China Everbright Bank placed itself directly in the firing line of terrible puns last week when reports it had defaulted started to circle.
Thankfully, Anne Stevenson-Yang from J Capital read into the news a bit further than most:
The interbank defaults last Thursday provided definitive, if indirect, proof that the cash coming into China is for financial investment and interest arbitrage. It masquerades as a trade surplus but is not. With the tightening of the domestic central bank credit window, Chinese banks are heavily dependent on these inflows for the cash they need to roll over loans. That is why the banks immediately went into distress when regulators decided to clamp down on fraud on the trade account.












Older entries
1Time to take basic income seriously?
2We cannae give the economy no more, we're giv'n it all we've got Captain
3The case for official e-money +1
4Hacking and property prices make the BoE big league
5Tax needn't be taxing. It can also be a Hungarian debt wheeze
Show more6"Companies should know who really owns them..."
7QE down under
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9When liquidity meets control in China [updated with credit crunch probability]
10The central bank (communications) bubble
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