Executives at RINO International, a steel industry supplier, have been charged by the SEC with inflating revenues 15 fold in their US filings, while some of the proceeds from a reverse merger and $100m cash raising in 2007 were diverted to buy a house in Orange County, two Mercedes Benz cars and also funded shopping trips to the Chanel and Valentino stores in Beverley Hills. Most of the rest of the money was dispatched to China.

Last week Standard Chartered’s China economist Stephen Green and his team slashed their 2013 forecast to 7.7 per cent from 8.3 per cent. Their 2014 forecast was cut to 7.5 per cent from 8.2 per cent.

Today, BAML’s Ting Lu cut to 7.6 for both 2013 and 2014, from 8 per cent and 7.7 per cent, respectively.

That’s a big (click to enlarge) chart from Moody’s on how they define “shadow banking” in China, via a Q&A comment on the growth of the sector.

The promise of a crackdown was taken seriously, but it’s believed to be much too late for the April data.

China signaled it will propose plans this year to allow freer flows of its currency in and out of the nation as part of measures to loosen control over the yuan and interest rates.

It gave a April reading of 51.1, down sharply from 54.3 in March, and was the lowest since August 2011:

Now that we know China’s April PMIs are definitely not supporting that notion, it is worth revisiting, again, the whole question of the country’s recent surging credit growth. The significance of the debt-to-GDP ratio can be argued over, and it’s impossible to say at what level it might become a big problem. But here are a couple of ideas to consider.

This might be best considered an addendum to Kate’s Politburo detective work on Friday which highlighted China’s changing attitude to growth (now maybe less important) and financial risk (now probably more important). It’s a piece of the China recovery puzzle we don’t look at enough.

So what came out of it? It’s always hard to tell, but it probably wasn’t good news for anyone hoping for big stimulus measures.