On China’s Financial System and Property Markets: Aliber and Walter

We are delighted to share work presented in recent days by two good friends of the CFS: Robert Z. Aliber and Carl E. Walter.

Carl discussed his forthcoming book The Red Dream: the Chinese Communist Party and the financial deterioration of China. Red Dream analyzes 1) the build-up of leverage throughout the system, 2) how regulators have worked to generate strong performance metrics while sloughing off unwanted assets, 3) the health of the financial system, as well as 4) the present within the context of prior financial stressors in the U.S., Japan and China itself.

Bob offers his latest thoughts on China’s property market, Evergrande, and future economic prospects more broadly. He first discussed these dynamics in the epilogue of the seventh edition of Manias, Panics and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises.

Carl recently served as an independent director of a major Chinese bank. For many years, Carl worked in China, where he last served as JP Morgan’s China COO and CEO of its banking subsidiary. He is now a visiting scholar at the Stanford Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center.

Bob is professor emeritus of International Economics and Finance at the University of Chicago. He has written extensively about the prices of currencies, international investment flows, banking issues, the multinational firm, international monetary arrangements, and financial crises.

To view Carl’s slides on China’s financial system:
http://www.centerforfinancialstability.org/research/Walter_China_Feb_2022.pdf

To view Bob’s “The Ponzi Bubble in China’s Property Market is Deflating”:
http://www.centerforfinancialstability.org/research/Aliber_China_031122.pdf

As these topics are complex and challenging, we look forward to any comments you might have.

Rhodes on Global Policymakers and the Macro View

As 2021 approaches, remarks by CFS Advisory Board Chairman William R. Rhodes are essential for the year ahead.

As part of the Foreign Policy Association’s (FPA) Great Decisions series, Bill addresses:

  • Views on the world economy,
  • Implications from the recent G20 meetings,
  • Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economies of the emerging markets,
  • Thoughts on the policies of the incoming Biden administration,
  • Climate change and green finance,
  • The Venezuelan political and economic tragedy and
  • Views on the Chinese economy.

View the interview at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkjUYVSxLEc&authuser=0

With best wishes for a strong, healthy, and joyous New Year,
Larry

Holzmann on “The Great Demographic Reversal”

Robert Holzmann (ECB Governing Council Member and Governor of the Austrian National Bank – OeNB) adds to the insightful comments received in response to Charles Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan’s “The Great Demographic Reversal” CFS presentation recently distributed.

Robert notes that “there is a lot to be done, but a lot can be done.”  Two referenced papers from his days as an academic are offered:

1 – His ‘three-tiered life-cycle model’ by income groups suggests that the traditional model applies only to the middle-income subset of the population (see http://centerforfinancialstability.org/research/Holzmann_3_Tiered_Life_Cycle.pdf ).

2 – A new perspective on ageing and dynamic adjustment in the dependence ratio softens the economic impact of fears from the aging bubble ahead (see http://centerforfinancialstability.org/research/Holzmann_Optimistic_Dependency.pdf).

The original message and link to previous comments as well as Charles and Manoj’s slides are below.

Best regards,
Larry


———- Forwarded message ———
From: Lawrence Goodman <lgoodman@the-cfs.org>
Date: Fri, Oct 16, 2020 at 11:53 AM
Subject: Comments on The Great Demographic Reversal…

Two comments received regarding Charles Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan’s “The Great Demographic Reversal” follow questions that surfaced during the CFS roundtable discussion.  They include 1) the role of technology and productivity as well as 2) the internationalization of the big demographic shift.

First, Hal Varian (Chief Economist, Google and Emeritus Professor, UC Berkeley) offers a paper on advancing technology and automation vis-a-vis the impact of demographic forces on the supply of labor – https://voxeu.org/article/automation-versus-procreation-aka-bots-versus-tots.

Second, David Dodge (Senior Advisor, Bennett Jones and Former President, Bank of Canada) noted…
“I have been making the same point about the aging of the baby boom generation in Canada. This big cohort were big savers in the first two decades of this century. They will become big dis-savers from 2025 to 2045.”

The original message and link to slides are below.

Best regards,
Larry


—–Original Message—–
From: Lawrence Goodman <lgoodman@the-cfs.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2020 12:31 PM
Subject: The Great Demographic Reversal (Goodhart and Pradhan)…

Last week, we hosted a roundtable discussion with CFS Advisory Board Member Charles Goodhart and his co-author Manoj Pradhan.

The Great Demographic Reversal is superb.  It addresses head-on demographic forces that will only gain in importance over time.  The book proposes that the underlying forces of demography and globalization will shortly reverse three multi-decade global trends – it will raise inflation and interest rates, but lead to a pullback in inequality.  Charles and Manoj broadened the country-by-country demographic analysis by connecting many global threads and interactions among nations.

Please find their slides at
http://www.centerforfinancialstability.org/speeches/The_Great_Demographic_Reversal_CFS.pdf

Best regards,
Larry

Comments on The Great Demographic Reversal (Varian and Dodge)

Two comments received regarding Charles Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan’s “The Great Demographic Reversal” follow questions that surfaced during the CFS roundtable discussion. They include 1) the role of technology and productivity as well as 2) the internationalization of the big demographic shift.

First, Hal Varian (Chief Economist, Google and Emeritus Professor, UC Berkeley) offers a paper on advancing technology and automation vis-a-vis the impact of demographic forces on the supply of labor – https://voxeu.org/article/automation-versus-procreation-aka-bots-versus-tots.

Second, David Dodge (Senior Advisor, Bennett Jones and Former President, Bank of Canada) noted…
“I have been making the same point about the aging of the baby boom generation in Canada. This big cohort were big savers in the first two decades of this century. They will become big dis-savers from 2025 to 2045.”

The original message and link to slides are below.

—–Original Message—–
From: Lawrence Goodman lgoodman@the-cfs.org
Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2020 12:31 PM
Subject: The Great Demographic Reversal (Goodhart and Pradhan)…

Last week, we hosted a roundtable discussion with CFS Advisory Board Member Charles Goodhart and his co-author Manoj Pradhan.

The Great Demographic Reversal is superb. It addresses head-on demographic forces that will only gain in importance over time. The book proposes that the underlying forces of demography and globalization will shortly reverse three multi-decade global trends – it will raise inflation and interest rates, but lead to a pullback in inequality. Charles and Manoj broadened the country-by-country demographic analysis by connecting many global threads and interactions among nations.

Please find their slides at
http://www.centerforfinancialstability.org/speeches/The_Great_Demographic_Reversal_CFS.pdf

The Great Demographic Reversal (Goodhart and Pradhan)

Last week, we hosted a roundtable discussion with CFS Advisory Board Member Charles Goodhart and his co-author Manoj Pradhan.

The Great Demographic Reversal is superb.  It addresses head-on demographic forces that will only gain in importance over time.  The book proposes that the underlying forces of demography and globalization will shortly reverse three multi-decade global trends – it will raise inflation and interest rates, but lead to a pullback in inequality.  Charles and Manoj broadened the country-by-country demographic analysis by connecting many global threads and interactions among nations.

Please find their slides at
http://www.centerforfinancialstability.org/speeches/The_Great_Demographic_Reversal_CFS.pdf

Penn: Quant Tools and Macro Workshop

The Penn Institute for Economic Research (PIER) will offer a workshop on Quantitative Tools for Macroeconomic Policy Analysis. Francis X. Diebold, Enrique G. Mendoza, and Frank Schorfheide will provide training on essential state-of-the-art methods.

Guest Speakers include:

– Guillermo Calvo
– Narayana Kocherlakota
– Donald Kohn (three-hour mini-workshop on the practice of Macroprudential Policy)

The workshop will be held May 4 to May 8 at the University of Pennsylvania. Details are available at http://economics.sas.upenn.edu/pier/tools-workshop.

Sargen: How Tariffs and China’s Slowdown Impact US Companies

As U.S. companies report fourth quarter earnings, a growing number have cited China’s slowdown as adversely impacting their businesses.  The most recent include industry bellwethers such as Apple, Caterpillar, and Nvidia.  In prior reports, multinationals such as Alcoa, Coca-Cola, Ford, GE, Harley-Davidson, and Whirlpool stated their earnings were being hit by higher tariffs on imports from China.

This list, moreover, is likely to grow if China slows further and/or tariffs on Chinese imports are increased.  However, this begs two questions: (i) Why is China’s economy softening; and (ii) Will the government be able to stabilize growth as it did in 2016?

One of the challenges investors confront is to assess whether China’s slowdown is primarily cyclical or secular.  Its growth rate has slowed steadily throughout this this decade, from about 10% in 2010 to 6.6% last year, the lowest in three decades.  In dissecting the recent slowdown, investors need to disentangle the effect of higher tariffs on Chinese imports from the impact of structural changes inside China.

There is general agreement that last year’s slowdown coincided with tariffs being imposed on 10% of Chinese goods imported to the U.S. during the first half of 2018.  The economy weakened further in the second half, when the list was extended to cover one half of imports from China.  Accordingly, investors believe a resolution of the trade dispute is critical to stabilize China’s economy.

Beyond this, China’s potential growth rate is decelerating for structural reasons. The country’s economic miracle was founded on agricultural workers in rural areas migrating to urban areas along the coast with higher-productivity manufacturing jobs.  But this process has become more challenging as wages in manufacturing have increased and unit labor costs have surged. Consequently, some economists believe China confronts a “middle income trap.”

Amid declining productivity growth, China’s government has relied increasingly on fiscal stimulus and credit expansion to achieve its growth target of 6.0%-6.5%.  But this has also resulted in a doubling of China’s overall debt burden from about 150% of GDP before the GFC in 2008 to 300% currently.  The problem with this strategy is it is not viable, as more and more credit is required to support each unit of output.  The reason: Much of the credit expansion has gone to SOEs, some of which the IMF labels as “zombies” – or firms that pile on debt but do not contribute positive value added.

Faced with this predicament, China’s policymakers pursued several measures last year to bolster the economy.  They included lowering short term interest rates by more than 200 basis points, allowing the yuan/dollar exchange rate to decline by 10%, while also expanding credit and lowering tax rates.  Similar actions were undertaken during China’s slowdown in 2015-2016, which proved effective in bolstering the economy.

Thus far, however, their impact is not readily apparent.  Auto sales, for example, declined in November by nearly 14% over a year ago, and Apple’s recent public filing indicated softness in consumer spending on electronics.  China’s imports plummeted in December, and exports also appear headed for a fall based on recent purchasing manager surveys and weakness in Asia and Europe.

What is clear is China’s policymakers are prepared to take additional actions to keep economic growth above the 6% threshold.  The central bank, for example, announced a one percent reduction in reserve requirements, and the government is boosting spending and lowering taxes. What is unclear is whether such action will be as effective as in the past due to the country’s rising debt burden.

The wildcard is whether an agreement on trade can be reached by the March 1 deadline.  While both sides wish to do so, the underlying issues are complex.  If the disagreement were simply about the size of the bilateral trade imbalance, the issue would be resolved, as China is willing to boost imports from the US and could direct SOEs to do so. However, the more difficult issues relate to violations of intellectual property and subsidization of businesses by the Chinese government, which the US opposes.

The most likely outcome is a temporary truce will be reached, which would bolster world equities for a while.  However, because a lasting agreement is harder to achieve, officials may in effect opt to “kick the can down the road.”

The outcome will have an important bearing on global economies.  While the US economy has withstood the impact of China’s slowdown thus far, a growing number of US companies are feeling the impact as noted previously. Furthermore, there has been a significant downward revision to earnings expectations by Wall Street analysts over the past six months. They are now calling for S&P 500 EPS growth of 8.1% in 2019 from more than 20% last year.  Yet, some observers believe the results will be weaker.

Ultimately, the market’s outcome will depend on whether China’s slowdown can be arrested by policy action.  If so, equity markets are likely to rally.  If not, they are likely to stay volatile, as the impact of a permanent slowdown has not been priced into markets.

CFIUS and Silicon Valley: We’re Still Trying to Find a Cure!

CFS senior advisor Charlie Schott writes on new twists to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).  While in government, Charlie’s group oversaw the Treasury-chaired inter-agency Committee.

CFIUS is the place where the United State’s commitment to an Open Investment Policy meets our most important national security concerns.

Early last August Congress passed the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA), making significant changes to CFIUS.  The following article covers (1) what changes have been made by the new law and (2) what to expect with CFIUS going forward.

Who should be interested in these changes?  The short answer is Silicon Valley and financial market participants!

For the paper
http://centerforfinancialstability.org/research/CFS_Schott_1_10_19.pdf

CFS Financial Crisis Timeline

As the 10-year anniversary of the global financial crisis approaches, assessment of key events before, during, and since is essential for understanding varying dimensions of the crisis.

The CFS Financial Timeline, created and managed by senior fellow Yubo Wang, seamlessly links financial markets, financial institutions, and public policies. It:

  • Covers more than 1,100 international events from early 2007 to the present.
  • Provides an actively maintained, free, and easy-to-use resource to help track developments in markets, the financial system, and forces that impact financial stability.
  • Curates essential inputs on a real time basis from established public sources.

Since 2010, the Timeline has become an integral part of the work done by scholars, students, government officials, and market analysts. View the Timeline.

We hope you find it of use and interest.

UK-US Financial Regulation: The Benefits of Greater Coherence

“UK-US Financial Regulation: The Benefits of Greater Coherence” illustrates the importance of “regulatory coherence” across borders.

Authors Ike Brannon, Bob Jennings, and Julie Chon delve into the longstanding and seminal UK and US relationship from a financial regulatory perspective.  They examine pathways to deepen and formalize cooperation with the aim to strengthen the international financial system.

As always, comments, critique, complement, or alternative thoughts are eagerly sought.

View the paper.
http://www.centerforfinancialstability.org/research/US_UK_Regulatory_Coherence.pdf