MaxedOutMama
Friday, January 09, 2009
Once In A Blue Moon
China: 70 city home price index declines slightly over 2008, with half the decline occurring in the last month. Big surprise. Biggest losers - Shenzhen (-18.1%) & Guangzhou (-9.4%). It's kind of the same old, same old, happening in a different alphabet. Here is a very good Christian Science Monitor article on general aspects of the current Chinese economy, if you are interested. The average American thinks Communism = all these social benefits, but in fact China's economy is hypercapitalism for the average peon. Industries get a lot of state support. In recent years the Chinese have tried to implement more worker protection measures (companies must pay back wages), but they are now backing off some of those because of the slump.
Recent suggestions and efforts to improve the Chinese economy have included:
Germany: Surprise to the downside on industrial output in November. -3.1% on the month, -10% on the year. I could go through a bunch of other countries in Europe, but why bother? Spain's fell about 15% over the year.
Remember, Japan's industrial output dropped 8.1% for November, and if I recall correctly, that made for about a 16% drop over the year. Brazil's industrial output dropped 5.2% for November, which makes a 6.2% decline for the year. The Brazilian auto mfrg numbers are already out, and are so poor that December's industrial output is sure to decline again sharply.
And the blue moon is shining in the sky. According to the January release of US consumer credit, which covers consumer credit through November, the impossible has happened. Real - not SA - outstanding non-revolving credit has dropped. Much of that is auto loans. From September, outstanding non-revolving credit dropped about 13 billion. Only about 90 billion to go before we can expect some recovery in autos!!! We'd hit that sometime in the third quarter. It can't come soon enough for Brazil.
Recent suggestions and efforts to improve the Chinese economy have included:
- introducing REITs,
- introducing margin trading,
- encouraging buying consumer durables on credit,
- lower downpayments for homes,
- etc.
Output at factories and utilities fell 2.4 percent from the previous month, Insee, the Paris-based statistics office, said today. Economists expected a drop of 0.8 percent, according to the median of 17 forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey. Manufacturing slumped 3.1 percent after a revised decline of 4.4 percent, the biggest since May 1997.Year over year, industrial production dropped 9%, and manufacturing 11%. That's considerably worse than US numbers for November, and it makes me worry about what US numbers will look like in January.
“Everyone expects the fourth quarter to be just about the worst in memory,” Jean-Louis Mourier, economist at Aurel Leven in Paris said on Bloomberg Television. “These numbers confirm that industrial activity really contracted after mid- September.”
Germany: Surprise to the downside on industrial output in November. -3.1% on the month, -10% on the year. I could go through a bunch of other countries in Europe, but why bother? Spain's fell about 15% over the year.
Remember, Japan's industrial output dropped 8.1% for November, and if I recall correctly, that made for about a 16% drop over the year. Brazil's industrial output dropped 5.2% for November, which makes a 6.2% decline for the year. The Brazilian auto mfrg numbers are already out, and are so poor that December's industrial output is sure to decline again sharply.
And the blue moon is shining in the sky. According to the January release of US consumer credit, which covers consumer credit through November, the impossible has happened. Real - not SA - outstanding non-revolving credit has dropped. Much of that is auto loans. From September, outstanding non-revolving credit dropped about 13 billion. Only about 90 billion to go before we can expect some recovery in autos!!! We'd hit that sometime in the third quarter. It can't come soon enough for Brazil.
