Goldman Finds That China’s Debt Is Far Greater Than Anyone Thought
By Tyler Durden
When it comes to China’s new credit creation, at least the country is not shy about exposing how much it is. To find the credit tsunami flooding China at any given moment, one just has to look up the latest monthly Total Social Financing number which include both new bank loans as well as some shadow banking loans. As we reported in April this amount had soared to a record $1 trillion for the first quarter …
… although as we followed up last month, it tumbled in April as suddenly Beijing slammed the breaks on uncontrolled credit expansion. It is unclear why, although the following chart may have had something to do with it: increasingly less of credit created is making its way into the broader economy.
No matter the reason for these sharp swings in credit creation, one thing that was taken for granted by all is that unlike China’s GDP, or most of its “hard” macroeconomic data, at least its credit creation metrics were somewhat reliable, and as such provided the best glimpse into Chinese economic inflection points.
That appears to no longer be the case.
In an analysis conducted by Goldman’s MK Tang, the strategist notes that a frequent inquiry from investors in recent months is how much credit has actually been extended to Chinese households and corporates. He explains that this arises from debates about the accuracy of the commonly used credit data (i.e., total social financing (TSF)) in light of an apparent rise in financial institutions’ (FI) shadow lending activity (as well as due to the ongoing municipal bond swap program).
Tang adds that while it is clear that banks’ investment assets and claims on other FIs have surged, it is unclear how much of that reflects opaque loans, and also how much such loans and off-balance sheet credit are not included in TSF. By the very nature of shadow lending, it is almost impossible to reach a conclusion on these issues based on FIs’ asset information.
Goldman circumvents these data complications by instead focusing on the “money” concept, a mirror image to credit on FIs’ funding side. The idea is that money is created largely only when credit is extended—hence an effective gauge of “money” can give a good sense of the size of credit. We construct our own money flow measure, specifically following and quantifying the money flow from households/corporates.
Goldman finds something stunning: true credit creation in China was vastly greater than even the comprehensive Total Social Financing series. To wit: “a substantial amount of money was created last year, evidencing a very large supply of credit, to the tune of RMB 25tn (36% of 2015 GDP). This is about RMB 6tn (or 9pp of GDP) higher than implied by TSF data (even after adjusting for municipal bond swaps). Divergence from TSF has been particularly notable since Q2 last year after a major dovish shift in policy stance.”
As Goldman concludes, its finding suggests that the Chinese economy’s reliance on credit …read more
Source: Goldman Finds That China’s Debt Is Far Greater Than Anyone Thought
