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.





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