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Comment by fnazeeri | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty sure history doesn't not count orderly bubble deflations. It's like recording non-car accidents. I'm not suggesting this article is likely true, I'm just skeptical that there has never been an orderly bubble deflation.

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With the kind of control Chinese government has on everything in its economy l they probably are the one country that could deflate in a controlled manner compared to the rest of the world. Instead of a trillion dollar collapse in 2-3 weeks. They can probably control smaller shocks of few hundred billion over 1-2 years.

This. I think sometimes people who have not actually had to LIVE the experience by being in China longer term don't have an appreciation for the degree of control that exists there.

China is a strange place where the central government is omni-present, AND nowhere all at the same time. It's strange, and difficult to describe. But I agree with xbmcuser...

The Chinese government, as long as it maintains its current structure, is in a happy position vis-a-vis economic control.

(Or any other type of control for that matter.)

The issue may not be the amount of control. It may be the wisdom to use that control in a way that causes the least (economic) harm. At this point, how best to deflate that bubble might be regarded as an unsolved problem. (There may be theories. In fact, there probably are more theories than there are successful examples.)

I agree. It took me a long time to realize most of my negative opinion for china was media driven and validated by chinese americans whose outdated opinions are elevated as absolutes, its a quirk of our culture.

Everything about china is much more nuanced and full of opportunity

> With the kind of control Chinese government has on everything in its economy l they probably are the one country that could deflate in a controlled manner compared to the rest of the world.

See, I used to think this, until as recently as 2014, but now I'm not so sure. I don't think "China" has the total control of the economy that everyone (including themselves) thinks they do. My impression is that the central government in Beijing understands the problems they have very well, and has the right solutions, but then when it comes time to translate that into "action on the ground", they struggle.

The issue is that the provincial government leaders don't share Beijing's incentives: they get both tax revenue and political opportunity by continuing to juice the credit bubble and looking the other way at the dangerous techniques used to do that. The last few years of economic news out of China have been like this:

- Central government orders reforms to try and gently deflate bubble

- Provincial governments obey for a bit, but growth slows and discontent increases. Provincial governments panic and pull back on reforms.

- Lather, rinse, repeat.

I've come to realize that even authoritarian governments in some sense depend on a popular mandate, even if it's in an indirect way. There might be some way for China to "thread the needle" and balance the opposing goals of deflating their credit bubble before it explodes without stoking popular anger at the hit growth will take, but it's not a sure thing, and if it does happen it won't be because they have total control of the economy.

I used to be bearish on the Chinese economy until I saw how they handled the crisis of 2016. Nowadays I think if there is an economy that can sustain bubbles, the modern Chinese economy is that one, because it is basically controlled by the communist party. The US, on the other hand, is just one financial bubble away from the collapse (unless we use similar tactics to control the financial system - which will be much more painful than in China).

Well, the last bubble that broke here, the Fed saw that the bubble collapse had destroyed about $3 trillion, and injected $3 trillion into the economy to stabilize things. That actually worked rather well. It was very painful, but not catastrophic.

Of course the next bubble will require more than $3 trillion... And saying that things are going rather well is absurd.

I didn't say that things are going rather well. I said that the Fed's intervention worked rather well. That's not the same thing.

In particular, compare 2008-2017 to 1929-1938. That gives some (imperfect) measure of how well the Fed intervention worked.

The Australian housing bubble's end was a non-event, too.

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