The Bubble Has Burst

Isle of Man, United Kingdom, October 9, 2015 (Newswire.com) - The average home price in America was $US286,000, an increase of two per cent in 2015.

This should be an arresting number for Australians, because, expressed in local currencies, the medium home value in the United States is less than half the median house price in Australia, which is $660,000.

Things do not happen. Things are made to happen. John F. Kennedy

Alastair, McAndrews

Did somebody say housing bubble?

There was widespread disquiet about the Chinese stock market bubble when the Shanghai Composite Index rocketed up 66 per cent in the four months to June 6, when it peaked at 5122.

On Wednesday, the index closed near 3000, meaning it had plunged more than 40 per cent in three months.

The loss of market value in Chinese stocks in the past three months is $1.6 trillion. This happens to be almost exactly the combined value of the Australian stock market. In other words, the destruction of the value in Chinese stocks, in a matter of weeks, was equivalent to wiping out the entire Australian stock market, the eighth largest in the world.

This destruction was set up by some ham-fisted market meddling by the Chinese government, first to stimulate investment, then to contain the damage caused by misguided policy.

This time, as the market plunged, Beijing did not try to impose its will on the market.

In the wake of this Chinese market free-fall much has been made of Australia's vulnerability to China. Indeed, much has been made of the world's vulnerability to China. For the past decade, China has been responsible for more than half the growth of the global economy.

This is unsustainable. Call it the law of large numbers. The larger an economy grows, the harder it becomes to maintain high growth rates. Having become the world's second-largest economy, China cannot be expected to maintain seven per cent annual economic growth.

When the Chinese stock market was jolted this week, the United States was then jolted, and while the amount of damage done to the value of US stocks was even greater – $US2 trillion – it was a much smaller percentage of market value.

Unlike China, the recent decline in US stock valuations has been orderly and measured after a four-year bull market which saw the market double in value since August 2010. It's been a tremendous bull run and was due for a pull-back.

Similarly, the Australian All Ordinaries has made a 12 per cent retreat in four months after two years of solid gains.

Now there is speculation of a re-run of the 1997 Asian economic crisis.  The root cause of the 1997 crisis, centered in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and South Korea, was grossly inflated currencies, compounded by poor economic governance.

This jolt in China is completely different. The market fall may have been unruly and unnerving but, after a rapid boom and rapid bust, the stock market is down only four per cent for the year.

The bursting of the Chinese equity bubble has little to do with the real economy. It is about granting margin loans to people who should never have qualified for them.

It is also about the excesses in Chinese real estate development.

Another guardrail for China is that the value of its stock markets is equivalent to less than 40 per cent of gross domestic product. In advanced western stock markets, total stock market capitalization is equivalent to 100 per cent of GDP.

All this is why the chief executive of BHP-Billiton, Andrew Mackenzie"thought China was poised for solid growth". Many questioned his optimism but BHP has been intimately involved with China for 20 years.

The Beijing government, having learned a hard lesson this year, and seen an ongoing outflow of foreign capital, is now seeking to lift China's sagging growth rate by other means: devaluing its currency, cutting interest rates, and reducing the reserve requirements for banks.

The next step expected is an old-fashioned expansion of the money supply, the tool used by the United State and Europe after the 2008 financial crisis. The technical term is quantitative easing. The non-technical term is loose money.

Globally, there has been so much quantitative easing by governments that interest rates are the lowest ever seen in advanced economies. Inevitably, this has moved investment into hard assets, stocks and real estate.

Does Australia have a housing bubble, partly driven by an inflow of money from China? Consider what $286,000 would buy in Sydney or Melbourne.