Instead, the evidence that China is a slow-motion trainwreck lies in the very consistency of its Beijing-cooked numbers. That’s why the next crash will come as an even greater surprise than the Lehman meltdown, and will be far more brutal and uncontainable, as well. In truth, Wall Street has become so intellectually addled from its addiction to central bank enabled gambling that it no longer has a clue about what really matters.
But that does not prevent most of Wall Street from taking seriously each and every word of China’s self-evidently clueless statist rulers spouting growth rates to the decimal point. Namely, the true size of China’s economy is unknowable to the nearest trillion or even several trillions. You might find the irony exceptionally rich, but there is a larger message. China’s #2 communist boss is out promoting the “enterprenurial spirit” while emitting central planning propaganda to the decimal point. The better-than-expected result-a Wall Street Journal survey of 13 economists forecast a median 6.8% gain-is likely to renew debate over the accuracy of China’s growth statistics…….Speaking at an event to promote entrepreneurism in Beijing on Monday, Premier Li Keqiang said ‘even though it was 6.9%, it is still a growth rate of around 7%.’ But no, the Wall Street Journal took it all very seriously, noting both the “beat” and China’s claim that the “miss” wasn’t a miss at all: