BC ECONOMY
Saved by @SteveeRogerr

1/16

It is a little frustrating to see the response many analysts had to the GDP growth data Chinese released today. These numbers aren’t especially good, and they certainly shouldn’t have been surprising. Back in April and May, when most

 2/16

were projecting negative or barely positive GDP growth for China in 2020 (the OECD, for example, expected China’s GDP to contract by 3.7%), I insisted that GDP growth for 2020 would be positive, and probably between 2% and 3%.

Today, it was reported as 2.3%. How did...
3/16

I know? Because I knew that while most of the healthy sources of Chinese growth would contract (except for exports, which would expand given Beijing’s intense supply-side response to the impact of Covid-19), Beijing was going to respond to a significant...
4/16

worsening of the healthy parts of its economy by unleashing enough of the unhealthy, non-productive growth it has long tried to constrain – basically real estate and infrastructure investment – in order to achieve as much economic activity as it...
5/16

needed for domestic political ends.

And that’s exactly what happened. While GDP grew by 6.5% in the fourth quarter, even with substantial tailwinds its retail sales measure – a proxy for consumption – was only up 4.6%, and it was down 3.9% overall in 2020.
6/16

That is pretty bad. Not only did the imbalances get worse in 2020, in other words, they even got worse in the fourth quarter, when we were expecting a partial consumption rebound.

Put differently, the consumption share of China’s GDP will have probably dropped...
7/16

by 3-4 percentage points this year, driving it almost back to its nadir in 2010-11. There is no way that this can be seen as good news, and is confirmed by the fact that while exports were up 3.6% in 2020, imports were down 1.1%. By the way those who say China’s trade...
8/16

surplus soared because Chinese factories opened first simply do not understand how the balance of payments work. The main way exports could have expanded while imports contracted is if the share workers retained of GDP contracted, and this is what happened. For all the...
9/16

promise that “external circulation” would be used to shift the Chinese economy towards “internal circulation”, what actually happened was a huge shift from internal to external circulation.

That isn't what anyone wanted, and the fact that more than 100% of...
10/16

China’s “recovery” was driven by supply-side measures, and that the economy is now more unbalanced than ever, has, of course, two important implications. First, China’s debt burden must worsen significantly, and of course it did in 2020, with China’s debt-to-GDP ratio...
11/16

rising by 25 percentage points, roughly 3-4 times its previous year’s increase. Second, that its trade surplus must soar, putting huge pressure on the rest of the world, and of course that happened too.

This means that China must reverse the consequence of 2020 as...
12/16

quickly as possible. We will probably see some partial reversal this year: consumption growth – along with the associated growth in business investment – should account for most if not all GDP growth this year. This will depend on whether Beijing is satisfied...
13/16

with 6-7% GDP growth or whether the authorities will demand more. If the former, the debt ratio should remain flat.

But without a serious – and politically difficult – push by Beijing, it isn’t clear that household income growth will even keep up with GDP growth...
14/16

in 2021, and it must sharply exceed GDP growth simply to return China to the unbalanced position from which it ended 2019. I think analysts should stop focusing on China’s GDP growth rate as if it could tell us about how well the Chinese economy performed in 2020.
15/16

It performed badly, like the rest of the world, and it is only because Beijing sharply increased all the things it has been trying to rein in that the GDP measure was able to rise. That’s like saying that if I can run faster after smoking a big bowl of crystal...
16/16

meth, it means I am healthier than I thought. To say that China was the only major economy to grow in 2020, in other words, is only to say that we are unable to distinguish between GDP and the economy.

More from Michael Pettis

Michael Pettis
Michael Pettis
@michaelxpettis
1/9

China is aging so rapidly that it urgently needs to address the problem of a rapidly declining work force in a slowly declining population. To give an idea of relative population changes among the three most populous countries, today

2/9

are 4.3 Chinese for every American and 4.7 Chinese of working age (ages 15-64), while there is just over 1 Chinese for every Indian and 1.1 Chinese of working age.

By the end of the century, however, there are expected to be 2.5 Chinese for every American and...

3/9

just 2.4 Chinese of working age, while there will be 1.4 Indians for every Chinese and 1.5 Indians of working age. Over the rest of this century, in other words, while China’s population declines quite rapidly relative to that of the two other most populous countries, it...

4/9

also switches from having a much better dependency ratio than either to having a worse one than either, with far more of its dependents being the elderly rather than children. In effect its working age population will drop by half relative to those of the other two.

5/9

This is going to be a very tough problem to resolve, although to the extent China succeeds, it will be very useful as an example for other countries. I am not sure they are going about it the right way, however. Making seniors make better use of smart technology sounds...
CHINA
Michael Pettis
Michael Pettis
@michaelxpettis
1/10

The latest IMF report on China was released yesterday and provides a lot of good information and intelligent insight on the Chinese economy. The IMF’s measure of China’s adjusted fiscal deficit (including estimated off-budget

2/10

spending) is projected to rise to 18.2% of GDP in 2020 from 12.6% in 2019. The authors correctly note the worrying surge in debt and warn that Beijing must continue to try to contain financial stability risks, but I notice that they are projecting average GDP...

3/10

growth of just over 6% between 2012 and 2025, including a downward revision of their 2021 forecast from 8.2% to 7.9% (which I still think is a little high).

As I’ve long argued, it will be impossible for China both to control the surge in debt and to achieve growth...

4/10

targets above the real underlying growth rate of the economy, which I suspect is 2-3% at best. I know the IMF is constrained in what it is able to say about the Chinese economy if it wants to remain part of the advisory process, but I do think that after 10 years...

5/10

of watching this game we should be a lot more explicit about the relationship between unreasonably high GDP growth targets and high credit growth. There really is no point in advising Beijing to get financial risks under control while at the same time approving...
WORLD
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Michael Pettis
Michael Pettis
@michaelxpettis
1/9

While debt-to-GDP ratios already have a limited but very misunderstood use, it seems economists are finding bright new ways of misunderstanding them. Now we say that when nominal interest rates are lower than nominal growth rates, the

2/9

downward pressure on the debt-to-GDP ratio makes rising government debt and larger government deficits more sustainable and more easily justified.

This is totally confused. When the nominal interest rate is lower than the nominal GDP growth rate, it only means that net...

3/9

borrowers are getting a disproportionate share of growth relative to net lenders. This in and of itself changes the comparability of the debt-to-GDP ratio, so the fact that the ratio may decline tells us nothing about its sustainability which, I'm glad to say, isn't...

4/9

a mistake Olivier Blanchard makes in this article.

At least three things matter. First, whether or not rising debt is sustainable depends almost wholly on underlying conditions in the real economy, and only trivially on the arithmetical relationship between...

5/9

the interest rate and the growth rate. Second, this approach simply assumes away financial distress costs, in which case debt capacity is infinite anyway and the interest rate becomes irrelevant. And third, it assumes that the nominal debt level matters independently...
GOVERNMENT
Michael Pettis
Michael Pettis
@michaelxpettis
1/11

An article worth thinking about: “As changes to the world structure accelerate, China’s rule is in sharp contrast with the turmoil in the West,” says Beijing.

I agree, but I draw a different conclusion. The world is certainly currently

2/11

through "a period of turbulent change", in Beijing’s words, and great structural adjustments, but usually when that happens, what matters in the long run is not how stable a system seems but rather how successfully political, economic and social institutions adjust to...

3/11

the new conditions. In the past these adjustments have almost always been messy, chaotic, and disheartening to most, but ultimately they were necessary even if we were unable to judge them so at the time.

I would argue that the world today is undergoing both a reversal...

4/11

and rejection of the current model of globalization and an urgent need for most countries in the world, including China, to initiate a major rebalancing of the way income and wealth (and ultimately political power) is distributed, but there are few if any historical...

5/11

precedents in which this level of restructuring and rebalancing have been neat or orderly.

Beijing's response, which is to do whatever it takes to maintain stability, may look good in the short term, as this strategy always does, but if it prevents the necessary...
GOVERNMENT
Michael Pettis
Michael Pettis
@michaelxpettis
1/9

Good article. But while growing international criticism and rising trade tensions may have had some impact, as the article suggests, I don’t think they really explain the great reversal in BRI lending of the past few years.

2/9

As I have been writing since 2011, China’s development lending was always likely to follow the pattern of other countries when they first “went out” (e.g. the US in the 1920s, USSR in the 1950s, Japan in the late 1970s). Because of little historical...

3/9

knowledge and no previous experience, an early rapid rise in development lending would be driven mainly by underestimating risk and an overestimation of their own business "success" in making loans, and would of course be further supported by geopolitical ambitions.

4/9

This combination would inevitably lead to bad lending decisions, followed just as inevitably by debt restructuring, loan losses, and a contraction in development lending. In the 1920s, for example, the US set off quite explicitly and aggressively to displace England in...

5/9

Latin America, and American businesses and banks assumed they “understood” Latin America much better than the English did, in spite of the vast English experience there, but their early displacement of British lending only resulted in the huge loan losses of the 1930s.
ECONOMY

More from Economy

micky finn
micky finn
@critpraxis
For those who haven’t heard, we are witnessing a globally coordinated plan (conspiracy) to use fear and safety as cover for a #GreatReset of the world economy & society. This is a planned and internationally coordinated strategy by the most powerful global elites-the ruling class

The aim of the global ruling class is to refashion global capitalism into what we can call neo-feudalist technocratic bio-fascism-or ‘global fascism’ for short.

The aim is for remaining liberal democratic rights and freedoms that have been in place at least formally in the ‘west’ for the last few hundred years to be eroded and withdrawn.

There’s lots of different terminology and branding, for example: Great Reset, Fourth Industrial Revolution, Technocracy. The main aim of this plan is the concentration of power over capital, wealth, people and nature in the hands of a the very largest corporations and monopolies.

This plan for a new phase of global capitalism is enabled by national states and governments, international organisations & quangos (EU, UN, NATO, IMF, WTO, WHO, Gates, GAVI). With no clear lines between state and non-state actors, this is also a form of global corporatism.
ECONOMY
Michael Pettis
Michael Pettis
@michaelxpettis
1/10

This is a really tough problem to resolve, especially if the massive increase in inflows from the trade and financial accounts are sustained, as I expect they will be well into 2021.

Clearly the PBoC would like to see the RMB gradually...

2/10

strengthen. This would keep financial markets stable and promote rebalancing, but the RMB has already strengthened a lot, and this puts unwanted pressure on exporters and “international circulation”.

Although PBoC reserves have been flat, other state-controlled Chinese...

3/10

banks have bought large amounts of dollars, but this is expensive. If these banks have half a trillion dollars of exposure, for example, they are losing at least $15-17 billion annually on negative carry, plus another $20-30 billion just this year from the rise of the RMB.

4/10

Beijing seems also to be trying other measures to slow the rise. The regulators are relaxing capital controls on outflows. In mid October the PBoC cut to zero the reserve requirement ratio for banks doing FX forward trading. This requirement was created in 2018 to reduce...

5/10

downward pressure on the RMB. In late October it suspended the counter-cyclical factor in RMB fixing, which was introduced in 2017 also to reduce downward currency pressure. But in both cases while the RMB dropped a few pips on the news, it quickly resumed its upward climb.
ECONOMY
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Moses Kagan
Moses Kagan
@moseskagan
1/ How to raise a real estate fund (and, ideally, avoid getting sued)

Have warned everyone it’s better to raise capital deal-by-deal, bc it’s easier to raise & bc it's better for the sponsor. Still, there’s interest in learning how to do a fund… so, here goes.

2/ Don’t think of doing this unless you have a record of successful deals, ideally mostly/all in the same asset class / strategy.

Remember: You will be asking LPs to invest in YOU; they need to feel like you know what you’re doing.

3/ Really helps to have a list of prospective LPs BEFORE you start your raise. The more high-quality leads you have, the more likely you are to succeed. (I built my list via my blog initially; now twitter leads predominate - see my bio.)

4/ Find an experienced attorney. Doesn’t need to be a huge, expensive firm, but you want someone who has done a lot of private offerings before. Don’t agree to a big fee yet… at first, you just want a few hrs of her time for advice.

5/ Find an experienced CPA. Ideally, your existing CPA has worked on a lot of private deals before. If not, get a new one. Prospective LPs need confidence that someone good is overseeing the bookkeeping and doing the tax prep.
ECONOMY
Ben Norton
Ben Norton
@BenjaminNorton
Priyamvada Gopal is part of a class of elite academics in the imperial core who teach the ruling class, and use woke radlib rhetoric to justify current Western imperial aggression.

She echoes propaganda against Syria, Iran, and China and is silent about Venezuela, Nicaragua, etc


Anti-anti-imperialist Cambridge University Professor @PriyamvadaGopal smears opponents of the Western neocolonial war on Syria as "Assadists"

Would she ever call liberal imperialist Obama a "blood-soaked cretin"? He has exponentially more blood on


The CIA spent over a billion dollars per year arming and training "rebels" who massacred and ethnically cleansed Syrian civilians, especially religious minorities.

But anti-anti-imperialist @PriyamvadaGopal insists these CIA-backed contras are


This was elite anti-anti-imperialist Cambridge University gatekeeper @PriyamvadaGopal's response right after colonial powers the US, UK, and France bombed Syria in April 2018 on bogus lies that have since been


Of course anti-anti-imperialist Cambridge Professor @PriyamvadaGopal's is also a supporter of the neoliberal imperialist European Union -- one of the key institutions of European necolonialism
ECONOMY
jerry
jerry
@ThinkingLSD
Let's discuss how little you actually understand about economics and energy.

The first thing to understand is that energy is not globally fungible. Electricity decays as it leaves its point of origin; it’s expensive to transport. There is a huge excess (hydro) in many areas.


In other words, it can also be variable. It's estimated that in Sichuan there is twice as much electricity produced as is needed during the rainy season. Indeed, there is seasonality to how Bitcoin mining works. You can see here:

Bitcoin EXPORTS energy in this scenario. Fun fact, most industrial nations would steer this excess capacity towards refining aluminum by melting bauxite ore, which is very energy intensive.

You wouldn't argue that we are producing *too much* electricity from renewables, right?

"But what about the carbon footprint! ITS HUGE!"

Many previous estimates have quite faulty methods and don't take into account the actual energy sources. Is it fair to put a GHG equivalent on hydro or solar power? That would seem a bit disingenuous, no?

Well that's exactly what some have done.
ECONOMY

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Aditya Todmal
Aditya Todmal
@AdityaTodmal
Boss is always Boss @Mitesh_Engr

Mitesh Sir's FUTURES BREAKOUT TRADES 101:

• How to pick stocks at right time?
• What to look for?
• Importance of BO post consolidation
• How to manage SL
• How to get huge profits
• Multiple Examples

In collaboration with @niki_poojary


Importance of Trading only BO or BD stocks by @Mitesh_Engr Sir: 👇

•Two questions to always ask:

~Why stock is going up/down and when?
~ Who is behind big up/down and when?

• Trade only stocks with Momentum
• Instant results
• Small SL or huge profits


Sir's take on how to Trade: 👇

• Observe fight between buyer & seller
• Position will be created within first 3 hours
• Operators will win
• Just find BO or BD
• Look for huge volume support
• Give company to operators
• ATP importance explained


How to take trade in Breakout/Breakdown stocks by @Mitesh_Engr Sir: 👇

• Check Support & Resistance
• Wait for 2-3 months consolidation
• Surge in volumes
• Trade on 3 min charts
• Small SL
• Keep trailing
• Always pyramid in profit


When and Why to Pyramid? By @Mitesh_Engr Sir

• Adding to winning positions
• Signals of continued strength
• Potentially large profits
• An Example of pyramiding in one of his trades
MPLEARNINGS , ALL , MPTRADERULES
KrishnaLeela
KrishnaLeela
@Talesofkrishna
🌿𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚 𝒐𝒇 𝒂 𝑺𝒕𝒂𝒓 : 𝑫𝒉𝒓𝒖𝒗𝒂 & 𝑽𝒊𝒔𝒉𝒏𝒖

Once upon a time there was a Raja named Uttānapāda born of Svayambhuva Manu,1st man on earth.He had 2 beautiful wives - Suniti & Suruchi & two sons were born of them Dhruva & Uttama respectively.
#talesofkrishna https://t.co/E85MTPkF9W


Now Suniti was the daughter of a tribal chief while Suruchi was the daughter of a rich king. Hence Suruchi was always favored the most by Raja while Suniti was ignored. But while Suniti was gentle & kind hearted by nature Suruchi was venomous inside.
#KrishnaLeela


The story is of a time when ideally the eldest son of the king becomes the heir to the throne. Hence the sinhasan of the Raja belonged to Dhruva.This is why Suruchi who was the 2nd wife nourished poison in her heart for Dhruva as she knew her son will never get the throne.


One day when Dhruva was just 5 years old he went on to sit on his father's lap. Suruchi, the jealous queen, got enraged and shoved him away from Raja as she never wanted Raja to shower Dhruva with his fatherly affection.


Dhruva protested questioning his step mother "why can't i sit on my own father's lap?" A furious Suruchi berated him saying "only God can allow him that privilege. Go ask him"
RELIGION
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Reagan Gomez
Reagan Gomez
@ReaganGomez
Black movie goers know which movies are for us and which films aren’t. We really don’t like our stories being made into films that center (and humanize) people that hate us. The filmmakers/studio know that by naming the film “The Green Book”, black movie goers...

...are going to be expecting a story about black people trying to safely navigate the country (real history) and instead will get a white savior film. Like folks went to see Detroit thinking it was about the riots...

Anywhoo, I know Mahershela is fantastic in it. He was the best thing about the trailer. As rich as the history behind the creation of ‘The Green Book’ is/was, as amazing as Dr. Don Shirley’s story is, WHY is this film about a random, racist driver and his family?

This feeds into the ignorant anti-Black American stereotype of “Black Americans don’t have any culture/history/mythology” or whatever. That our stories are still both being used while simultaneously erased in 2018 is wild to me. It’s gonna clean up come award season. 🤦🏾‍♀️

And now, if black filmmakers WANTED to make a film about The Greenbook, guess what it can’t be called🙃. Just like if someone wanted to make a film about the actual Detroit riots, guess what it can’t be called? Then those filmmakers would run into...
CULTURE
Anshul Pandey
Anshul Pandey
@Anshulspiritual
THE NOTICEABLE SIGNS OBSERVED ON IMPENDING DEATH(मृत्यु के संकेत या चिन्ह)

As per Skanda Puran, Kartikeya had narrated to Muni Agastya about the signs of the coming death. This is as per this ancient scripture.


If one experiences the air coming out of right nostril continuously then it is observed that the person dies within three years. If the breathing is continuous towards upper side from both the nostrils, then the person can die within two three days.

If the breathing is through the mouth instead of the nostrils then the person may live only for two days. The person should take into coignance these signs of the occurance of any sudden death.

As per astrology when the Surya is in the 7th house and Chandrama is in its own house and the breathing is only through the right nostril then the danger exists. If you see a yellow black coloured figure who becomes invisible immediately then the life span is limited to 2 years.

If any person sneezes, passes urine, stool and semen all together he has only a year more to live. If a person sees blue coloured snakes flying in the sky then he has only six more months to live. If a person sees any thing opposite to its real self like colours
RELIGION
Sheetal Rijhwani
Sheetal Rijhwani
@RijhwaniSheetal
How you can filter stocks for Intraday trades - 🧵

As a kid, we would do homework before school the next day - you have to do homework here too. A specific sector performs on a particular day and studying things a day before will help you spot that particular sector. (1/11)

To prepare for the next trading day, you got to check the Index charts of all sectors. You got to keep an eye on a specific Index if you see a few factors:

- If any Index closed exactly at the resistance, you can get a trade on either side on the next day. (2/11)

- If it gave a rejection candle at resistance.

- If any Index closed exactly at support, you can get a trade on either side the following day.

- If there was a bullish signal at the support.

- If any Index gave a breakout or breakdown and then gave a good closing. (3/11)

- If any Index has taken support at 50 or 200 EMA.

Once you spot the Index, look at all the stocks in that particular Index. Pick at least 3-4 stocks from that Index and add them to your watchlist for the next day. It's ideal to check both higher and lower timeframes. (4/11)

What you should do next day? (When I am unable to check Indices and stocks a day before, I sometimes directly start with this process.)

- Start with checking the top gainers/losers list. I observe market from 9:15 to 9:45am to check the sectors performing well on that day.(5/11)
SCREENERS , ALL , INTRADAY STRATEGIES