Jul
9
- Let’s pause for a second. In the 1990s, the Chinese banking system basically collapsed. To revive it, the Chinese government took bad loans from banks’ balance sheets and put them into off-balance-sheet vehicles (Enron would be proud of that financial ingenuity). Banks started to function as though nothing had happened. To finance the off-balance-sheet assets, the government set deposit interest rates at very low levels: 1% or so. In a country with a very high savings rate and 5% inflation, this resulted in a 4% annual loss of purchasing power.
- Chinese consumers were punished severely over the last 10 years for the banking crisis of the late ’90s. And they’ll be punished even more soon. Keeping money in the bank didn’t make that much sense, and investment alternatives were limited. However, they could invest in an asset that supposedly never declines in price – a house or condo. So they did. As China slams the brakes on the economy and as housing prices fall, the banks will lose plenty of money. But more importantly, it is the people who bought tremendously overpriced houses, and their relatives who lent them money, who will lose. The wealth and hard work of more than one generation will be lost, and this kind of pain leads to political unrest.
