I see karmic justice. First rule of ill-wishing…don’t do it, because the Universe will send it right back at you. Russian sanctions backfiring, check! US economy entering tailspin as inflation keeps inflating and the real economy getting worse by the day. Don’t believe the falsified US numbers, look at the streets in the US and the massive new homeless populations.

Posted by: deepblue | Sep 6 2023 8:32 utc | 3

I’m selling toilet paper which has the masthead of the New York Times embossed across it, if anyone is interested in buying?

Posted by: Lev Davidovich | Sep 6 2023 8:33 utc | 5

They r trying to scare away Chinese economic partners from global majority countries through the only edge the west has, domination withing media information space while west prepares to fight China through it’s proxy Taiwan and Philippines and maybe india. They just need a war with China so they can try to setup an economic blockade against china.

Posted by: A.z | Sep 6 2023 8:43 utc | 7

excellent work b (multiple examples rebutted, Yippy Ki-Yay)
p.s. I was puzzled as German sort of Indy media “Telepolis” just yesterday had picked up on this very negative hype on China which sort of came abruptly. It had something fishy. Now I know where the smell came from.

Posted by: AG | Sep 6 2023 9:09 utc | 9

Interesting Chart. If true I know why the Bankers do not like China. The people’s earning percentage to GDP is way too high for them. If the get their wish in Russia serfdom will be reinstated.
The phrase from WEF, “you will own nothing and be happy” is serfdom. They will own everything and be very happy. Everything they touch will turn into shit.

Posted by: circumspect | Sep 6 2023 9:41 utc | 11

Where’s the doom-casting from Gordon Chang? You cannot have a proper pity party of frustrated schadenfreude about China without Gordon Chang. That guy is the champion of failed unrequited wishful predictions about China’s demise. More than thirty years of “Any minute now!” with no gratification? Talk about blue balls!

Posted by: William Gruff | Sep 6 2023 9:42 utc | 13

Considering the topic, the poster Antonym should be spamming this discussion “Any minute now!” I strongly suspect that guy is Gordon Chang in drag.

Posted by: William Gruff | Sep 6 2023 9:56 utc | 15

p.s. I was puzzled as German sort of Indy media “Telepolis” just yesterday had picked up on this very negative hype on China which sort of came abruptly. It had something fishy. Now I know where the smell came from.
Posted by: AG | Sep 6 2023 9:09 utc | 5
—
Telepolis is about as much Indy as Baerbock, Habeck and Scholz.

Posted by: Nobody | Sep 6 2023 10:02 utc | 17

Does that “Wages % Share of GDP” chart consider wage supplements such as Medicare, Medicaid, and S.S.A.?
Also, is an increase in that metric forever a good thing, or is there a “sweet spot”? Thanks.

Posted by: SYaba | Sep 6 2023 10:28 utc | 19

What I’ve told friends is to simply Google “China” and “economy”, click the news option and behold the doom scroll that goes back years and years. And note that if all this was true, China would have collapsed, long ago.

Posted by: bobzibub | Sep 6 2023 10:31 utc | 21

SYaba @10: “Also, is an increase in that metric [“Wages % Share of GDP”] forever a good thing, or is there a “sweet spot”?”
That “sweet spot” should be somewhere around 100% I should think, at least once a country’s infrastructure and manufacturing capacity is built out. Why should there be any GDP that doesn’t manifest as a wage for someone?

Posted by: William Gruff | Sep 6 2023 10:48 utc | 23

I barely know why anyone listens to this perennial bashing of China’s economy any more. Failed economists if you check ’em out you invariably find that their tenure at their particular bank, academic institution or think tank has or is just about to end their rort. No reputable economist puts their name to such tripe, still it appears with less & less notable ‘economists’ scraping the barrel in hope of rehabilitation. Always fails cos few careers can be built on a reputation for dissemination unless one considers a seven figure salary as a TV pundit to be rehabilitation, that is apart from the down & out desperates.
The important part is that less and less humans believe their spiels simply because whatever these scum claim China always does better than anywhere else. When these pundits claim China is going down the gurgler the rest of the world pauses knowing that however bad thinks may get for China their economy will be worse.
China’s economists know that as a great deal of their economic success is based on capitalism which always trips & stumbles eventually, they need to be ready for that just as Russia was ready for her unjust SMO sanctions.
Those western creeps always telegraph their punches because any western pol’s real target is its own voters, so they tell aforesaid voters exactly what they plan to do next in the hope that success will bring them credit.
China pays attention and ameliorates problems as much as possible before they happen so amerikans’ pushback has the punch and the power of a gnat’s bite.
I still wonder what will be the last straw in amerika.
eg I’m greatly surprised to note that amerikans in the bastion of alleged freedom and individuality have accepted the reality of never owning the pot they piss in, now huge private equity combines replete with tax breaks and hot off the printing press cash, have cornered the market on home ownership guaranteeing working people will spend their disposable income on rent so they can never buy.
Nero fiddled whist Rome burned cos he had paid off street thugs to burn Rome’s CBD so he could build a huge palace on thousands of former homes. amerika’s current elites seem not to know that this was the action which turned citizens against him and caused his to be the last Julio-Claudian emporer. If amerikans still have any balls the actions of the last seven or eight slimy prezzes will provoke the same outcome, media be damned, reality cannot be ignored.

Posted by: Debsisdead | Sep 6 2023 11:32 utc | 25

I live in a Chinese tier 4 City for past 10 years.
And formed my own empirical yardstick of boom and gloom of Chinese society.
You’ve heard of Burgernomic, so now I bring to you EBikenomics. Tried and tested evidence of growing consumer spending.
I live in an Evergrande estate (cue laughter at collapsing Chinese real estate) and the past months since China officially lifted all US Virus caused restrictions as of January 2023, there’s a massive boom in the number of electric bikes, etrikes, Dinky ecars just in my estate alone.
These people’s transports is spilling from sidewalk to roadways in search of parking spaces. And more rows of electric charging points for them.
Up to you what you make of this.

Posted by: Surferket | Sep 6 2023 11:34 utc | 27

So the usual projection then.
Well it is a change from “Russia is collapsing”, “Putin is weak”, etc. which is also projection.
I imagine Assad enjoys being ignored for a while.
It is so good that Cheney is still alive to see the results of his greed and stupidity.

Posted by: Bemildred | Sep 6 2023 11:42 utc | 29

Essentially, China has the best capitalist economy because it has a communist government. This mix gets the best of economic freedom and capital formation while avoiding the corruption of government by monopolistic forces and charlatans posing as politicians.
If Russia had liberalized its economy instead of its politics, the Soviet Union would still be around and it would be a success story similar to the Chinese.

Posted by: Johan Kaspar | Sep 6 2023 11:42 utc | 31

These people’s transports is spilling from sidewalk to roadways in search of parking spaces. And more rows of electric charging points for them.
Up to you what you make of this.
Posted by: Surferket | Sep 6 2023 11:34 utc | 14
Too much is worse than none is what I make of it. When you are already crowded, lots of consumer crap makes it all worse. Been there done that. Soon you will have storage rental businesses everywhere too. Consumer culture, despite its many attractions, sucks in the end. You don’t need all that crap, what you need is good people around you, people you can trust, and that is all you really need.
This whole idea of electrifying everything with the same old electric grid is not going to work either, not here anyway. Perhaps You in
China will be able to do it, but it will not be better when you do. The problem is not what kind of energy we use, it is how much we use. The problem is not people, it how many people. Quantity has a quality all its own.

Posted by: Bemildred | Sep 6 2023 12:09 utc | 33

These people’s transports is spilling from sidewalk to roadways in search of parking spaces. And more rows of electric charging points for them.
Up to you what you make of this.
Posted by: Surferket | Sep 6 2023 11:34 utc | 14
Just a quick question.
Are the stories about the ebikes and escooters spontaneously combusting overhyped or true enough?
Saw a youtube story about this Phenomenon a few days ago.
You’ve much better placed to comment though!

Posted by: jpc | Sep 6 2023 12:20 utc | 35

Posted by: Lev Davidovich | Sep 6 2023 8:33 utc | 3
##########
I am very protective of my butt, a NYT masthead might give me an STD.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Sep 6 2023 12:24 utc | 37

Do you really need to ask why? I believe I answered the question when I posted this seven years ago in November 2016.
HOW MEDIA PRODUCES LIES FROM HALF-TRUTHS & FACTOIDS
MSM has a code word they use when they are lying: UNPREDICTABLE! It means that any information they give on the subject is totally useless in predicting its future behavior. “Unpredictable” topics include Trump, Assad, Putin, and North Korea.
Mainstream news on “unpredictable” topics consists of four ingredients in varying proportions:

1. Outright lies: In the Syrian context this often takes the form of accusing “Assad” for crimes committed by “rebels”.
2. Half truths
3. Falsoids (was factoids): small pieces of falsehoods and lies that have already been shown to be lies, but that are repeated by the media so often that sheeple believe them to be true. “Assad, who last year gassed his own people, denied…”
4. Facts: the most useful fact are the time and place of alleged events. Sometime the article may contain useful pieces of eyewitness testimony.

The factual parts of the article however do little to help the reader form a coherent picture of events. They are chosen in the same way photo mosaic collages are made. First a narrative is created, that the writers and articles must follow. Suitable pieces of factual content are chosen, so that taken together they produce something that resembles the predetermined narrative.
***
A former editor and correspondent of the The New York Times, Michael Cieply describes how the newspaper works:

Stunned By Trump, The New York Times Finds Time For Some Soul-Searching – Deadline, November 10, 2016
It was a shock on arriving at the New York Times in 2004, as the paper’s movie editor, to realize that its editorial dynamic was essentially the reverse. By and large, talented reporters scrambled to match stories with what internally was often called “the narrative.” We were occasionally asked to map a narrative for our various beats a year in advance, square the plan with editors, then generate stories that fit the pre-designated line.
Reality usually had a way of intervening. But I knew one senior reporter who would play solitaire on his computer in the mornings, waiting for his editors to come through with marching orders. Once, in the Los Angeles bureau, I listened to a visiting National staff reporter tell a contact, more or less: “My editor needs someone to say such-and-such, could you say that?”
The bigger shock came on being told, at least twice, by Times editors who were describing the paper’s daily Page One meeting: “We set the agenda for the country in that room.”

Posted by: Petri Krohn | Sep 6 2023 12:31 utc | 39

Let’s not forget that the reason for slowing in China’s real estate sector is that in recent years, the government deliberately bankrupted Evergrande, the largest speculator. XI said at the time said something like housing is a right, not something to speculate on.

Posted by: John Schoonover | Sep 6 2023 12:34 utc | 41

Western propaganda is not even creative anymore. Since Ukraine they’ve just been throwing every kind of shit at the wall they can think of regardless of credibility or logic. Or in this case of China, just lazily wheeling out the same ol’ discredited trope that had never come true during the last 20 years they’ve been saying it. It’s probably why so many countries are eager to join the brics in the last couple of years, the smell of decline is overwhelming.

Posted by: Autumn | Sep 6 2023 12:37 utc | 43

This whole idea of electrifying everything with the same old electric grid is not going to work either, not here anyway. Perhaps You in
China will be able to do it, but it will not be better when you do. The problem is not what kind of energy we use, it is how much we use. The problem is not people, it how many people. Quantity has a quality all its own.
Posted by: Bemildred | Sep 6 2023 12:09 utc | 17
It is obvious this “Bewildered” poster has not bothered to study China’s electric infrastructure…
Is ignorant of the massive new Hydro/Wind/Solar power plants…
Is ignorant of the many new nuclear power plants coming on stream
Is ignorant of the great improvements in air and water quality consequent to China’s shift to EVs
Is ignorant of China’s pioneering work on Thorium Fueled Molten Salt Reactors, Pebble Bed Reactors, and breeder reactors
Is ignorant of China’s recent completion of the north-south waterway
Is ignorant of China’s success in breeding giant rice, salt tolerant rice
Is ignorant of China’s fielding high speed rail lines exceeding 450 km/hr
and….
Is ignorant of China’s success in greening it’s deserts, making rural life attractive…
INDY

Posted by: Dr. George W Oprisko | Sep 6 2023 12:44 utc | 45

the government deliberately bankrupted …
Posted by: John Schoonover | Sep 6 2023 12:34 utc | 21
—
And they’ll do it again! That trick never gets old. It gives liberals righteous vapors.
When my Central Bank does a thing its good, but when your Central Bank does it, its bad.

Posted by: too scents | Sep 6 2023 12:45 utc | 47

Keeping families out of poverty in a capitalist system?
https://www.picodi.com/us/bargain-hunting/minimum-wage-2023
Minimum wage worldwide: how did the record inflation affect those earning the least?

Posted by: Oui | Sep 6 2023 13:08 utc | 49

A significant problem for western thought / analysis / decision making is that many believe their media to be the global media. It probably started in the 90’s but really became noticeable in the early 00’s when certain magazines and newspapers were regularly available at airports and train stations globally. It’s parallel to the Friedman motto of “everything you need to know about country X can be learned from my conversation with a cab driver who happened to speak perfect English”.
Western leadership became convinced that its media was the primary source of information globally. And before the internet it did play a large role for anyone speaking English. But that was never the majority of the global population and the internet destroyed whatever power it had.
Theoretically, it means that articles like this have a strong effect on global opinion. Realistically, it’s just preaching to the choir. But because the west has convinced itself that western media is the primary source of information for the planet, the end result is the west merely propagandizing itself. Combine that with the particularly American idea that nowhere else in the world really matters and you’re left with the US-EU axis believing things about the rest of the world that simply aren’t true. The downsides of this information environment won’t be felt until it’s too late. And it’s also clear that whatever serious intelligence work is done in western capitols is secondary to media opinion formation in leadership circles. Meaning leadership is making poor decisions based on poor information.

Posted by: Lex | Sep 6 2023 13:16 utc | 51

If Chris Buckley lives in China why doesn’t he quote even one person who is really involved in China’s economy or policy making? Isn’t there any active Chinese politician or Chinese CEO or Chinese economist or Chinese worker he could quote?
answer
A) they lose their job
B) their social rating score collapses and they can’t access society in general
C) they don’t trust western media
D) all of the above

Posted by: Kimert | Sep 6 2023 13:21 utc | 53

Bemildred @17: “The problem is not what kind of energy we use, it is how much we use. The problem is not people, it how many people.”
Oh no! Not you too!
This is a very dangerous line of thought as the people who think it are invariably thinking of there being too many other people and are exempting themselves. This is exemplified by larded-up Americans who are each spewing more carbon than more than half a dozen other people on the planet combined, and consuming enormously more resources than many others combined on top of that.
Rather than using less energy, humanity needs to use more. Much more. Like an order of magnitude more. Energy use is one of the metrics for how developed a civilization is, and we’re not so developed as we think so long as hundreds of millions in South Asia still cook their meals over burning cow poop instead of in microwave ovens.
To be sure, burning fossil carbon for energy is a dead end, but there are good alternatives. I won’t go into the details of the best of those alternatives because it is well beyond what most people now can imagine, but know that the Chinese are working on it and they are going to succeed. And when the Chinese succeed they will become the new age OPEC, offering vast, practically unlimited amounts of cheap and perfectly “green” energy to the world. Let’s see if we can hold off recommending genocide of the less fortunate until then, OK?

Posted by: William Gruff | Sep 6 2023 13:26 utc | 55

Why? Because everything we are told to believe is a lie.
Funny thing, it is very simple. Repeat that sentance in your mind, everytime you are told to believe this or that. I guarantee you everything changes when you stick to it

Posted by: mtntopforge | Sep 6 2023 13:43 utc | 57

humanity needs to use more. Much more.
Posted by: William Gruff | Sep 6 2023 13:26 utc | 28
—
What a flying taxi level of comment.
In practically every case energy is traded against time.
When people learn (or are allowed) to properly value time the energy situation will take care of itself.
The capitalist’s tight coupling of time with money is what drives energy consumption.
The technological solution to energy conservation is the prudent application of socialism.

Posted by: too scents | Sep 6 2023 13:49 utc | 59

too scents @30
Here you go: Flying taxi.
As I said, “it is well beyond what most people now can imagine”, and that certainly includes you. There’s no shame in that.
As for what drives energy consumption, speak for yourself. I suppose you’d cook with cow flops too if it were not for capitalism, right?

Posted by: William Gruff | Sep 6 2023 14:09 utc | 61

Posted by: jpc | Sep 6 2023 12:20 utc | 18
They do sometimes burn up. But very rarely. Given China’s population of 1.44 billion people and most of them actually have one of these ebikes then it’d seem “frequent”.
The problem arise when these idiots bring their ebikes back home to charge up and sometimes Cheap ebikes don’t have auto charge off so it gets heated up. Because they don’t want to pay a bit more for public charging facilities they risk burning their families and neighbours up.
Back in my home country where these ebikes are actually banned the burning up incidences are MORE often then in China because the importers tamper with boosting the speed limitation circuits of these ebikes.

Posted by: Surferket | Sep 6 2023 14:11 utc | 63

The technological solution to energy conservation is the prudent application of socialism.
Posted by: too scents | Sep 6 2023 13:49 utc | 30

Posted by: Phil R | Sep 6 2023 14:20 utc | 65

My late father who was a senior diplomat in the US Foreign Service said 25 years ago that the thinking at State (he knew everyone) was that “it was either the Chinese or us who would run the world and it better be us.” That has been the thinking in the foreign policy elite for decades. Most diplomats of that time were not neocons but they gradually moved to the neocon positions of using aggressive and bellicose methods to assert American supremacy because, as they were nearly all political liberals, they did not want the future dominated by what they saw as highly authoritarian regime that would institute a global order resembling a global 1984. At that time, most senior diplomats, heads of liberal think tanks cared about the country and believed in its future. I think 911, as they said in those days “changed everything.”
Diplomats, soldiers, think-tankers all warmed to the idea of “being at war” and did not question during the aughts the aggressive direction they were going in. The press in particular joined into the rah-rah America thing. What disillusion came in was moderate by their personal need to advance their careers (the younger professionals in the foreign policy Blob) and be the very model of 1950s “organizational men.” My father, a realist of the Hans Morgantheau school (he was mentored by him at the UC) became deeply skeptical of the new patriotism and did what he could to change minds before he died.
My point is that the foreign policy community that now contains not only the Deep State federal and international (NATO etc.) organizations, but also all major US and Western news organizations–they all, I suspect, see themselves as bulwarks against a potential tide of authoritarian societies led by China to destroy the international order. Few of them understood that by adopting such a militant view that they themselves and not the Russians or Chinese would be the bringers of their own kind of authoritarianism and they have wildly succeeded. The NYT is a branch of the government and are seen by themselves and the feds as warriors for their side. Sadly both the news hacks and the foreign policy apparatchiks are stuck in that mode. Thus when senior editors at the Times have dinner with State, WH, or CIA people they get the “line” that in the usual Washington “nudge-nudge-wink-wink” way that only negative stories can be published about China there it goes. The media is now no different than the Soviet or Nazi media in its organization and direction. Even if a reporter wanted to provide a deeper context to their stories they would know they would be immediately be fired for contradicting the Party Line. This is what we’ve come to in the USA at all senior levels of leadership in all institutions. They lie and distort as a policy and a way of life–and feel righteous and noble soldiers for doing so, at best, at worst they just punch the clock.

Posted by: Chris Cosmos | Sep 6 2023 14:20 utc | 67

The truth is that nobody knows anything definate about the state of the Chinese economy. Not even the Politburo. Lower rungs of the party lie and cheat to advance; they falsify statistics and fudge numbers to an incredible extent. That is why outside oberservers and the PB rely on other numbers like electricity consumption and the production of certain goods to get an idea of the state of things. These metrics don´t look good at all. Worst of all is the real estate crisis which you can identify by looking at published numbers of prepaid vs. finished apartments. It is the biggest Ponzi scheme (using new money to finish older buildings) the world has ever seen. The PB cannot not bail out the RE sector as tens of millions of chinese have invested their life savings. But there´s the problem of moral hazard and the fact that there are already tens of millions of empty appartments. Will be interesting to see how Beijing will solve this problem. Most likely is a Japanese style solution: extend and pretend.

Posted by: Tom67 | Sep 6 2023 14:21 utc | 69

Posted by: Surferket | Sep 6 2023 14:11 utc | 32
Thanks.
Great to hear from someone in the area.

Posted by: jpc | Sep 6 2023 14:21 utc | 71

The technological solution to energy conservation is the prudent application of socialism.
Posted by: too scents | Sep 6 2023 13:49 utc | 30
Maybe I’m just naive, but I seriously doubt that socialism is the “technological solution” to anything, much less energy conservation.
(sorry about the previous post. Accidentally hit “post” before finishing).

Posted by: Phil R | Sep 6 2023 14:22 utc | 73

Maybe I’m just naive, but I seriously doubt that socialism is the “technological solution” to anything, much less energy conservation.
Posted by: Phil R | Sep 6 2023 14:22 utc | 37
##################
I don’t think you’re naive. For some, socialism is the answer to everything. Remember, “true Communism” hasn’t been tried yet! 😂

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Sep 6 2023 14:28 utc | 75

It is the biggest Ponzi scheme (using new money to finish older buildings) the world has ever seen.
Posted by: Tom67 | Sep 6 2023 14:21 utc | 35
##########
Dear friend, I anxiously await you applying the same analysis to the “American economy”.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Sep 6 2023 14:30 utc | 77

Tom67 @35: “… there are already tens of millions of empty appartments. Will be interesting to see how Beijing will solve this problem.”
Foreclose, seize the physical assets (real estate), and sell to local moms and pops for jiǎo on the dollar. Most of the overextended investments are by foreigners anyway so it won’t hurt China very much. Hey, investors make their money by taking risks with it, right? Risks don’t always pay off, so deal with it.

Posted by: William Gruff | Sep 6 2023 14:37 utc | 79

The empire is good at media warfare. That is probably focus management due to the recent (several days ago)
A new Huawei phone has defeated US chip sanctions against China”

Posted by: Grey Cloud | Sep 6 2023 14:37 utc | 81

The New York Times is not a newspaper, it hasn’t been one for years. It has transitioned into an American Völkischer Beobachter, the German Nazi party propaganda rag. The Deep State had enough of the NYT during the VietNam War and took it over in broad daylight. Why would you give any credence to anything it prints, when its purpose is not to inform, but to form public opinion.

Posted by: DrCiber | Sep 6 2023 14:39 utc | 83

The biggest problem in “Capitalist” economies is the commercial-bank-debt-as-currency system imposed on us by governments granting private banks the right to create fiat currencies ex-nihilo every time they extend loans.
I don’t know whether the Chinese have a similar monetary system, but if not, they’re miles ahead of us in the “capitalist” West.

Posted by: Observer | Sep 6 2023 14:47 utc | 85

China and Russia are finally eradicating the EVIL and demons who reside in the Western hemisphere. Please continue.

Posted by: AI | Sep 6 2023 14:58 utc | 87

I don’t know whether the Chinese have a similar monetary system, but if not, they’re miles ahead of us in the “capitalist” West.
Posted by: Observer | Sep 6 2023 14:47 utc | 43
When it comes to bad debt, China is worse than we are and has been for several decades. The difference is that the Chinese system is better at both subsidizing the bad debt and hiding the problem. That is one of the reasons the Chinese have so much money to spend with things like the Belt and Road project and the government building things in other countries generally. And also why they get involved in building whole cities that nobody lives in and the very expensive high speed rail. They have a surplus of funds that they can’t actually make good use of.

Posted by: Jmaas | Sep 6 2023 14:58 utc | 89

I don’t think you’re naive. For some, socialism is the answer to everything. Remember, “true Communism” hasn’t been tried yet! 😂
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Sep 6 2023 14:28 utc | 38
Yep. Same has been said for “true Socialism” and “true Marxism.” There has never been and there will never be a “prudent application of socialism.”

Posted by: Phil R | Sep 6 2023 14:58 utc | 91

Evergrande soars 70% leading Chinese property stocks higher after Country Garden avoids default

Posted by: Bemildred | Sep 6 2023 15:00 utc | 93

I see Chinese mobile phone videos that slipped through the Great Firewall of China: a picture says a 1000 words.
For words there are Weibo messages that get cut off by (AI) Censors but some still make it abroad.
Logic also answers some Chinese riddles.
For those who do not want to see there is no remedy.

Posted by: Antonym | Sep 6 2023 15:02 utc | 95

A commonplace problem when an economy expands rapidly is that some asset class gets bid up too high in price. Or too much of some asset is acquired. As the money to do it is commonly borrowed, the outcome is an asset that may no longer be worth the amount of money that was borrowed to purchase it. That produces credit problems: there is a bunch of bad debt. Plus once the growth slows, as it always will, the overpriced asset class stagnates in value or falls.
Unless some agency steps in and covers the bad debt the situation will crash the credit market which will be followed by a recession or depression, depending on severity. If the government steps in and cover the expenses of the speculators using public money, there is still the holdover problem of a major asset class that is stagnant or declining in value. That stagnates the economy and will terminate economic growth, if not cause a decline.
The major asset class that has been overbid in price both here and in China is real estate. China, apparently, has it worse than we do, but their more regimented society can sometimes deal with these things better than our more capitalist society. As far as the Chinese economy crashing to our benefit, on balance I think we look weaker then they do.

Posted by: Jmaas | Sep 6 2023 15:03 utc | 97

Just a quick question.
Are the stories about the ebikes and escooters spontaneously combusting overhyped or true enough?
Saw a youtube story about this Phenomenon a few days ago.
You’ve much better placed to comment though!
Posted by: jpc | Sep 6 2023 12:20 utc | 18

Lithium-ion batteries that contain nickel and cobalt have problems with thermal runaway (fires) when damaged. The newer LFP batteries don’t have this problem, even when shorted out, and the even newer sodium-ion batteries don’t have this problem either. That’s why electric car makers are switching to LFP (and newer) batteries.

Posted by: Contrarian_Ed | Sep 6 2023 15:08 utc | 99