The Tremors Are Back: Japan Recession, China Trade Disappointment, European Periphery Slides!
- The Tremors Are Back: Japan Recession, China Trade Disappointment, European Periphery Slides!
by Tyler Durden, www.zerohedge.com
In a perfect trifecta of disappointment, overnight we had reality reassert itself with a thud as first Japan reported weaker than expected GDP which contracted for a second consecutive quarter and which technically sent the country into yet another recession, merely the latest one in its 30 year deflationary collapse. And it isn’t about to get better: ” Analysts expect another quarter of contraction in the final three months of this year due to sluggish exports to China, keeping the Bank of Japan under pressure to loosen monetary policy as early as this month.” Of course, there is hope that the new, old PM, Abe will restore money trees and unicorns and get Japan to a 3% inflation target, without somehow destroying bank and insurance co balance sheets in the process, all of which are loaded to the gills with JGBs set to collapse should inflation truly return.
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Then after Japan, China reported miserable trade data, which flatly refuted all hopes of an economic pick up both in the mainland and across the world. As BusinessWeek reports “China’s exports rose 2.9 percent in November from a year earlier while imports were unchanged, leaving a trade surplus of $19.6 billion, the customs administration said today in Beijing. The growth in overseas shipments compares with the 9 percent median estimate of analysts in a Bloomberg News survey.” This was below the lowest forecast of the range ($21.9-$32.2) with an average expectation of a $26.9 billion surplus.
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Perhaps the reason China can not openly fudge its trade data, unlike its GDP, inflation, retail sales, industrial production and all those other indicators that none other than the incoming head of government Li Keqiang said are for “reference only” (a fact conveniently ignored when they are all going up, and duly noted when China is self-reportedly sliding) because other countries report the counterparty data and it is very easy to catch China lying in this particular case. And finally there was Europe…
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