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> is this still "the next Lehman brothers"?

No, and it never was.

With Lehman, the banks stopped lending to Lehman and then to everyone else. In China, Beijing can let Evergrande default while compelling lending to peripheral players. Thise players know this. The market knows this. That makes contagion risk de minimis. (For Western central banks, the analogous policy tool is “extraordinary measures,” i.e. committing to buying everything in sight.)

Keep in mind that Evergrande is defaulting because Beijing implemented debt limits. They’re wilfully deflating the bubble American policymakers ignored in ‘08. I’m a China hawk. But this whole episode is a show of strength for their system.



If it were a show of strength in the system why did they let the bubble get so big in the first place?

They've been using real estate as a place to stash everything bad for a while:

https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/what-if-xi-jinping-just-is...


Less a show of strength IMO and more of a using the fire extinguisher to put out a fire.


> They’re wilfully deflating the bubble American policymakers ignored in ‘08.

The Fed was aware of the real estate bubble and tried to deflate it in 07-08. But it's hard to deflate a bubble gradually without triggering a catastrophic downturn.

The Fed played a huge role in triggering the recession. They intended to deflate the housing bubble, but didn't realize it would cause several banks to implode and risk the entire financial system.


They knew it was too hot, but the market failure in the bond rating market hadn't been identified so they were operating off of flawed information.

The real failure of the Fed was being way too tight monetarily after the crisis started though.


It looks like they went from too tight to too loose:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BOGMBASE

I’m not an economist but that graph looks unhealthy.


Monetary base is irrelevant without looking at velocity (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V)

The Fed has been much more on point this time around than it was in 2008.




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