The Asian Crisis

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

So after China loosened monetary conditions last quarter at the fastest pace in almost two years.

Aug 11, 2014 23:31:26 GMT -5 Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger said:

Why is it so bad that $1 only creates 20 cents in GDP?

China Credit Gauge Plunges as Expansion in Money Supply Slows

How does the market look now?

-China property developer Shui On Land gives warning
-China's housing sales fall 10.5% in 7 months to July

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

A bit more on the foreclosure situation - that can't happen because Chinese property buyers have put so much down on their property, and have such a high savings rate.

House Owners Default on Mortgages

A Mainland 21st Century Economic Report recently disclosed that in May and June of this year, Hangzhou City of Zhejiang Province, Wuxi City of Jiangsu Province, Ningde City of Fujian Province, Xinyi City of Jiangsu Province and others are all experiencing defaults on personal mortgage loans. The bank sued the property owners. As early as last July, 595 cases of all kinds of house abandonments occurred in Wenzhou City of Zhejiang Province, which has a highly developed private finance, resulting in more than 400 million yuan worth of bad loans.

The report says no data is available to show the common phenomenon of housing foreclosures. However, information disclosed by the Mainland regulatory authorities has confirmed the severity of the problem.

On May 12, Mainland Central Bank Vice President Liu Shiyu hosted the Housing Finance Service Symposium Conference which disclosed information regarding the prevention of buyers from foreclosing due to falling house prices. The Central Bank requires all banks to give priority to housing loans.

Two weeks ago, China Banking Regulatory Commission Chairman Shang Fulin admitted third and fourth-tier cities need to give a lot of attention to the credit risk.

Some small and medium-size property enterprises suffered capital chain tension. Some housing property enterprises and even home buyers broke contracts in some areas.

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

Jun 9, 2014 20:42:38 GMT -5 Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger said:

And land sales are following housing sales. The bullish trends just keep building for the global economy.

Jun 18, 2014 12:25:59 GMT -5 Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger said:

And housing prices are following sales.

Jun 19, 2014 12:35:34 GMT -5 Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger said:

And the economy is following housing.

The downward spiral continues. Stay

China's property prices skid further in July

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

Considering that Asian economies are about twice the share of global GDP compared with 1997, I think it's going to be quite a shock to people when China comes apart at the seams.

I know I have made this point before, but in a country where insider trading and info are rampant, with no real repercussions for the ones at the top... Smart money long gone from China property

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

Aug 19, 2014 22:50:34 GMT -5 Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger said:

Considering that Asian economies are about twice the share of global GDP compared with 1997, I think it's going to be quite a shock to people when China comes apart at the seams.

If China Keeps Ignoring These Red Flags, The Entire World Could Be Paying For It

The Financial Times reports that the housing market in China is tanking. Home prices recently fell for the third straight month, the most since records began in 2006. This housing market decline directly threatens a nascent economic recovery that is badly needed not just for China but for global growth. Default pressure is growing not just on the corporate sector but in the lower tier housing area as well.

China is in a major catch 22. Corruption is rampant; and bad incentives for investment abound, leading to improper allocation of capital. The only way China can maintain the growth economic rate needed is to prop up the credit market by loosening standards or lowering rates. However, this just digs the default hole bigger and kicks the needed credit correction down the road.

Europe is still struggling to recover from the housing crisis. The Russian sanctions threaten major damage to European markets and could tip the balance into an economic contraction. Russia itself is most likely in recession, and things will get worse there as oil prices fall. Latin America is stagnant with Argentina defaulting, and now China is having major problems. America seems to be the only country where growth is steady, feeble as it is.

Funny thing is, kicking the can down the road is exactly what lots of investors are hoping for right now - why? Hope that the market can just keep pushing higher.

The author from the article above is outlining the exact trends I pointed to last year that are coming to fruition - sans the Mid East war. The fact is the US economy is the strength in the weakness, however, a large portion of US companies rely on the world economy for earnings growth.

Now, how about the Chinese economy? China Manufacturing Gauge Drops in Sign Growth Pickup Stalls

Stay

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

If Chinese banks looking to Europe wasn't bad enough, Property developer offers $325,000 discount on homes to online shoppers.

Oh, and things are a lot worse than they seem - almost like state owned companies are full of $#:t or something....

China’s falling real-estate prices trigger protests, clashes

The sharp drop in China’s housing prices has led to an outburst of anger among property owners, leading to violent clashes in some cases, according to local media reports Tuesday.

In one case, scores of property owners surrounded a Shanghai sales office of Greentown China Holdings Ltd. to protest the developer’s 25% cut to prices within a five-day period, according to a report on the NetEase news portal site 163.com....

.....In other Chinese cities, such confrontations between buyers and developers have turned violent.

In the eastern city of Jinan, banner-carrying owners blocked a street to protest another 25% price cut for a local housing development, this one conducted over the space of two weeks, according to the local-government-run Life Daily newspaper.

The protesters clashed with a group of counter-protestors suspected to have been hired by local developers, injuring some of the demonstrators and forcing the police to break up the fight

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

The reality of how much the Chinese property bubble is going to affect things is slowly setting in. Just in time for China Home Prices to Fall for Fourth Straight Month too.

China's housing market is on the brink of collapse. Should Australia be worried?

It’s perhaps not surprising that China is important not just to Australia’s economy, but the whole world’s. But just how important it has become is surprising.

Back at the start of this century the Chinese economy was around 11% the size of the US; now it is nearly 60% the size of the US. But despite that massive growth, it wasn’t until 2007 that China became more important than the US to world economic growth.

Before 2007, the US was easily the biggest contributor to the growth of the world’s economy. In 2004, for example, the world economy grew by 12.8% (nominal terms) to which the US contributed two percentage points. By way of context, the UK and Japan that year contributed 0.9 percentage points, France 0.7 and Germany 0.8. China also contributed 0.8 percentage points.

In 2007, the world’s GDP grew by a similar 12.7%, but this time China was the biggest contributor with 1.6 percentage points worth, and the US contributing just 1.2. And since then, China has remained the biggest driver of the world’s economic growth:

To put it in even more stark terms, from 2007 to 2013, the world’s economy grew by 31% and China contributed nearly a third of that, with 10.1 percentage points worth......

......So where does the concern come from?

Housing.

In the past few months there have been a number of worrying signs that the booming Chinese real estate market is about to burst.

For example, the Wall Street Journal recently reported a Chinese study that found in 2013 22.4% of houses in China’s urban areas were vacant – up from 20.6% in 2011.

Since they see the writing on the wall and all the big developers have exited the building, they have to still find growth somewhere, right? Ah yes, more private capital flowing into the US economy.

Chinese builder Landsea to invest $1 billion in U.S. housing market

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

What's that? A depression? The US economy isn't the only game in town, and people that are focused solely on FED policy have their head in the sand to the real problems that are going on globally?

That's what I thought.


-With skyscrapers, pride comes before the fall

CEO of Large Real Estate Firm in China Disappears With Money

The CEO of a large real estate firm in China disappeared with a large sum of money, leaving defrauded victims in 16 provinces and 50 cities. People who sought help from local governments were beaten and arrested by the police.

Xing Lin Real Estate was established in October 2009 with more than 1,000 branches nationwide. Its CEO, Wu Binglin, recently absconded.

Since Sept. 2, Xing Lin’s branches in Inner Mongolia, including Hohhot and Baotou, were found vacant. More than 200 home buyers are said to have been victimized in this region; some allegedly lost more than one million yuan.

Xing Lin branches in the cities of Xi’an, Yinchuan, Baoji, and Chifeng reported similar situations.

In Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi Province, more than 300 victims with 30 million yuan (US$4.9 million) in losses are said to be involved in two of its stores. One victim said the company had stopped contacting him since he made a down payment in mid-July.

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

Well.. China housing sales down 10.9% on year.. And what is the CPC doing aside from beating and arresting citizens that complain about being swindled? Not much. They see the writing on the wall...

Li’s Options Narrow as China Growth Slowdown Deepens

In a speech at the World Economic Forum in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin last week, Li said the government won’t be distracted by short-term fluctuations in individual economic indicators and will maintain its focus on structural adjustments and dealing with long-term issues.

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

Here's an interesting tidbt...

China housing a “bubble on eve of destruction”

Below is an op-ed by Gu Jun, a professor of sociology at Shanghai University, talking about the empty residential buildings all over the Chinese coast as a metaphor for the failure of central planning. He closes by tying it to Premier Li Keqiang’s reform efforts. This op-ed was the top headline in the real estate section of iFeng’s website on Sunday.

The title can roughly be translated as “this bubble is on the even of destruction.” Here’s is my incomplete summary (not a direct translation):

This bubble is not in Wenzhou, Ordos or Yulin, but on the shore. It is in Dalian , Yingkou, Qinhuangdao, Yantai, Weihai, Qingdao on the Shandong Peninsula, in Huizhou, Sanya and Beihai in the south, where the “ocean view apartment” is on the eve of destruction. Many rushed in to buy homes, but when night falls there are dark, empty buildings. In 2008, in Weihai, Shandong, homes were bought for more than ￥500,000; today they sell for ￥200,000, but there is little interest. There is a price, but no market.

When insiders describe the chaotic development of the coastline, they give three reasons. The first is that the timing wasn’t right, and they “over drafted” the coastline’s resources. The second is a lack of good planning; the developers moved as a herd and destructive development followed. Third, there was no core industry support, without a healthy ecosystem it could not continue growing. Valuable coastal ecosystems were destroyed, plans for scenic development fell through, now there is only a concrete and rebar forest, in the still of the night there are only a few lonely lights for comfort in this sad and lonely place.

This so called “coordinated” development, where government makes the decisions instead of independent actors, has turned into uncoordinated confusion. The BATs fly overseas (Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent), there is fake packaging scandals and shoreline destruction. Yet people still believe the government can implement the highest reason, they have a superstitious belief in planning, that government will somehow deliver long-term planning for the good of all society. Government is just another interest group though, and in the race to get promoted, officials pushed development to get ahead.

From the official’s standpoint, coastal ecology has nothing to do with me; fishermen, farmers and city residents need for a supply chain has nothing to do with me; scenic development needs what type of development and continuous promotion, has nothing to do with me; if the home buyers can even see the ocean, has nothing to do with me. It is the same with the losses in high speed rail, the world’s fastest M2 growth, and the investigation of the “tigers” and “houseflies.”

But hey, it's all good! China just pumped $81 billion into the banking system - now where have I heard that before?

Stealth Fed Funds Cut

On August 9-10(2007), the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan, the Federal Reserve, plus the central banks of Australia, Norway, Switzerland and certain other countries "injected" the equivalent of about a third of a trillion dollars ($325 billion) into the money systems of the world on an emergency basis. The Bank of Japan handed out ¥1 trillion, about $8.5 billion. The European Central Bank showed signs of panic, or of realism, by spewing out about $160 billion over two days. Their goal was to stave off a spreading panic at bond trading desks and in the capital markets of the world.

In the U.S., on August 10 the Federal Reserve added $38 billion to the banking system by purchasing securities in the open market. It was the largest such cash infusion since the Federal Reserve’s response to the attack on 9/11. The immediate effect was to prop the stock market up for the day, the Dow closing with a loss of just 31 points.

[bimetalaupt]

I FOUND THIS INTERESTING AND RELEVENT TO THE ACTION OF THE FED'S NEWEST THINKER: DR. FISCHER "THIN-KING".

Monetary Policy Week in Review – Sep 1-5, 2014: ECB to inject cash into markets while Fed, BOE to withdraw
Shaken by the loss of momentum in the euro area’s economic recovery, the European Central Bank (ECB) pushed its benchmark refinancing rate to the lower bound and added fresh fuel to its June stimulus measures by buying asset-backed securities (ABS) and covered bonds.
The ECB’s measures are aimed at easing the credit conditions for the euro zone’s ailing banking sector which accounts for over 80 percent of all credit that is provided to businesses and households.
The ECB’s decision to cut its refi rate to 0.05 percent and the deposit rate to minus 0.20 percent was triggered by news that growth in the second quarter stagnated from the first quarter while inflation in August fell further to 0.3 percent – the weakest since October 2009 – renewing fears that the euro zone may slipping into Japanese-style deflation.
The ECB’s move to inject liquidity into financial markets may turn out to be opportune for the global economy.
Apart from the geopolitical risks from the Ukraine and Mideast, the global economy is continuing its moderate recovery and the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England (BOE) remain on track to raise rates at some point in 2015.
So just as investors could become jittery over the prospect of rate rises by the Fed and BOE, the ECB will start pumping money into financial markets.
The global economy may be not be firing on all cylinders but the ECB’s action may ensure that financial markets remain on a smooth and steady path upwards.
With the ECB’s rate cut, the 90 central banks followed by Central Bank News have now cut their policy rates 46 times through the first 36 weeks of this year compared with 35 rate rises.
Of this year’s 331 policy decisions, 13.9 percent have favored rate cuts, up from 12 percent at the end of the first half and 12 percent at the end of the first quarter.
But the trend toward higher global rates, pushed by the Fed, remains alive, with 10.6 of decisions favoring rate rises, up from 9.3 percent at the end of June and 8.7 percent at the end of March.

www.centralbanknews.info/2014/09/monetary-policy-week-in-review-sep-1-5.html

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

That's very interesting ! The ECB hasn't stopped pumping money into their economies since 2007 - great point. If I remember correctly, the stock market was also hitting fresh highs in 2007, non?

Oh, and this is also ringing a bell from that time period as well... Stay .

-Property Trusts Pull Support as Mounting Debt Due
-Bad Loans Could Bust...
-unsold housing stock soars 190pc over four years
-house prices fall for fourth straight month as downtrend deepens

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

Aug 17, 2014 23:10:01 GMT -5 Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger said:

Jun 9, 2014 20:42:38 GMT -5 Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger said:

And land sales are following housing sales. The bullish trends just keep building for the global economy.

Jun 18, 2014 12:25:59 GMT -5 Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger said:

And housing prices are following sales.

Jun 19, 2014 12:35:34 GMT -5 Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger said:

And the economy is following housing.

The downward spiral continues. Stay

China's property prices skid further in July

China Industrial Profits Drop in August as Slowdown Deepens

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

As protests gather steam in Hong Kong... Gee, I wonder why China isn't rushing to prop up their ghost cities....

China Home Prices Continue to Skid

China's average home prices fell in September for the fifth straight month and at a quicker pace as property developers engaged in more aggressive price cutting at the start of the traditional peak sales season in September.

Average new home prices fell 0.9% in September from August, falling faster from the 0.6% decline in August, data provider China Real Estate Index System said Tuesday. The latest data also marks the largest month-over-month drop since the survey started in 2010. Average home prices started to fall month-over-month since May this year, which was the first decline since June 2012.

Out of the 100 cities surveyed, 79 showed a decline in home prices, up from 74 in August.

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

More "great" news out of China, especially considering the service report came in soft..

China housing bubble 'will burst'

WA's top Treasury official says China's housing market is a bubble waiting to burst.....

...After visiting several Chinese cities, including Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia, Mr Barnes said he was convinced the sector was due for a severe correction.

In a sobering reminder to the State Government, he said this would have "implications" for steel production in China and in turn iron ore exports from WA.

Mr Barnes said the remarks were his own views and did not reflect the Government's position.

"As far as the eye can see there are rows and rows and rows - not just in this city (Hohhot) but every city I went to - of 20, 30-storey empty apartment buildings," Mr Barnes said.

"It's extraordinary. The official estimate in China is there are 50 million surplus apartments, yet they're still building them.

Fears of housing crash in China raise global alarm

Residential sales dropped 9.3 per cent year on year in the second quarter of this year, with sales registering the deepest contraction since late 2008.

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

2007 marked the high point in the stock market, and US Real estate was in trouble; like China's RE is in trouble right now. Also, in 2007 we weren't on the verge of WW3 and there weren't super viruses floating around. At that time the EU was also "in good shape".... Ah yes, that's why Kash is King!

China Factory-Gate Price Drop Ties Asian-Crisis Record

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

Good reads..

On ‘Epic Recession’: From Prelude to Transition

China’s initial response to the 2009 crash was a massive fiscal stimulus, equal to around 15% of its GDP, which focused on direct government investment. China recovered rapidly. Because China’s recovery stimulated demand for commodities and other resources and goods produced by the EMEs, China ‘pulled up’ the EMEs. The EMEs were also the direct beneficiaries of the money capital inflows from the AE central banks. AE banks diverted the QE and zero rate loans to offshore markets, both into real asset investment and financial asset investment. Because the EMEs and China were growing, the stock and corporate bond markets in the EMEs boomed. The AE liquidity flowed also into speculation in foreign exchange currencies of the EMEs, real estate markets in the EMEs, and so on. So the combination of China rapid recovery and the US-UK-Europe monetary policies together benefited the emerging market economies like Turkey, the BRICS, and others like Mexico, Indonesia, etc.

Was this growth healthy? So long as the money capital flowed into these EME economies from the AEs and so long as China boomed. But now China is rapidly slowing in terms of growth, so demand for EME commodities, resources, and imports is slowing there. At the same time, the USA and UK are phasing out their QEs and are about to raise interest rates. That will reverse the money capital flows back to the AEs and slow the growth rates in the EMEs as well still further.

TOSUN: In a series of articles you wrote recently you observe that the center of the global crisis is shifting to the EMEs. Can you explain the reasons behind this shift?

RASMUS: It’s basically what I described above. Now that the central banks of the USA and UK have fully bailed out their banking systems via QE and zero rates, they realize there is no need to continue to do so by these monetary measures. The governors of the central banks realize that more liquidity injection won’t deliver much more results and, more importantly, that it is beginning to create new financial asset bubbles worldwide again. So they are reversing these policies. What it means is that, as interest rates rise in the USA-UK in 2015, money capital will start to flow out of the EMEs and back to the AEs. The stock and bond markets in the EMEs will begin to decline. Capital will leave the EMEs for the higher returns in the USA-UK. In turn, less capital in the form of foreign direct investment into the EMEs will also take place. The EME currencies will then decline and have already begun to do so. The EMEs will attempt to stem the capital outflows and currency declines by raising their own domestic interest rates to attract capital. But that will slow their domestic economies further. Those EMEs weakest in terms of exports to the AEs and China, will be hit the hardest. So we are entering another ‘phase’ of the epic recession globally.

Why the next global recession will be made in China

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

Big suprise that China's growth "beat expectations?"

China third-quarter housing sales fall almost 11%

Debt-laden 'zombie' firms threaten China's economy

After expanding at a lightning-fast rate, China's corporate debt market is now the world's largest at $14.2 trillion, according to Standard and Poor's.

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

Aside from the fact that China is a communist country with a major problem brewing in their population, the biggest thing that economists overlook is how much pollution there is in China. With 40% of their farmland unusable and air so bad it makes people gag while playing sports - the fact is a major real estate bubble is just one part to a very large underlying crisis that is coming to a head.

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

The downward spiral... Chinese home prices fall 1.3 pct y/y in Sept

Average new home prices in China's 70 major cities fell 1.3 percent in September from a year earlier, marking the first annual drop in nearly two years, according to Reuters calculations from official data published on Friday.

Compared with the previous month, home prices were down 1.0 percent in September, a fifth consecutive monthly drop though easing slightly from a drop of 1.1 percent in August, Reuters calculations showed.

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

Considering China already has enough empty property sitting to bring urbanization in line with developed countries, these are very stark numbers.

One reason China’s housing market collapse will get even uglier: home ownership is already 87%

As it happens, a study by Southwestern University of Finance and Economics (pdf, link in Chinese) published earlier this year shows that China’s urban home ownership rate is already 87%, notes Kent Troutman, an economist at Peterson Institute for International Economics. Here’s how that stacks up against other major economies:



Meanwhile, the urban vacancy rate is around 22%—probably because, despite all those restrictions on multiple home purchases that have recently been relaxed, first-time buyers constitute less than one-fifth of overall housing demand.
That makes a near-term housing recovery look wildly optimistic. However, the SUFE study offers a nugget that makes the long term seem similarly bleak.

China’s leaders are counting on rural migration to cities to boost housing demand over the next decade or so—a process called “urbanization.” As Troutman points out, though, rural home ownership is already at 97%.

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

Let's call him, Mr. Optimistic.

China’s Property Prices May Decline Up to 10%, SouFun Says

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

Even with fake invoices manufacturing is just barely holding on in China. How bad is it in the housing market? Fortunes Of Chinese Property Billionaires Tumble Amid Chilling Market, and apparently a Shanghai news report predicted a Housing Crash in China for 2015.

Stay

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

As the property market in Asia takes it on the chin..

Spreading deflation across East Asia threatens fresh debt crisis

Deflation is becoming lodged in all the economic strongholds of East Asia. It is happening faster and going deeper than almost anybody expected just months ago, and is likely to find its way to Europe through currency warfare in short order.

Factory gate prices are falling in China, Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, Taiwan and Singapore. Some 82pc of the items in the producer price basket are deflating in China. The figures is 90pc in Thailand, and 97pc in Singapore. These include machinery, telecommunications, and electrical equipment, as well as commodities.

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

The downward cycle continues, and the vultures are starting to circle.. Stay

China Bad Loans Jump Most Since 2005 as Economy Cools

China’s bad loans jumped by the most since 2005 in the third quarter, fueling concern that a cooling economy will be further weakened as banks limit lending to avoid credit risks.

Nonperforming loans rose 72.5 billion yuan ($11.8 billion) from the previous quarter to 766.9 billion yuan, the China Banking Regulatory Commission said in a statement on Nov. 15. Soured credit accounted for 1.16 percent of lending, up from 1.08 percent three months earlier.

Weakness in the economy and extra competition for lenders because of financial deregulation may weigh on banks’ profitability. Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. (1398), the world’s largest lender by assets, last month reported its biggest quarterly jump in bad loans since at least 2006.

Stresses in the economy are visible through companies such as Sinosteel Corp., a state-owned miner and steel trader that in September reported financial difficulties.

Distressed Loan Buyers Watch Chinese Developers as Debt Mounts

Buyers of distressed loans are watching China’s property market closely as debt soars and growth falters.

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

As mentioned in the black swan thread Chinese manufacturing went the wrong way last month. However, the bigger problem is the downward spiral in home prices continued in Nov, even though interest rates were cut.

This past year China's real estate market has mirrored 2007 in the USA - stay .

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

Runnin' on empty

China's Economy: Don’t Bet on Beijing

The Financial Times recently reported that China has wasted nearly $7 trillion since the global financial crisis. According to research by China’s state planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, “ineffective investment” made up nearly half the total amount invested in the Chinese economy since 2009. The soaring ranks of empty skyscrapers and residential complexes that crowd the skylines of so many of China’s third- and fourth-tier cities are the most obvious sign of this prodigality, although alongside extraordinary levels of misallocated capital, billions of dollars of post-crisis stimulus has simply disappeared into the opaque pockets of Communist Party officials. Following the widely hailed conclusion of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum earlier this month in Beijing, where Chinese President Xi Jinping insisted once again on a “new type of great-power relations” between the United States and a rising China, these reports of waste on an immense scale should be a salutary reminder of the extent of the challenges the Chinese Communist Party faces before any supposedly inevitable transition of global power takes place.

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

According to the IMF, based on PPP China's economy is set to be the largest in the world this year - something that even Japan didn't accomplish during their rise in the mid 80's to the mid 90's. China now accounts for more global GDP growth than the USA, and that is why the Chinese real estate bubble is a global issue.

As has pointed out on a number of occasions, Easten European banks broke the camels back in 1932 after the world has seemingly put the crash of 1929 behind them. What we are seeing now is war causing weaknesses through Eastern Europe and banks collapsing in the far east region of the global economy.

So while some people tout declining oil prices as a good thing for the economy, the opposite might actually be true. Especially since - just like the early 1930's - European banks have yet to put the crash of 2008 behind them, and China has pumped seven trillion dollars into creating a new one.

Cheap oil’s economic benefits may be a big myth

[dothedd]

Oct 31, 2014 11:08:54 GMT -5 Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger said:

Let's call him, Mr. Optimistic.

China’s Property Prices May Decline Up to 10%, SouFun Says

"The People’s Bank of China’s new rules give homeowners who have paid off their mortgages and want a second property the same advantages as first-time buyers, including a 30 percent minimum down payment, compared with at least 60 percent previously."   

I'm shopping for a condo and I can't believe some of the "GREAT deals" I am being offered!  

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

I hear ya b. If the Chinese wouldn't have overbuilt by historic proportions the housing market would have been in great shape.

I'll bet there are some smokin' deals on condos right now, especially since you have been in your house for many years. Happy hunting!