It’s Time To Start Worrying About China Again

One year ago, S&P futures would tumble the second a flashing red headline noted that things involving China, the Yuan, or the PBOC were not playing out as expected. One year later, the market has forgotten it ever cared about the world’s biggest debt bubble.

However, the time may have come to once again start worrying about China.

With China coming back from its week-long holidays last Friday, a very important event took place under the radar, and was largely missed by the broader investing public masked by the relentless noise out of Washington and the January payrolls report: China has resumed tightening. For those who missed it, here is a recap of what we said first thing on Friday:

While China’s first effective tightening in two years largely slipped between the market’s cracks, the press is starting to pay attention (“China’s central bank raised key interest rates in the money marketFriday, reinforcing a shift toward tightening monetary policy aimed atdeflating asset bubbles and reducing long-term financial risk.” MarketWatch, Feb 3; “China’s surprise increase in interest rates on medium-term loansweighed on bond prices. …Some traders were clearly rattled by China’s first-ever increase in interest rates for its medium-term lending facility (MLF) loans, which was seen as signaling that short-term funding costswill move higher eventually as authorities try to cool an explosive increase in debt.” Reuters, Jan 25).

To be sure, Friday’s explicit tightening followed several similar implicit actions by the government, which has been flashing warnings it would tighten and/or engage in deleveraging to slow down China’s stupendous ascent toward 300% debt/GDP, including a sharp slowdown in government spending which has collapsed from 20% one year ago to only 8% Y/Y at the end of 2016, the first slowdown in home price acceleration in 19 consecutive months following Beijing eagerness to pop China’s housing bubble, the recent hike in auto sales taxes from 5% to 7.5%, and so on.