Jan 20, 2011

Jim Chanos on winners and losers once the China bubble bursts

In an investment driven economy, once you finish putting up a building, you have to start all over again and put up another building. Anyone using common sense, this leads to its own set of problems. Everyone gets affected by China's Real estate bubble bursting. The US get affected least. The US is not dependent on resource exporters like Australia, Canada, and Brazil. Those will be the economies that will be hit the most. The real problem is China's credit growth is somewhere between 25 and 35% of the economy. They are expanding credit 3-4 times as fast as their economy which is growing at 9%. Bulls point out that individual purchasers of apartments are not highly leverage. What they are missing is the system, which is geared toward fixed investment is massively leveraged. The system is simply not stable. There will be a reversion to the mean pretty hard for some industrial commodities.

~Jim Chanos, founder, Kynikos Associates, CNNMoney.com interview, January 20, 2011

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