be the real threat to growth. Again, this may not be a fair metaphor, but what springs to mind is that intoxicated teen on stilts trying to take off a T-shirt. He could do it, but you wouldn’t want to bet money on it.