Chinese growth will bottom under 2-3% in 2010.

Anyone know of a graphic that shows us the relative sizes of the bubbles worldwide? Debt vs. GDP or something like that?

Re: China...

Taipei says office vacancy in Beijing could hit 36-40% this year. Spin *that* sucka...

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/t-business/2009/03/25/201572/Economic...

Hong Kong says it will get to 26%:

"Beijing will have an estimated 4.79 million square meters (sq m) of vacant space in Grade A office buildings by the end of this year, which would mean a vacancy rate of 23.68%, whereas it was only 16.48% at the end of last year, according to industry sources.

The vacancy rate of Grade A office buildings in Beijing is predicted to hit 17.38% in the first quarter of this year."

http://china.hktdc.com/content.aspx?data=CHINA_content_en&contentid=1078...

Here's the fun part though. NAR has infiltrated Mainland China! Go Zhang go!

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2009-04/09/content_7661026.htm

Shilling as high art:

"Beijing developers are creating the illusion of busy business by paying people to stand in line, 50 yuan per person/day."

http://www.chinastakes.com/Article.aspx?id=1132

(correction for above post: "...will get get 23.68%..." Notice the precision of this number)

Did anyone read this about Buffet buying into this Chinese car company?

http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/13/technology/gunther_electric.fortune/inde...

It will be hard for Government Motors to compete with a company that uses migrant labor to assemble cars, pays it's engineers $600-700 a month, and is probably able to get away with polluting. I can only imagine that there is some sigificant pollution associated with battery manufacturing.

Dawg, you beat me to it. The US doesn't have a patent on data fabrication, but if they did, the Chinese would have stolen it. Time for my metamucil. Goodnight.

"But they felt a little empty"
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Spiritually or physically?

Guess everybody is worn out from taxes & tea bag stories.

......q1's rather low growth is mainly due to the chinese new year holidays,esp this year has been longer .....they will accomplish 8% growth this year......domestic economists dont place any emphasis on this number........ciao..........

..................JPM ..............better than expected.....................

http://investor.shareholder.com/jpmorganchase/earnings.cfm

'Start your own bubble. '

They already did - you might remember the almost global recession of the early 1990s, the one responsible for our former draft dodger in chief getting elected?

You know what made it 'almost'? The East German land and infrastructure rush. Of course, we all know the result of such irrational exuberance, though the Germans were bit players compared to the Japanese in terms how big the bubble grew.

But the bubble was more than big enough to saddle Germany with major deficits for years - remember how the Germans were the first to not meet the mandatory eurozone 3% deficit target, to the amusement of everyone else in the eurozone? A note - that 3% deficit is of all government spending, not just at the federal level, but also at the state/province and municipality level. Generally, Eurostat statistics are much less forgiving than America media published numbers concerning the U.S. Or for a little fun - to accurately compare Germany or France's or Spain's deficit as reported to the ECB or in the American media, it is necessary to add up the deficits of every state and city/county in the U.S. Not a pretty picture when you consider it

And the SPD, the socialists, have a fascinating proposal going into September's election - anyone not required to file an income tax form will be paid 300 euros, 600 if married (I assume this includes Germany's 'Homoehen' too). In other words, anyone that doesn't have rental or other non-income sources of taxable earnings will be paid 300 euros.

It is an interesting proposal, leaving aside the political pandering, a perception which might take hold. First, it provides a stimulus to the economy where it might do good. Second, the 3 billion a year it is estimated to cost will be funded through a stock sales transaction tax - which means that those that earn income from normal wages will benefit compared to those that are involved in the stock market. Class warfare from one perspective, but most Germans are in no mood to reward any investment bank or stock exchange at this point - and it isn't as if the socialists aren't socialists, after all. Or that the socialist don't face serious competition from die Linke, a party considerably to their left, which has been gaining voters steadily with its consistent anti-capitalist platform.

And a major attraction here, according to the proposal, is how simple it will be - the Finanzamt doesn't have any extra work really, the proposal won't require much in the way of changes to the tax laws, and people getting paid not to file paperwork sounds clever. It will tie the FDP, the party of smaller government and lower taxes into knots - though most FDP voters are distinctly the type to earn money from owning property or stocks, those voters will not face an additional burden, and it will be very hard for the FDP to argue against simplifying tax filing for the majority of Germans without appearing as hypocritical idiots (see the Republican party in the U.S. for how this is playing out among the large majority of Americans who don't consider themselves Republicans).

It will be fascinating to see how this plays out over the next period of time - but it is a surprisingly creative proposal which doesn't actually violate the socialist's principles, while actually addressing concrete problems in a way likely to buy votes from those whose disgust at the current system is hard to overestimate.

Merkel and her party's response should be interesting, because they could lose the election right now if they fumble the issue too badly.

Of course, this proposal has no equivalent American framework, and though imaginable in perhaps a few other euro-socialist contexts, it is pretty much limited in application to a wider context.

Which in a way is a shame, because this is the sort of politics that a functional democracy participates in, as compared to mass teabagging on the public streets. Or whatever it is they think they are doing to protest tax cuts for the poor, and tax hikes for the well off to the level of the bad old days when the draft dodger in chief was running surpluses. Even better is protesting these tax hikes, which stem from our former torturer in chief, as a way to convince the majority of Americans that brought the Democrats into power that returning tax rates to the levels of the 1990s is awful policy. Though why bother with the past when we can teabag someone today?
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Whether you like it or not, America will be a teabagging nation.

I'm surprised no one is talking about General Growth's bankruptcy becoming official