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Bremst China haut es wirklich rein

Schon 2014 habe ich die Entwicklung in China mit der Schuldenwirtschaft im Westen verglichen:

→ China: Schuldenwirtschaft nach westlichem Vorbild

Wirklich geändert hat sich seither nichts. Im Gegenteil, das Land hat sich genauso wie der Westen immer mehr in die Ecke manövriert, gefangen in immer höheren Schulden und der Notwendigkeit, immer größere Dosen einzusetzen, um die Wirtschaft wieder auf Trapp zu bekommen.

Doch was wäre, wenn das Land wirklich versuchen würde, die Schulden abzubauen? Michael Pettis, immer wieder auch bei bto zitiert …

→ China muss die Schuldenlast reduzieren und Vermögen umverteilen

→ „Does It Matter If China Cleans Up Its Banks?“

… diskutiert das Szenario in einem Gastbeitrag für Bloomberg:

  • “(…) China has met its GDP growth targets only because soaring debt allowed it to capitalize non-productive activity, i.e. value it at cost rather than its real economic value. The target could be 6 percent just as easily it could be 7 or even 8 percent: As long as local governments and state-owned enterprises had debt capacity, they could generate enough activity to meet almost any target.” – bto: Auch bei uns nährten die Staaten und die Privaten die Einkommensillusion.
  • “(…) if China begins a serious deleveraging, reported GDP growth rates will fall by a lot more than expected – by more than the amount of non-productive activity that had formerly been capitalized. This is clear from the historical precedents. In every modern case where countries enjoyed similar investment-driven growth ‘miracles’ and then suffered painful adjustments, medium- and long-term GDP growth rates slowed much more than even the most pessimistic projections.” – bto: natürlich! Das wissen wir seit Irving Fisher und den Debt-Deflations. Es findet eine Kettenreaktion nach unten statt. Was vorher den Boom verstärkte, verstärkt jetzt den Abschwung, was am Leverage-Effekt liegt, der nun mal in beide Richtungen wirkt.
  • Sieht auch Pettis so: “The reason is that a reversal of the balance-sheet dynamics that had boosted growth during the expansionary phase forced GDP growth down during the contractionary phase. There are at least two ways in which this works. First, many years of excessively high GDP growth targets create an overstatement of total assets and total wealth.” – bto: weil alle Vermögenswerte und Investitionen durch den Leverage nach oben getrieben werden.
  • Dann kommt Pettis mit einem sehr guten Beispiel: “If a loan funds a $100 dollar investment in a project that creates only $60 of value, for example, there is a $40 loss that should normally reduce the value-added component of the GDP calculation. But, if this loss is capitalized and the investment carried at cost, the full $100 expenditure is added to GDP and the total amount of real wealth in the economy is overstated by $40. This overstatement doesn’t last forever. Once debt stops growing, this $40 will effectively be written down in the form of lower future GDP growth, in part because real growth is being measured relative to an artificially high base.” – bto: Es gibt also einen weiteren Verzerrungseffekt, den ich nicht auf dem Radar hatte. Weil das Wachstum auf einer zu hohen Basis fortgeschrieben wird, vergrößert sich der Fehler! Das erklärt auch die erhebliche Abweichung, die wir heute Morgen gesehen haben.
  • “After many years of overstatement, then, reported GDP growth rates will begin to understate real growth in the underlying economy. This can happen quickly in the form of a crisis or, as is more likely in China’s case, it can take place over many years as seems to have happened in Japan.” – bto: weil die Abschreibungen das aktuelle BIP belasten, eigentlich aber nur die Korrektur früherer Verzerrungen sind.
  • “The second way in which balance-sheet dynamics will push down growth is by forcing a heavily indebted economy to absorb what finance specialists refer to as “indirect” financial distress costs. (…) these costs mount when rising fears of bankruptcy encourage stakeholders to protect themselves in ways that reduce or destroy economic value. (…) This can happen because of substantial uncertainty about how future debt-servicing will be allocated. Once debt is no longer rolled over, debt-servicing costs must be absorbed directly or indirectly by one sector of the economy or another, causing each to try to minimize its losses.” – bto: so, wie wir individuell versuchen, die Verluste der sich abzeichnenden Fortsetzung der Euro-Krise zu vermindern.
  • “These two phenomena – financial distress costs and the amortizing of overstated wealth — could drive down GDP growth to below half current levels. What’s more, their impact is a function of the amount of bad debt that’s previously been accumulated. The more debt China builds up and the longer it takes to shrink the pile, the lower we should set our long-term growth projections. Just as high reported GDP growth rates today make the economy’s performance look better than it is, low reported growth rates tomorrow will paint a much bleaker picture.” – bto: weshalb die “säkulare Stagnation”, wie ich immer wieder geschrieben habe, die Folge der Schulden ist und nicht umgekehrt. Was Pettis hier zu China schreibt, gilt ebenso für Japan, weite Teile Europas und zunehmend auch die USA. Keine guten Aussichten.

→ bloomberg.com: “Don’t Breathe Easy About China Yet”, 4. April 2019