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Oct 17th 2014, 13:53 by Simon Cox | BNY Mellon
Simon Cox is Investment Strategist for Asia-Pacific at BNY Mellon Investment
Management in Hong Kong.
THE chart below shows growth and inflation in an unidentified economy. Even
without naming the place, it is clear that all is not going well. The country
is no stranger to deflation, having suffered several months of falling prices
in 2009. In more recent quarters, it has endured a steady slowdown in economic
growth. As a consequence, inflation has remained below the official target for
well over two years. Last month price pressures fell sharply again.
Most economists looking at this nameless, numberless chart would assume the
economy was falling comfortably short of its full potential. Demand must be
weaker than supply, they would surmise, weighing on prices. Being a
prescriptive bunch, these economists would no doubt call attention to the
authorities failure to meet their own inflation target and wonder loudly if
enough was being done to stimulate spending. A responsible economist might
recommend restoring growth to something like its late 2011 pace, which,
allowing for lags, seems roughly consistent with on-target inflation.
This reasoning is quite routine. It is the sort of thing economists often say
when discussing the euro area, for example, or Japan. But the mystery chart
above does not portray either of those economies. It instead depicts China.
The second chart below restores the name and the numbers. (It also shows the
minor shifts in China s official inflation target, set each year by the State
Council, China s cabinet.) Both growth and inflation are of course much higher
than is typical of a mature economy. But the underlying economic logic still
applies.
China s growth (which was 7.5% in the year to the second quarter and probably
slower than that in the third) seems to be falling short of its sustainable
limit. As a consequence inflation has remained below the official target for 32
months in a row. In September consumer-price inflation was just 1.6% (compared
with the same month a year earlier). The absence of inflationary pressure is
even more striking further upstream. Producer prices have been falling
(year-on-year) for 31 months. The September figure was -1.8%, according to
China s National Bureau of Statistics.
And yet most economists refuse to believe that China s growth is much below its
sustainable limit. They complain (rightly) about China s excessive homebuilding
and grandiose infrastructure investments. They shake their heads in bafflement
at monstrous increases in lending. Most would scoff at the notion that China
could grow again at 8%, let alone the even faster pace it enjoyed in late 2011.
For this reason, even as inflation ebbs, many economists are wary of calling
for further stimulus. They worry that additional help will unleash lending to
parts of the economy that have already borrowed too much, namely property
developers, state-owned enterprises, and some local governments, which often
raise money indirectly through financing vehicles set up for the purpose.
But extra lending to these groups is not the only kind of stimulus. Indeed,
judging by recent experience, it is no kind of stimulus at all. Rapid increases
in credit have failed to translate into equally rapid increases in nominal GDP.
This is probably because much of the borrowed money was spent on existing
assets, such as land and property, that do not add much to production, jobs or
consumer-price pressures. If this form of credit expansion packed much of a GDP
punch, China would already have rapid growth and high inflation.
The economy s critics are right to argue that China needs to stabilise its high
ratio of corporate debt to GDP. But in bringing that ratio under control, the
authorities need to take close care of the denominator nominal GDP as well as
the numerator. Credit restraint will not help if it causes nominal GDP to slow
disproportionately. By the same token, credit expansion will not hurt if it
causes nominal GDP to grow disproportionately. In achieving the latter, happier
outcome, the composition of credit is as important as the quantity. Lending
should support the production of new goods, not speculation in existing assets.
Easing does not have to be only of the monetary sort. The fiscal authorities
can also help by, for example, cutting taxes and lifting social expenditures.
The indebted parts of China s economy will find it easier to curb their
borrowing if the rest of the economy increases its spending in counterpoint.
China does not need a 2008-style stimulus, which pushed inflation far above
target. But it does need a bigger impetus than it has received thus far. Most
economists looking at the nameless chart above would conclude that the economy
is failing to make the most of its growth potential. That conclusion should not
change just because the word China is added to the title.