{"id":43882,"date":"2019-02-19T08:15:04","date_gmt":"2019-02-19T13:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43882"},"modified":"2019-02-19T08:15:06","modified_gmt":"2019-02-19T13:15:06","slug":"credit-exhaustion-is-global","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43882","title":{"rendered":"Credit Exhaustion Is Global"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"http:\/\/charleshughsmith.blogspot.com\/2019\/02\/credit-exhaustion-is-global.html\">Credit Exhaustion Is Global<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Europe is awash in credit exhaustion, and so is China.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The signs are everywhere: credit exhaustion is global<\/strong>, and that means the global growth story is over: revenues and profits are all sliding as lending dries up and defaults pile up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>What is credit exhaustion? Qualified buyers don&#8217;t want to borrow more<\/strong>, leaving only the unqualified or speculators seeking to save a marginal bet gone bad with one more loan (which will soon be in default).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Lenders are faced with a lose-lose choice:<\/strong>\u00a0either stop lending to unqualified borrowers and speculators, and lose the loan-origination fees, or issue the loans and take the immense losses when the punters and gamblers default.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Europe is awash in credit exhaustion, and so is China.<\/strong>\u00a0China&#8217;s situation is unique, as credit expansion has been propping up the entire economy, from household wealth to corporate speculation to the export sector.As this article explains,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/the-china-story-that-is-far-bigger-than-apple-11546598005\">The China Story That Is Far Bigger Than Apple<\/a>, China&#8217;s trade balance&#8211;trade surpluses for decades&#8211;is close to slipping into trade deficits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the same time, China&#8217;s once-mighty pool of savings has diminished as consumption has risen. As a result, China now needs foreign investment more than it did in the previous era.Chinese businesses have borrowed around $2 trillion in US dollar-denominated debt, requiring the acquisition of dollars to service the debt.So far this sounds like a typical case of a fast-growth economy maturing into a trade-deficit, debt-dependent consumption economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>What the article misses is the staggering rise in the cost of living in China over the past two decades.<\/strong>\u00a0Some services are still affordable to the masses&#8211;subway fares are extremely cheap&#8211;and private healthcare is a mere fraction of healthcare costs in the U.S.But other costs&#8211;housing, food, clothing, etc.&#8211;&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Credit Exhaustion Is Global Europe is awash in credit exhaustion, and so is China. The signs are everywhere: credit exhaustion is global, and that means the global growth story is over: revenues and profits are all sliding as lending dries up and defaults pile up. What is credit exhaustion? Qualified buyers don&#8217;t want to borrow [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[127,175,24434],"class_list":["post-43882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-charles-hugh-smith","tag-credit","tag-credit-exhaustion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43882"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43883,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43882\/revisions\/43883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}