China trade data

[hardnox]

http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2014/04/09/asia-markets-live-blog-more-trade-deficit-disorder-f...

Pretty horrible. As far as grains go, probably not very telling as to near term demand as you'd assume that grain is pretty low on the hierarchy of need.

Also hard to know what to make of anything since, as the one analyst sort of suggests, the Chinese government's data is about as reliable as the Enron accounting department's.

Probably significant to the macro picture, though. Who is the world's growth engine going to be if China's historic credit expansion has run out of steam?

[BA Deere]

FWIW  Gartman on China

http://dennisgartman.blogspot.com/2014/04/gartman-buyer-of-china.html

[hardnox]

Be my guest. Actually ShComp has probably discounted a soft landing.

Perhaps the party oligarchs can manage to deflate an historic credit bubble better than everyone else has in history has.

And as Lincoln Steffens said following his guided tour of the Societ Union, "I've seen the future and it works!"

[hardnox]

Taking our recent mortgage creit bubble as an example, it defies logic to assume that you can expand credit that fast via sound underwriting.

[hardnox]

BTW, much buzz about big US banks being very aggressive in the commercial lending markets with "covenant lite" type loans.

For the austerian types, might be construed as evidence that when you pile a lot more money into banks in a weak loan demand environment, a race to the bottom ensues.

Something to that. Fed Gov Fisher (one of the brighter lights, I think) made some comments to that effect.

Although they also have a regulatory function so it would seem they could do something about that if they were actually concerned.

[BA Deere]

The thing with China is they have become "more capitalist" than the US, they aren`t plagued with those pesky environmentalists and labor unions.  There is a marvalous quote that I can`t refind, but it essentially says `if everything else is on a level playing field, then the most unethical will win`.  what sets China apart from the FSU, is China is at least pretending they aren`t communist, the Soviets actually believed their own rhetoric.

Here`s a podcast (takes a little to buffer)  but Dave Kranzier talks about housing and QE.  According to him, when QE started 70% of new debt was monetized...last few monthes nearly 100% of new debt has been monetized.  Could that be because of the fed tappering that it`s now basically 100% monetized?

http://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/b/d/7/bd73f7919dcdad21/Dave_Kranzier_04.Apr.14.mp3?c_id=7043030&expiration...