Falling Chinese Charts

In these days of HFT Algos, Spanish yields, Grrek dramas and other subjects, investors seem to have forgotten about China?

The slowmotion fall of the “perfect” economy should receive more attention. From Macrobusiness.

A recent staff report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) shows an estimate of capacity utilisation in China.  Interestingly, according to IMF’s estimation, China has been operating below capacity (albeit not unreasonably) even at the peak right before the 2008/09 financial crisis, and that was supported by external demand which no longer quite exists now. China has built even more capacity since then, which is able to serve the demand from a global economy does not exist.  Capacity utilisation has dropped from about 80% before the crisis to a mere 60% in 2011.  That compares with about 78.9% for the US currently for total industry (which is not very high by US’s historical average), and 66.8% at the financial crisis trough according to the Federal Reserve.  In other words, current capacity utilisation in China appears to be even lower than that of the US during the 2008/09 financial crisis. (Full artcle here).