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Samizdata quote of the day Today’s Sisyphus is China. More particularly, the Chinese authorities. They are determined to roll that boulder uphill. The path of least resistance for the boulder, however, is downward. Gravity, after all, is a bitch. The Chinese stock market is still comparatively young, and as stable as any toddler overwhelmed by parental expectations. With their boulder beset by the giant suck of gravity, China’s Sisyphus first cut rates, and trimmed banks’ reserve ratios.
The boulder continued to roll downhill.
– Tim Price
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A brilliant article.
“There are no markets anymore, just interventions”.
PhD bureaucrats in the West and Communist bureaucrats in China are far more intelligent about what economies need than markets correctly setting prices by supply and demand.
In other words Obama, Bernanke, Yellen, the Clintons, Communist crony capitalists and Politburo apparatchiks and so forth are smarter than Ray Dalio and Seth Klarman. Right?
JG III-
Smarter than? No.
Know what economies NEED? Yes.
But that ugly conflict between actual Economics, and Political “Science”, keeps raising it’s ugly head!
“Dependent upon…in the manner to which they have become accustomed” (self included)plays a key roll I think.
Mindful that some “special” folk may produce (NOT to imply “originate”)volumes describing why “Well, it’s complicated…”!, and instruct “impressionable” future allies EXACTLY how to defend their
fec…theses, “or else”….No, it is NOT!
China is a vast contradiction.
Its economic strength, which is indeed impressive, (and the foundation of its MILITARY power) depends on privately owned industry.
But the political legitimacy of the regime depends on Marxist ideology and honouring the memory of Mao.
The regime may be critical of Mao from time to time – but it can not break with him without destroying the foundations of its own legitimacy.
Mao the largest scale mass murderer in human history.
See “Mao: The Untold Story” as well as the historical works of Frank Dikotter such as “The Tragedy of Liberation” and “Mao’s Great Famine”.
As for those people who say the contradiction does not matter – I have three words for you.
You are wrong.
The Chinese financial system is thoroughly politicized, which is to say utterly corrupt. None of their data can be taken at face value, and economic motives for various courses of action routinely find themselves trumped by political considerations.
It may very well be that the greatest economic advantage the west has had over the last century is the gruesomely incompetent and murderous regimes that have repressed and hamstrung the industrious and enterprising Chinese people.
It will be an interesting day, indeed, if and when they manage to free themselves, and unleash the pent up energy that bubbles restlessly beneath the surface.
The Chinese remind me of something I wrote about some years ago, when discussing planning. Some people, emboldened by some small-scale success in their own lives and/or property, believe that they can extend their planning talents to regulate more and more of the rest of the world. Napoleon-like, they do not believe they have any limits, until they are suddenly up against their limits. Beijing tries to plan everything. I wonder if there is an enflamed part of the brain that could be usefully cut off, to protect all of us?