China's lockdown policies and real estate crash hamper economy

 Washington Examiner:

Growth slowed in China, the world’s second-largest economy, adding to fears of a broader global recession.

China reported that economic activity decelerated across the board last month, causing central bankers in Beijing to slash interest rates unexpectedly in an effort to prop up the economy. It was the first time that the country cut rates since January and shows that China’s strict COVID-19 mitigation policies and worsening real estate slump are cutting into the economy.

Chinese industrial production slowed to 3.8% in the 12 months ending in July, below forecast expectations of 4.6% growth, according to the country’s National Bureau of Statistics. Additionally, retail sales growth in China was nearly half of what forecasters anticipated.

“The July data suggest that the post-lockdown recovery lost steam as the one-off boost from reopening fizzled out and mortgage boycotts triggered a renewed deterioration in the property sector,” said Julian Evans-Pritchard, senior China economist at Capital Economics, according to Reuters.

Evans-Pritchard said that while the People’s Bank of China is increasing its support for the economy, it “probably won’t be sufficient to prevent further economic weakness.”

The news comes as other major economies worldwide are feeling the pain from too-high inflation and the global fallout from the Russian war in Ukraine.

Inflation has been soaring in Western countries, causing central banks to begin aggressively tightening their monetary policies.

...

Things in Europe are also not going too well. Inflation in the United Kingdom and the European Union as a whole is even higher than in the U.S., and the continent is grappling with a devastating energy crisis because of the Russian war in Ukraine.

...

China's command economy is in trouble.  The lockdowns were a disaster as they were in some US blue states.   China's real estate market is grossly overbuilt with high rises in ghost cities sitting idle.  The Chicom government is responsible for both debacles.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more