Quote from: rudius on April 17, 2014, 06:31:18 PM

Quote from: billyjoeallen on April 17, 2014, 04:24:34 PM

. This was the inevitable consequence of their neo-mercantilist foreign trade policy, as it was for Japan and every other country that tried it.

Could you develop please? Not sure what you mean...

When the government and/or Central Bank of a country has an explicit and intentional policy of having a positive trade surplus. You would think that this would be a good policy until you look for the hidden costs.

By intentionally devaluing their currency (in order to make their exports look cheaper to the buyers), they also increase their input costs, because foreign raw materials get more expensive. They know this will happen, but think an abundance of cheap domestic labor will more than compensate. They are generally right, but there is a limit. As their customers--countries with trade deficits--get poorer (as they usually will with large sustained and growing trade deficits), they have less and less ability to buy until they can only buy on credit. So the neo-mercantilist country lends them money (usually in the form of buying government bonds from the customer country . This amounts to loans that become increasingly less and less likely to get paid back.

The United States is almost certainly going to default on its government bonds in one of two ways: either a hard default where we stop making interest payments or more likely a soft default where we crank up our own printing presses and pay interest with devalued money. The American government has already begun this process.

Basically Chinese capital is heavily invested in factories making stuff for foreigners and in domestic real estate developments. Neither of these markets show signs of much further growth and the capital was borrowed, which means they have little ability to withstand a prolonged downturn. To make matters worse, much of their population were former farm workers who moved to the cities when the farms modernized. If these people lose or cannot find employment, civil unrest becomes increasingly likely.

Then the politicians will do what politicians always do: look for someone else to blame for their mistakes. The most extreme example of this is Germans blaming Jews in the 1930s, but any group will suffice if there is a pretext. If the situation deteriorates far enough, a probable outcome is war.

The situation is much more complicated than that, but I have tried to give a simplified version. I foresee a race to the bottom where most countries try to debase, debauch and devalue their own currency faster than other countries until somebody cracks. What i am saying is that China shows signs of cracking. Japan has already begun the process of cracking, because they have a 30 year head start in the process.

Neo-mercantilism is not free trade. It is managed trade by managers who do not and cannot know how the resources should properly be deployed. It always ends badly.