Sean Maher

Will U.S. Growth Beat China's in 2009?

Shaun, indeed they have, and the PBOC is now frantically slashing rates, but given the lags in monetary policy it's all too late to avert a deep slowdown in 2009...the point is that the Fed has been quick to react to the looming US slowdown from late 2007, while the PBOC has retained a very tight stance (notably to squeeze rampant real estate speculation) until very recently, exacerbated by the reversal of opaque speculative flows circumventing official capital controls. Controlling an economy via monetary policy is like steering a supertanker, and China is now way off course.


On Dec 17 08:46 AM Shaun Rein wrote:

> "A key mistake made by the Fed in the 1930s Depression (and one identified
> by Ben Bernanke in his PhD thesis) was to constrict money supply
> at a critical juncture after the Wall Street crash, and that is an
> error the current Fed is taking extreme pains not to repeat. However,
> Chinese authorities, lacking that institutional memory, are set to
> repeat this mistake just as the country's merchandise exports slump
> despite ever increasing export subsidies and a recently depreciating
> currency."
>
> Ummm... China announced 2 days ago that it was increasing money supply
> by 17%...