One River CIO “We’re Willing Participants In Our Own Demise”
With the world’s focus falling on Beijing this week, where president Xi Jinping give a glowing account of China’s future during the 19th Party Congress, boasting that “the banner of scientific socialism with Chinese characteristics is now flying high and proud for all to see,” not all are impressed by China’s vision of the world in which China sees itself as increasingly taking over from the US as the world’s superpower. And it’s not just stories about China’s neverending behind the scenes bailouts of anything that may telegraph a hard landing for the economy (as decribed in “China’s Government Is Expected To Buy 24% Of All Residential Real Estate For Sale In 2017“); it’s the country’s entire financial system, which Kyle Bass has been shorting for nearly two years now but which he has failed to recognize now holds the entire world hostage: if it goes, so does the global financial system, unleashing a worldwide depression the likes of which have not been seen.
Here is Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Mgmt, explaining why everyone is wrong about the $35 trillion Chinese financial system, and yet how Beijing has figured out a way to become a parasite on the global financial system, resulting in an outcome in which “we’re willing participants in our own demise.”
“China’s financial system is a hermetically sealed snow globe,” he said. “They’ve built a system to resemble ours on the surface, but scratch it and you discover something altogether foreign.”
China has banks. They lend money. But pierce the patina and you find a vast subsidy machine, with no cold-blooded allocation of capital. There are no defaults to speak of; just bailouts, no reckonings.
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