In keeping with China’s strategy of methodically encroaching on its geopolitical rivals via air force and naval drills in the Pacific, both Japan and South Korea scrambled fighter jets earlier this week as China suddenly expanded the scope of naval drills being held in the waters off the Korean peninsula.
Last week, when looking at the latest Chinese credit data, we made two troubling observations: first, China's economic growth was slowing across a number of key data points despite massive new credit injected into the economy over the past year. Second, that the formerly massive credit impulse - which was responsible for pushing the global economy and markets out of the early 2016 rut - was no more, and that overall system credit growth slowed to 14.4% yoy from 14.9% the prior month, which was the slowest total credit growth in the past 27 months.
Yesterday we joked that with the US House of Representatives set to vote for the GOP tax bill on Tuesday, markets would "price in" the same tax legislation they have been pricing in every day for the past year, all over again...
Get ready for US markets to price in tax reform all over again in just a few short hours
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 19, 2017
Here we go again...
Authored by Chris Hamilton via Econimica blog,
Many economists suggest China is on the cusp of significant growth in domestic consumer demand.
That this rising domestic demand coupled with continued growth as the global exporter will push the global economy further. However, I'll briefly show why neither of these outcomes is remotely likely.
Problem #1- China as Consumer: