unclear.
china did not 'buy' what bill gross sold, but merely xferred what china owns of ust via london on to proper ledger
I am feeling bearish again.
Had lunch with rabo commodity banker today, and he wanted to talk macro, was worried about his personal money (mostly cash) and confident about his job. I cured him over lunch, and he left the club worried about his job but happy about his paper money.
Were we to dine instead of lunch, I might be feeling differently by then.
I am trying to sense the perturbation in the force.
Very quiet. Too quiet.
in the mean time
- another thing, more likely than not (else it would not be a bear market), before the bear market is over, warren buffet's reputation must be pulverized, meaning his 'time to buy usa' must result in disaster; however, bill gross's reputation must also be rubbished, and he may have just set the trash can by going zero of usa bond holdings (had bill gross been japanese back in 1989, he would be zero-ed had he zero-ed jgb debt at any time in sustained way over the past 20 years)
- let us watch, (team usa + tribe china) vs (gross + chanos)
rah rah
i am of two minds, and admit it, meaning
see below from ubs re china real estate un-boom
Sent: 10 March 2011 17:17
Subject: UBS EM Daily Chart - This Chart Probably Doesn't Mean Anything
My dad taught me, "What you see is what you get - except in pre-packaged strawberries."
- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
SUMMARY: We didn't have time to finish the note on Ukraine today - so
here, as more or less pure filler, is an interesting comparative chart
on Chinese housing construction per capita.
Chart 1. How big is China's housing boom?
Source: CEIC, Haver, UBS estimates
.... but we had a request to calculate these numbers, and we thought we
would share the rough results with you.
The question was simple: How much physical residential housing does
China build every year on a per capita basis - and how does that compare
to the US and other developed economies?
We took a brief look around, got a few numbers and ended up with the
picture in the chart above (we discuss the sources of the data further
below).
The results were a bit different than we expected: China only built
around 0.6 sqm of housing per capita on average over the past decade -
compared to a likely figure of around 1.5 sqm per capita in the US and
Spain and 1.0 sqm in post-bubble Japan. And even today China's housing
effort is less than it was in these developed economies in the
pre-crisis era.
Now, as we said, this chart probably doesn't mean anything. If you take
the estimated total value of annual residential housing construction as
a share of overall GDP over the same period, for example, you end up
with numbers like 4% in the US and closer to 6.5% in China (and for 2010
the figures would have been 2% and 9% respectively).
Needless to say the arguments spiral onwards from there, of course, as
to the nature, quality and financing of that housing; China economics
head Tao Wang has written in detail about the mainland housing boom -
most recently in Ten Big Questions on China's Property (Asian Economic
Perspectives, 13 May 2010) - and we would refer the interested reader to
her work for further reference. But we thought it was an interesting
chart.
Data notes
For China, we take the average of total residential floor space
completed and total residential building area completed, reported by the
Construction Ministry and the National Bureau of Statistics directly in
sqm terms.
For the US, we use data on new private housing completions reported by
the Department of Commerce. These data are in units rather than sqf or
sqm, so as an ad-hoc rule of thumb we used 150 sqm per unit for single
and double housing units, and 120 sqm for multi-units.
For Spain, we use data on new housing completions reported by the
Ministry of Public Works. These data are also in units, and as a rule of
thumb we used 120 sqm per unit.
For Japan the figures are for housing starts rather than completions,
and are reported by the Ministry of Land directly in sqm terms. |
