主题：【讨论】再推荐一段PETIS的BLOG吧 -- aokrayd

我以经多次推荐过他的BLOG，估计恐怕都要惹人不高兴了。

http://mpettis.com/2009/01/all-but-the-kitchen-sink/

不知道大家是不是能看得到。这里有一段我最感兴趣的：

China has to make an adjustment from an economy overly dependent on exports to one more focused on domestic consumption. This adjustment was never going to be easy and there will definitely be a significant cost. Every other country in history that I can think of that successfully made the adjustment only did so with great difficulty, in the throes of crisis, and over decades. My worry, which I started discussing a few months ago, is that in their desperation to reduce the combined cost of the transition and the global slowdown — instead of forcing the transition during good times they waited until they were forced into it during a crisis — policymakers are going to throw everything they have against the resulting slowdown, including out-of-control bank expansion. While this may reduce the extent of the slowdown this year, as Dong Tao points out, it does so at the risk of creating much deeper instability in the banking system.

If the global crisis lasts only a year, this all-but-the-kitchen-sink strategy will probably have turned out to be a good one, but if, as I suspect, the crisis is going to last two or three years or more, weakening the banking system so early in the process may create much greater risks for China in the future. Piling up loans in such an undisciplined way and having the banks bear most of the heavy lifting in the fiscal expansion plans is good only if it does not result in a sharp rise in non-performing loans. That, most of us would agree, and Victor Shih has been especially worried about this possibility, is unlikely. If it does result in surging NPLs, however, in the near future policymakers will be seriously constrained in their ability to fund more expansion and may even find themselves caught up in a monetary contraction as bank portfolios go bad. The monetary side of policy making in China continues to be, in my opinion, the most difficult and uncertain part of the process, and I think it pays to be cautious.

I know, I know, it sounds like I am warning that China’s growth will be much lower than expected (I still think well below 7% for 2009), which is a bad thing, but if I am wrong, and growth is higher, that is an even worse thing. That sounds a little mean spirited, doesn’t it, and possibly inconsistent?

Maybe, but not necessarily. I have been arguing for three years that an adjustment in China is very necessary and that this adjustment does not involve choosing policies that lead either to good or bad outcomes but rather that lead to bad or worse outcomes. In other words Chinese overcapacity was based on excess investment and massive capital misallocation. There will be a significant cost to reorienting capital and resolving the earlier misallocation. This necessarily entails a slowing of the economy — reallocation of capital typically takes place disruptively and via bankruptcies.

If adjustment policies had been put into place during periods when the global economy was booming — always easier said then done, politically — the adjustment would have been more easily absorbed, but clearly that is no longer an option. There is however still a chance to postpone the adjustment by accelerating the misallocation process, but this only postpones the adjustment and, of course, increases its magnitude. This strategy may be politically necessary but ultimately represents a gamble on the duration of the global slowdown. If the duration is short and the slowdown light, it will have been a winning gamble, and once the world takes off again China can get serious about resolving the internal imbalances.

Of course if the global slowdown is long and deep, the gamble will have failed. That means, dear readers, that if Chinese GDP growth in 2009 is higher than I projected — say 8% – I will not whip out the party hats and favors. Instead I will immediately begin whining about the state of the banking system. Perhaps that indicates intellectual rigidity on my part, but I have been working with and studying developing economies long enough to know that problems that we identify may take longer to emerge than we expected, and often emerge differently from what we projected, but they almost always do emerge in the end.

中国目前的大好形势正是他所担忧的情况，以银行为代价。巨额的错置资金和呆账，完全会使中国重回到当年三角债的局面。中国现在所走的步子和当年日本几乎是如出一辙。09年以来的经济路线实际上是一场赌博（记得河里也有网友指出过），即赌外部环境的迅速改善从而能减低银行的风险。这实际上是错误地理解了美国的金融危机。表明上是金融危机，实质上这是资本主义经济危机的一个大爆发。不是一两年可以结束的，肯定将延续多年。所以外部环境不会改善反而会恶化。现在中美似乎都想维护以前的局面，但实际上是做不到的。

这里有另外一个LINK，我不知道这个作者了解的是不是实情。因为感觉这应当是非法的。不过这个作者从去年起一直长期看好中国，这个LINK里所指出的情况恐怕是很让人担忧的。这说明银行以经到了极其危险的地步了。

http://jubakpicks.com/2010/08/31/china-is-creating-bank-capital-out-of-thin-air-and-thats-not-good/

You’ve got to give China’s most recent effort to increase the capital of China’s largest banks big points for chutzpah.

That’s not exactly an endorsement for these banks as investments, however. Or of the soundness of China’s troubled banking system.

On August 24 Central Huijin Investments, which is the domestic arm of the government’s sovereign investment fund China Investment Corp., sold $6 billion in bonds in the first of a series of bond sales designed to raise $27 billion that Central Huijin will then invest in the country’s big state-controlled banks. The goal, laudable in itself, is to increase the capital reserves at these banks.

Only one odd twist: Figures show that about 80% of the August 24 bond offering was purchased by those very same state-controlled banks. Central Huijin, which owns a controlling interest in such banks as China Construction Bank, Bank of China, and Agricultural Bank of China, had ordered the banks to buy bonds in the offering.

So while it looks like the banks are getting new capital to hold against their increasingly large portfolios of bad loans, in reality the banks will be getting their own money back.For accounting purposes the money will show up as an increase in capital on the banks’ books.

And assets will get created at both Central Huijin and the big banks without any new capital at all entering the banking system.

To return the favor Central Huijin has said that it will subscribe to the rights offerings of Bank of China, China Construction Bank, and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. The sale of shares to existing investors through those rights offerings is intended to increase capital at those banks.

I assume that at some point that capital will get recycled back to Central Huijin when these same banks buy the investment fund’s bonds.

Regulators have required banks to keep more capital in reserve as a way to lessen risk in China’s banking system.

The game of musical capital that sends capital from the investment fund to banks and then back to the investment fund certainly does increase bank capital—on paper.

It’s pretty clear, though, that rather than cutting risk in the system, this game increases it.