PPCC: Pisitófilos Creditófagos. Verano 2023

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.expansion.com/inmobiliario/2023/08/26/64e910ba468aebf90a8b4581.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.expansion.com/economia/financial-times/2023/08/24/64e76488e5fdea851c8b460b.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.expansion.com/economia/2023/08/26/64e8ec36e5fdea5d588b4590.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.expansion.com/economia/2023/08/26/64e8ebed468aebf90a8b456e.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.expansion.com/economia/financial-times/2023/08/25/64e8cf5ae5fdeaf0118b461a.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.expansion.com/economia/financial-times/2023/08/25/64e8d893e5fdea851c8b4634.html

Saludos.

[sudden and sharp]

No es país para propietarios

Porque una peculiaridad del mercado inmobiliario chino es que las familias no compran, según la ley, una casa de por vida sino su usufructo por un máximo de 70 años. Este es un tema que genera un gran revuelo porque, pese a que algunos mandatarios han asegurado que no se ejecutará la norma, los ciudadanos tienen dudas. "Muchos chinos invierten en el extranjero y compran casa fuera para asegurarse que van a dejar una herencia a sus hijos. No sabemos qué va a pasar con las viviendas. La ley dice que hoy las familias se hipotecan por un derechos de uso, pero la propiedad es del Gobierno", nos señalan en Shanghái.

https://www.elconfidencial.com/mundo/2023-08-27/favelas-chinas-debilidad-economica_3722168/





Nos pasamos el día hablando de China... y no tenemos --por regla general, y me incluyo--; ni puñetera idea de lo que pasa allí.



 
Feudalismo medieval.

[Derby]

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/aug/27/multipolar-world-dollars-dominance-wont-last-forever-brics

In a multipolar world the dollar’s dominance won’t last forever, Larry Elliott

While we shouldn’t read too much into the Brics expansion, the geopolitical landscape is shifting

Two big international gatherings took place last week. The one that was held in the Rocky Mountain resort of Jackson Hole was a demonstration of the grip the US has on the global economy. The one that was held in Johannesburg was evidence of the challenge posed to America from the leading emerging market countries.

Let’s start with Jackson Hole, where Jerome Powell took centre stage. What the head of America’s central bank had to say about interest rates clearly mattered for the US, where the economy has so far emerged relatively unscathed from the severest tightening of policy in four decades. The message was that the battle against inflation was not over and further increases in interest rates were possible.

But, by virtue of the dollar’s position as the world’s principal reserve currency, what Powell and his colleagues at the Federal Reserve do in the coming months affects life well beyond America’s shores. Commodities such as oil are priced in dollars. Countries that borrow in dollars can see their repayments soar if the US currency rises in value. Countries that run current-account surpluses use the proceeds to buy US Treasury bonds, enabling the US to run massive trade and budget deficits.

There is nothing new in this. It is the way the international financial system has operated since the second world war. Unsurprisingly, Washington wants the status quo to continue because it allows the US to fund its twin deficits without needing to take the tough deflationary action that would be demanded of less privileged countries.

Equally unsurprisingly, the US’s financial hegemony is not universally popular. One of the motivations for the creation of the euro was that a European single currency would be a rival reserve currency to the dollar. Last week’s gathering in Johannesburg of the Brics – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – was another attempt to mount a challenge to the US-dominated international order.

There are a number of reasons for this. Looked at from the perspective of a developing country, the way the global economy is run looks like a stitch-up. The US and its western allies have controlled the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank since they were founded in 1944, to the extent that every IMF managing director has been a European and every World Bank president an American. By virtue of their permanent seats on the UN security council, the US, Britain and France can veto any initiatives they don’t like. Between them, the US and the EU can prevent the leading developing nations exerting any real influence at the World Trade Organization.

What’s more, it is clear that this is not the unipolar world that policymakers in the US envisaged after the break-up of the Soviet Union. China has emerged as a genuine rival, and has been successfully expanding its sphere of influence. One illustration of this is a global map produced by the consultancy Capital Economics that divides the world into countries that are strongly aligned or lean towards either the US or China. Outside the rich, developed nations of North America, Europe, Japan and Australasia, there are few countries strongly aligned with the US, and the only emerging economies of note leaning towards Washington are India and Vietnam.

By contrast, most of Africa is seen as aligned or leaning towards China, as is most of Asia and a significant chunk of South America.

Is this that much of a shock? Not really. The Brics have their own bank, which, in contrast to the strict conditions demanded by the IMF and the World Bank, offers loans on a no-strings attached basis. The selfish behaviour of the G7 countries – the US, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and Canada – when they hoarded vaccines during the Covid-19 crisis was not exactly conducive to winning friends in the emerging world.

The shift in the geopolitical landscape was demonstrated by the countries invited to join the Brics club at last week’s summit: three were oil producers (Saudi Arabia, Iran and the UAE); two were from Africa (Egypt and Ethiopia) and one (Argentina) was from South America.

It would be unwise to read too much into the Brics expansion. There are tensions between China and India, and between Saudi Arabia and Iran, while South Africa is eager to maintain good relations with the west. Like the G7, the Brics summits are essentially talkfests, where little of substance is decided. Having 11 members rather than five increases the chances of disagreement. Talk of a common Brics currency is for the birds.

What’s more, it will take years – perhaps decades – for the Brics to create a financial infrastructure similar to that which supports the dollar. Crucially, investors would need to be as willing to hold bonds denominated in a non-dollar currency as they are to hold US Treasury bonds. The dollar’s dominance is not under immediate threat.

But that might not always been the case. Saudi Arabia’s decision to join the Brics also poses a threat to the dollar’s dominance. The oil-rich kingdom has traditionally been a reliable US ally in the Middle East but relations between Washington and Riyadh have recently cooled markedly. The expectation is that the Saudis will increasingly accept payment for oil from other Brics members in their own currencies.

The US Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, has expressed concerns about the long-term consequences of using financial sanctions as a tool of American foreign policy, saying there was a risk “over time it could undermine the hegemony of the dollar”.

Yellen is right to be worried. A single, all-powerful reserve currency sits oddly with a multipolar world. It won’t happen overnight but a challenge to the dollar is coming.

[Derby]

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/china-small-stimulus-shift-from-debt-intensive-economic-growth-by-stephen-s-roach-2023-08

China’s Policy Paralysis, STEPHEN S. ROACH

An overly indebted Chinese economy cannot afford to roll out a massive stimulus, even when confronting the possibility of a full-blown property-market crisis. China thus faces a much slower growth trajectory for the foreseeable future, unless policymakers can successfully implement consumer-led rebalancing.

NEW HAVEN – Economist Min Zhu, speaking at a World Economic Forum panel in China in late June, was among the first to hint at China’s underwhelming post-COVID policy stimulus. Zhu, a former deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, as well as a former deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), is no casual observer of the Chinese economy and its role in the world. He is also one of my oldest and wisest friends in China, and I have learned to take his views very seriously.

Zhu’s prediction has proven to be accurate. Despite a promising snapback after the abrupt zero-COVID exit, China’s economic rebound has faltered in recent months. Many had hoped that the government would respond to this shortfall and introduce another large-scale stimulus package, as is its usual practice. Yet a series of announcements in mid-August from the PBOC, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), and the State Council has dashed those hopes.

The PBOC guided short-term lending rates only marginally lower, while the CSRC focused on enhancing market mechanisms, including longer trading sessions, reduced brokerage fees, and support for stock buybacks. The State Council, for its part, scrambled to slow the carnage in the property sector, as Country Garden faces liquidity pressures and Evergrande filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States.

For a country that has long prided itself on implementing proactive policies to preempt economic pressures, the latest stimulus measures are surprisingly reactive. The question is why. Zhu, in his remarks during the WEF panel, pointed to China’s debt problem.

By now, of course, the broad dimensions of China’s debt problem are well known. According to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), non-financial debt stood at 297% of GDP at the end of 2022. That is more than double the ratio at the onset of the global financial crisis in late 2008, when it was 139%, and up more than 100 percentage points since late 2012, when Xi Jinping became General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

Zhu’s argument is straightforward: an over-leveraged Chinese economy cannot afford another round of debt-financed stimulus. Chinese policymakers have been attuned to the risks of a debt build-up since 2016, when the now-infamous “authoritative person” publicly warned that China faced potential Japanization.

But understanding a lesson is different from acting on it. While China clearly needs to wean itself off debt-fueled growth, it is less clear why that hasn’t happened yet.

The answer lies in the mix of the Chinese debt cycle. Over the first decade of Xi’s leadership, BIS data reveal that growth in corporate debt accounted for 47% of the total increase in China’s indebtedness, the share of government debt was 30%, and household debt made up the remaining 23%.

Researchers at the International Monetary Fund have identified two main reasons for this debt surge: increased leverage of debt-intensive, low-return state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and a higher concentration of public indebtedness in local-government financing vehicles. The former is a byproduct of the unmistakable shift in economic power from the private sector back to the state sector under Xi’s leadership. The latter is an outgrowth of runaway land sales and property development, which have now hit a wall.

That gets to the essence of Zhu’s point about Chinese stimulus: enough is enough. By opting for surprisingly small measures, CPC leadership is drawing a line in the sand. Although the Chinese authorities would never openly admit to poor stewardship of the economy, increasingly worrisome debt dynamics in SOEs, combined with the possibility of a full-blown property-market crisis, have left them with no choice but to shift away from the current unsustainable growth model.

Their decision has important implications for China’s economic future. Absent support from the property sector, which accounts for roughly 25-30% of GDP, a Japan-like sustained shortfall of economic growth is a distinct possibility.

Mindful of this, the Chinese government has made yet another push for consumer-led rebalancing, with a 20-point plan released in late July. This should be music to my ears, given that I have written two books on the topic and for years have taught a course about it at Yale. But a careful look at the plan leaves me cold.

Specifically, the new consumer plan makes no mention of strengthening the social safety net – especially health care and pensions – for a rapidly aging population. Yet, unless this urgent challenge is addressed, Chinese families will continue to opt for fear-driven precautionary saving over discretionary consumption.

Barring a successful consumer-led rebalancing, it will be exceedingly difficult for China to recapture its previous growth momentum. Since the 2008 global financial crisis, the economy has grown about 7%, on average, accounting for nearly 35% of the cumulative increase in world GDP during the same period. If China’s growth rate slows to 3-4% – a distinct possibility – its contribution to global growth will be halved, with obvious knock-on effects for the rest of the world.

While the media focused on Zhu’s prediction that the Chinese government would not roll out a massive stimulus, his main point at the WEF panel was that a growth shortfall would necessitate structural reforms – an argument that I have also made over the years. Yet the benefits of such reforms, if they do occur, are likely to be realized only in the long term, while the headwinds of China’s current shortfall are blowing fiercely in the here and now. As China’s most powerful leader since Mao, the increasingly muscular, security-focused Xi seems willing to accept this tradeoff for the time being.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://cincodias.elpais.com/opinion/2023-08-28/la-marea-de-los-tipos-ya-llega-al-ladrillo.html

https://cincodias.elpais.com/companias/2023-08-28/el-sector-promotor-se-enfrenta-a-su-mayor-paron-desde-el-estallido-de-la-burbuja-inmobiliaria.html

https://cincodias.elpais.com/economia/2023-08-28/la-tormenta-sobre-la-vivienda-traera-la-primera-caida-de-precio-a-final-de-ano.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://cincodias.elpais.com/companias/2023-08-28/la-banca-gastara-un-tercio-de-su-exceso-de-capital-para-remunerar-a-los-accionistas.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://cincodias.elpais.com/companias/2023-08-28/marriott-jin-jiang-y-hilton-superan-el-millon-de-habitaciones.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://elpais.com/economia/2023-08-27/el-gigante-inmobiliario-chino-evergrande-perdio-4198-millones-de-euros-en-el-primer-semestre.html

https://www.pressreader.com/spain/Cinco-Dias/20230828/page/9/textview

Evergrande reconoce pérdidas de 4.200 millones

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://cincodias.elpais.com/fondos-y-planes/2023-08-28/la-banca-paga-mas-por-los-depositos-a-cambio-de-contratar-fondos.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://cincodias.elpais.com/mercados-financieros/2023-08-28/estan-los-inversores-preparados-para-la-deseada-caida-de-la-inflacion.html

Saludos.