Free Republic

MONTREAL - If the Chinese stock market is still an indicator of global investor appetite for risk, as analysts viewed it a few months ago, then that appetite has lately diminished. Perhaps they are finally absorbing some of the revelations about statistical manipulations. They may also be reacting to more recent revelations warning of bank fraud in China. In one case, the Royal Bank of Scotland is reportedly investigating suspected fraud in its China unit. Client losses could be worth up to US$3 million, the Financial Times has reported, citing local media. Whatever the reason, neither Chinese nor global stock...

Merrill Lynch: Ignore The Bubble In Pessimism, 2010 Will Be Awesome The Pragmatic CapitalistDec. 15, 2009, 4:53 AM We are just about finished wrapping up our series on 2010 outlooks. In this article we’ll outline Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Bank of America Merrill Lynch is very bullish heading into 2010 (an outlook similar to RBC). They see many of the trends of 2009 continuing into 2010 and driving equity markets around the world higher by double digits (see JP Morgan’s bullish emerging market outlook here). Ethan Harris, head of North American economics summarized the Merrill outlook: “We believe the...

Roach: The Fed Is Going To Blow The Exit, Get Ready For Another Massive Bubble Henry BlodgetDec. 12, 2009, 9:09 AM The Fed is stuck in a bind: With 10% unemployment, it can't raise interest rates. With zero interest rates, however, it can't prevent another asset bubble. The problem, Stephen Roach, says is the Fed's impossible dual mandate: protect the value of our money AND keep the economy humming. That combination will cause the Fed to keep rates too low for too long. Simon Kennedy, Bloomberg: The Federal Reserve may cause another crisis by botching the withdrawal of liquidity from...

Thomas SowellIBD Exclusive Series: Thomas Sowell on The Politics of the Housing Boom (Fifth and final installment of serieesCongressional support for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went far beyond words. When the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight — the agency overseeing these government-sponsored enterprises — turned up irregularities in Fannie Mae's accounting and in 2004 issued what Barron's magazine called "a blistering 211-page report," Republican Sen. Kit Bond called for an investigation of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, tried to have their budget slashed and sought to have the leadership of the regulatory agency removed. Democratic Congressman...

And they're the ones buying it like crazy! Even China -- which is obviously embarking on a long term plan to dump dollars, and move its reserves into hard assets -- is unnerved by the surge in gold. Telegraph: Hu Xiaolian, the vice-governor of the central bank, said Beijing would not buy gold indiscriminately. “We must keep in mind the long-term effects when considering what to use as our reserves,” she said. “We must watch out for bubbles forming on certain assets and be careful in those areas.” China announced this year that it had quietly doubled its gold reserves...

Albert Edwards and Dylan Grice's latest must read slideshow: We have just had the worst decade’s performance for equity investors on record. Relative to government bonds, equities have been an even bigger disaster. Surely after such a terrible decade for equity investors things can only get better? On a ten year view, equities may indeed prove to be a good investment. On a 1-2 year view, however, we still see much pain to come. After what we have been though so far, where the bulls? optimism has been crushed in 2001/2 and in 2007/8 surely there must be a heavy...

While reviewing a book about the financial crisis, a policy analyst of the free-market persuasion pooh-poohed the notion that housing constitutes a long-term project or "higher-order good," insisting that homes are instead a "durable consumer good," and thus he believes that examining the housing meltdown through the lens of Austrian business-cycle theory is illegitimate. This discussion was had many times as the housing boom raged on mid-decade. When the boom continued longer than many thought possible the question became, Why is there no bust? Maybe houses are the equivalent of big refrigerators. Maybe home prices can go up forever. After...

World financial markets are quaking in the wake of a request by Dubai World, a principal investment vehicle for the Emirate of Dubai, to suspend debt service amounting to billions of dollars in the next 6 months. The company owes a total of $59 billion. Islam, of course, opposes interest payments on borrowed money, so much of the debt is so-called Islamic debt, in which different labels are applied, but the concept of paying for the use of money remains. Dubai's fabulous skyline has been built on a vast pool of debt, and property there was often pre-sold and re-sold...

Dollar carry trade could herald the next global crisis, analysts warn Leo Lewis, Asia Business Correspondent The global economy could be poised for the creation of a potentially explosive dollar carry trade, analysts said yesterday. The trade allows investors to borrow dollars at near-zero interest rates, which they use to fund asset-buying sprees around the world, and has been possible since the collapse of Lehman Brothers last year and the extreme monetary response to its aftermath. The warning was issued at the Apec summit of Asia Pacific leaders in Singapore and came after a variety of assets started to display...

All agree that the bursting of the housing bubble caused the financial collapse of 2008. Most agree that the housing bubble started in 1997. Less well understood is that this bubble was the result of government policies that lowered mortgage-lending standards to increase home ownership. One of the key players was the controversial liberal advocacy group, Acorn (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). The watershed moment was the 1992 Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act, also known as the GSE Act. To comply with that law's "affordable housing" requirements, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would acquire more...

China's Economic Miracle Is A Fragile OneEdmund Conway says that the country's leaders risk creating the same type of asset bubble that floored Japan. By Edmund Conway Published: 6:29PM GMT 11 Nov 2009 Chinese vendor counts money at open market in Beijing. Photo: Reuters Every economist has a favourite fact about the Chinese economy. Mine is this: every month the country generates so much surplus cash from trade that it could afford to go out and buy three of Britain's biggest companies – say, British Telecom, Rolls Royce and J Sainsbury. Every single month. The £9.8 billion that Kraft proposed...

In a span of just three years, hedge-fund manager John Paulson went from practically unknown to practically unparalleled. After a series of smart bets against the housing market made Paulson's hedge fund billions of dollars—including days where it made more than $1 billion—he earned a place alongside George Soros and Warren Buffett as an oracle of investing. In his new book, The Greatest Trade Ever, Gregory Zuckerman, a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, examines how the unlikely team of Paulson and assistant Paolo Pellegrini—as well as a few other investors—bucked conventional wisdom and saw through the housing hype. Who...

Price Trends / WAR OF THE WORLDS (Round # 2): If you use 120 years of data for your time horizon, and assume prices will return to the average, then our residential property bubble will fall 49% from the bubble peak to the long-run average (see above (a) aka “(x) - (z) / 202” aka “Projected Fall Peak to Trend”). This total projected fall is less than the 60% predicted in my recent post based upon 20 years of data and a trend line drawn with the eye (click here to see that post). Property Values Set to Fall 43%...

After spending more than a year in suspended animation, the commercial real estate industry is expected to hit bottom in 2010 with a wrenching thud. Owners of business properties such as office buildings, warehouses and malls will suffer a surge of painful defaults, write-downs and workouts with their lenders as the market finally faces up to the reality of its diminished conditions, according to a report set for release today. The long-awaited blood bath, however, will benefit investors who are able to swoop in to take advantage of record bargains. Unlike the formerly overheated housing market, which is in the...

Pimco's Gross calls top of rally in risky assets Almost all assets appear overvalued, bond investment giant warns By Alistair Barr, MarketWatch SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - Bill Gross, managing director at fixed-income giant Pimco, called the top of the recent rally in stocks and other risky assets on Tuesday. "The six-month rally in risk assets -- while still continuously supported by Fed and Treasury policymakers -- is likely at its pinnacle," Gross wrote in his monthly market commentary. The U.S. economy and most other developed economies became too reliant on rising asset prices, rather than the production of goods and...

Saturday, October 24, 2009 Gillian Tett: “Was October 2008 just a dress rehearsal?” /snip Second, she indicates that most observers recognize the rally is not the result of fundamentals (duh!) but the result of excessive liquidity chasing assets. /snip From Tett: Earlier this month, I received a sobering e-mail from a senior, recently-retired banker. This particular man, a veteran of the credit world, had just chatted with ex-colleagues who are still in the markets – and was feeling deeply shocked. “Forget about the events of the past 12 months … the punters are back punting as aggressively as ever,” he...

Hold the Champagne on China’s Economy By Michael Auslin Thursday, October 22, 2009 Filed under: World Watch, Boardroom, Economic Policy Those who witnessed Japan's spectacular rise and fall in the 1980s should get a familiar feeling watching China these days. This month in Hong Kong, a single bottle of wine sold at auction for $93,000 to a Chinese buyer. No matter how good the vintage, that's not something to pop a cork over and celebrate. Those who witnessed Japan's spectacular rise and fall in the 1980s should be getting a familiar feeling watching China these days. In the eyes of...

This bubble won't last long ft.com We did not need to wait until the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit 10,000. It has been clear for some time that global equity markets are bubbling again. On the surface, this looks like 2003 and 2004 when the previous housing, credit, commodity and equity bubbles started to inflate, helped by low nominal interest rates and a lack of inflation. There is one big difference, though. This bubble will burst sooner. So how do we know this is a bubble? My two favourite metrics of stock market valuation are Cape, which stands for the...

China’s Growth Picks Up Speed but Raises Concerns By ANDREW JACOBS and BETTINA WASSENER BEIJING — The Chinese economy, already one of the fastest-growing in the world, picked up more speed during the third quarter, adding fuel to a debate over whether, and when, the Chinese authorities might start reining in stimulus measures. Prompted by vastly increased bank lending, generous government support for exports and a $585 billion stimulus package that is spurring a dizzying array of building projects, the Chinese economy grew 8.9 percent from July to September, up from the year-ago period, according to government figures released Thursday....

As Credit Crunch II looms, we must learn to escape risk of moral hazard For all those people belly aching about bank bonuses and dodgy mortgage lending in recent days, a speech by the Governor of the Bank of England addressing reform of the banking system ought to have been a highlight of the week. By Damian Reece Published: 9:57PM BST 20 Oct 2009 Comments 2 | Comment on this article But as Mervyn King told his Scottish business audience last night: "If our response to the crisis focuses only on the symptoms rather than the underlying causes of the...

Following Vietnam’s property market collapse earlier this year, luxury apartment prices have fallen sharply, with a 30% drop in places like Phu My Hung and as much as 60% in other areas. The slump has been particularly hard in the luxury segment. Independent financial expert, Bui Kien Thanh, said local developers had focused too highly on luxury properties. He said the luxury segment is set for more trouble since customers have raised complaints about the quality of the apartments they have bought. Former deputy minister of natural resources, Dang Hung Vo, said that property prices would continue to fall if...

Seriously Folks, The Housing Bubble Is Back Joe WeisenthalOct. 15, 2009, 5:51 AM We mentioned this a week ago, though this story has been kind of flying under the radar: The housing bubble is back. No, home prices aren't (yet) at overinflated levels again, but the housing market is seeing a return of enthusiasm, mania, and speculation, the likes of which we haven't seen in a long time. Now CNBC's Diana Olick (via Calculated Risk) is talking about it. Here's an email a realtor sent to a friend of hers. The foreclosure capital of America, Vegas home prices are down...

Roubini Warns of ‘Significant Amount of Froth’ in Markets Nouriel Roubini, a New York University economist known as “Dr. Doom” for his warnings about the U.S. economy, said in an interview Thursday he is concerned about the run-up in U.S. stock prices since March, which seem priced for a V-shaped recovery that he says is unlikely to happen. “Some of [the rally] is fundamental,” he said. “We avoided Armageddon, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and risk aversion is lower.” “But it has occurred so fast, so soon, in my view that it’s diverging from the...

The next financial bubble could come sooner than you think. A year after the collapse of home values triggered the financial crisis and Great Recession, another rapid and irrational rise in the price of assets - whether stocks, home values, oil or something else - would seem unlikely. After all, major bubbles through history have been spaced decades, if not centuries, apart. Today, though, amid the wreckage of the last bubble, the ingredients for the next are still with us. The price of gold spiking to unprecedented levels - $1048.60 an ounce on Friday - is one warning sign, as...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Gone are the hot breakfasts in most dorms and the pastries at Widener Library. Varsity athletes are no longer guaranteed free sweatsuits, and just this week came the jarring news that professors will go without cookies at faculty meetings. By Harvard standards, these are hard times. Not Dickensian hard times, perhaps, but with the value of its endowment down by almost 30 percent, the world’s richest university is learning to live with less. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard’s largest division, has cut about $75 million from its budget in recent months and is planning more....

Remember the 1990s tech bubble? When it burst, the experts were telling you - you should have been into Blue Chips. After you shifted your money - BANG - the market collapsed with ENRON, WORLDCOM and the others then Sarbanes-Oxley was enacted and the experts declared that you should have diversified and had some money into the "fourth asset class" - real estate. Many cashed out whatever was left in mutual funds and bought "investment condos" thinking they were going to "flip and buy" which was a strategy that lasted for a bit then they got caught up in the...

This time will never be different Review by Martin Wolf Published: September 28 2009 03:18 | Last updated: September 28 2009 03:18 This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly By Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff Princeton, $35; £19.95 The four most dangerous words in finance are “this time is different”. Thanks to this masterpiece by Carmen Reinhart of the university of Maryland and Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard, no one can doubt this again. As the authors note, “If there is one common theme to the vast range of crises we consider in this book, it is that excessive...

Andy Xie: Why One Bubble Burst Deserves Another 09-28 15:34 Caijing comments( 0 ) The financial crisis taught crucial lessons about the dangers of bubbles, loose regulation and debt. It's a pity we didn't learn. By Andy Xie, guest economist to Caijing and a board member of Rosetta Stone Advisors Ltd. (Caijing Magazine) Lehman Brothers collapsed one year ago. The U.S. government refused a bailout and warned other financial institutions to be careful. The government felt other institutions had already severed their dealings with Lehman's investment network, and that a collapse could be walled in. Little did the government realize...

This should have been a week for traders in the stock market to feel good about life. US stocks have rallied by close to 60 per cent in barely six months since they hit bottom in March. The Federal Reserve meanwhile pronounced this week that “economic activity has picked up” – the most confident language the central bank has used for some time. But Crispin Odey, one of London’s most respected hedge fund managers, was seeing things differently. He chose Wednesday, the day of the Fed’s pronouncement, to ruminate, both in a note to clients and in the Financial Times,...

"Whether through exuberant hedgies or anxious private investors, gold just keeps pushing higher..." SO SPECULATIVE BETTING on gold going higher now equals a record-busting 752-tonne position in Comex futures and options, yet this is not a bubble according to Michael Pento of Deltaga. Let's say otherwise. Let's say that gold prices, surging by almost $100-per-ounce in barely a month, are very much in a bubble...blown up by near-zero interest rates worldwide and a sharply negative cost of borrowing after inflation. Were that the case, the question before potential and existing investors would be simple: Is this "irrational exuberance" or a...

One year after America's brush with economic catastrophe, there's plenty of looking back at the bubbles that caused financial chaos. But what's next? There are surely dangerous economic bubbles forming as we speak. As Alan Greenspan warned this week, "They [financial crises] are all different, but they have one fundamental source," he said. "That is the unquenchable capability of human beings when confronted with long periods of prosperity to presume that it will continue." The trick, of course, is spotting them. By definition, most people don't spot a bubble before they form and burst. Here's 10 for which you should...

Many are accustomed to thinking in terms of a 'housing bubble.' But this is only part of the story. In fact, the first decade of the 21st century brought us a real estate double bubble—one in housing, and one in commercial real estate. Many are accustomed to thinking in terms of a “housing bubble.” But this is only part of the story. In fact, the first decade of the 21st century brought us a real estate double bubble—one in housing, and one in commercial real estate. They both involved property prices increasing by an obviously unsustainable 90 percent over six...

DENVER – He bought his first home, spent $30,000 fixing it up, and now, six months later, Jonathon Kyte has learned the home doesn't belong to him. According to the City and County of Denver, Jonathon owns the dump, next door. He found out about the mistake almost by accident when he received a map which showed the unit he's living is actually unit No. 4. "I froze. My wife and I were just speechless," Kyte said. Kyte owns the deed and title to unit No. 5. Jonathon blames the Coldwell Banker listing agent for the mistake. She marketed the...

Shanghai Shares Tumble 6.75% By MARK McDONALD HONG KONG — The Shanghai composite index plunged 6.75 percent on Monday to close out August with a drop of 21.8 percent, the worst performance for the month among the world’s major exchanges. Monday’s fall, coupled with a drop of nearly 3 percent last Friday, has made for “a huge, huge decline,” said Dariusz Kowalczyk, chief investment strategist at SJS Markets in Hong Kong. The overall index was down 192.94 points on Monday to finish at 2,667.75, the lowest closing figure in more than three months. Shares on the Shanghai exchange had rocketed...

The troubling side of Ben Bernanke He has saved the world but he helped cause the crisis in the first place, writes Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Published: 8:29PM BST 25 Aug 2009 Comments 35 | Comment on this article Ben Bernanke has proved himself a heroic fire-fighter, saving world from a calamitous spiral into debt deflation by showering markets with liquidity. A good thing too. He helped cause the raging fire of 2007-2009 in the first place. As a Princeton professor and then a junior Federal Reserve governor, Mr Bernanke was the intellectual architect of his predecessor Alan Greenspan's...

JACKSON HOLE, Wyoming (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Reserve's stated intention to keep interest rates exceptionally low for "an extended period" may conflict with its desire to avoid inflation, an academic economist told central bankers on Saturday. "The point of keeping interest rates low in the future is to promote economic activity today, but the price is a future rise in inflation," Carl Walsh of the University of California, Santa Cruz, wrote in a paper presented at the Kansas City Federal Reserve's annual Jackson Hole conference. "It is not clear how one has one without the other." Walsh's audience includes...

Is China the Next Real Estate Bubble? Weak export demand and looming Politburo changes are incentives to keep the monetary spigot wide open. By MICHAEL KURTZ Chinese policy makers have lately spooked markets into thinking they might soon take away the monetary punch bowl that's been fueling the local asset recovery. Don't be fooled. Beijing is likely to continue priming the monetary pump to support domestic markets. Exports remain weak despite positive signs from the U.S. and Europe, and domestic consumption has a long way to go to make up the gap. Spending on infrastructure is contributing massively to 2009...

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Something's in the air. You can feel it. A new bull. Hype? Maybe, but also a roaring new bull -- and eventually another meltdown. [...] Yes, folks, a new bubble cycle is already in motion. You can feel the energy building, the kind that fueled the meltdowns of 1998, 2000 and 2007. We never resolved the problems fueling the dot-com insanity. We made matters worse feeding the subprime credit-derivatives disaster with cheap money, Reaganomics ideology and two costly wars. Lessons were never learned, nothing was resolved. Today matters continue deteriorating. Behind the hoopla, the Wall...

By: MISES We now have the diametrical opposite of the famous "Peter Schiff Was Right" video (a compilation of 2006 and 2007 clips in which Schiff, a financial expert who subscribes to Austrian economics, predicted the deep recession that would follow the bursting of the housing bubble). "The new, opposite video" is a compilation of the 2005–2007 prognostications of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. In it, Bernanke is shown to have been just as embarrassingly wrong as Schiff was uncannily right.Could their differences in economic understanding have anything to do with this remarkable dichotomy? I have transcribed most of the...

So we've got "green shoots" in the market eh? Very nice chart, this, right? img src=”http://market-ticker.denninger.net/uploads/Charts-2009-08/spx-1y.png>. Hmmm... how do you square that with the fact that earnings are dropping like a stone on a year-over-year basis, revenues (the more important indicator of economic activity) are down double-digits on average, and consumer purchasing power (as measured by tax receipts, down 22% at a federal level year over year, the worst since the Depression) is in the toilet? We're told this is "money was on the sidelines" and "people are rushing in." But the statistics say otherwise: Only $400 billion has shifted...

BEIJING – The middle-aged crowd in the packed Guosen Securities office jostle around buzzing printers that spit out receipts for their share buys, hoping to cash in on China's stimulus-fueled stock market boom. "The central government has to fulfill their promise of 8 percent economic growth," said Wu Jun, 62, a retired civil servant who invested part of his life savings of 50,000 yuan ($7,300) and lives on a 2,000 yuan-a-month ($290 a month) pension. "They'll come up with measures to keep the market in good shape." But while investors expect the market — up more than 80 percent this...

Goldman Sachs is expected to report record profits this week. Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi calls the giant investment bank a "vampire squid," and notes how many Goldman alumni were involved in last year's financial bailout, which benefitted the firm. Taibbi concludes: It's early June in Washington, D.C. Barack Obama, a popular young politician whose leading private campaign donor was an investment bank called Goldman Sachs - its employees paid some $981,000 to his campaign - sits in the White House. Having seamlessly navigated the political minefield of the bailout era, Goldman is once again back to its old business, scouting...

<p>RMB 1.5 trillion in new Chinese lending — can we turn this thing off?</p> <p>July 8th, 2009 by Michael Pettis | Filed under Banks, NPLs.</p> <p>I don’t have time to do a long entry today, but in my June 30 entry I marveled at the huge explosion in new lending, and claimed that credible rumors suggested that total new loans for June would be an astonishing RMB 1.2 trillion. That would bring total new lending for 2009 to RMB 7.06 trillion, nearly three times last year’s first-half total of RMB 2.45 trillion.</p>

The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression has prompted a reassessment of how financial markets work and how people make decisions about money It has all the makings of a classic B movie scene. A gunman puts a pistol to the victim’s forehead, and the screen fades to black before a loud bang is heard. A forensic specialist who traces the bullet’s trajectory would see it traversing the brain’s prefrontal cortex—a central site for processing decisions. The few survivors of usually fatal injuries to this brain region should not be surprised to find their personalities dramatically altered. In one...

Earlier this week I noted that I had changed my mind on the Community Reinvestment Act. Contrary to my initial conclusion, the evidence is overwhelming that the CRA played a significant role in creating lax lending standards that fueled the housing bubble. Once I realized this, I had to abandon my suspicion that the anti-CRA case was a figment of the rhetoric of Republicans attempting to distract attention from their own role in the mortgage mess. So I laid out the facts and arguments that had convinced me to switch sides in the CRA debate. It was a long series...

There's ice on the export side, while there's flame on the real estate market side, and China's effort to create internal demand is being distorted. China's economic stimulus, which is bulldozing ahead, is causing problems for China's economic recovery. Manufacturing is steadily declining, employment and consumption growth are weak, but bubbles are beginning to gather in the real estate industry. In May, China's import and export totaled $164.13 billion, down 25.9%, year on year, and 3.9%, month on month. Export totaled $88.86 billion, off 26.4%, year on year, and 3.4%, month on month, and imports reached $75.37 billion, down 25.2%,...

There has been much confusion with all of the different explanations as to how we got ourselves into this housing collapse. The following is a simple story that may shed some light on the events. Big Jimmy’s Liquor Store had been a fixture in Jonesville for over twenty years. Big Jimmy was as you might suspect, a rather robust, affable man, who never met a stranger. Small town life suited him just fine and he felt like he was friends with the entire town. One of his close friends, Clive, started up Clive’s Liquor Store about ten years ago. There...

Insight: Recovery not as easy as U, V, W By Gillian Tett Published: May 28 2009 20:09 | Last updated: May 28 2009 20:09 Are you expecting a “V” shaped recovery this summer? Or do you anticipate a scenario more like a “U” or a “W”? That is the question I have been asked repeatedly this month, as the debate about “green shoots” roars on. Personally, though, I suspect that none of the letters in the Roman alphabet quite captures what is most likely to go on. To be sure, the last year might seem to correspond to the start...

Thomas Sowell on how government policies made the housing crisis possible Thomas Sowell, prolific public intellectual and the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, is one of America's greatest economic thinkers and educators. He's taught the fundamentals through such books as Economic Facts and Fallacies and Basic Economics and chronicled economic history through such scholarly works as Marxism: Philosophy and Economics and On Classical Economics. In his classic work Knowledge and Decisions, he espoused a sophisticated, largely Hayekian approach, revealing how the efficient spread of relevant knowledge is shaped by our social institutions, and often warped...

The Next Great Bubble: China By Vitaliy Katsenelson One more bubble, please. After the bubbles in technology, housing, and commodities, we saw the mother of all bubbles: the one in global liquidity. The world economy seemed to require bubbles for its continued functioning. I get the distinct feeling that investors’ prayers are now being answered: There’s a new bubble now - or an old one is being re-inflated, depending on your perspective even as I type this. I’d like to call it the Troubled China Revival Program (TCRP). Why start reserving bubble-naming rights? Well, I recently received an email from...