This Is The $3.5 Trillion “Neutron Bomb” That Keeps Kyle Bass Up At Night [HINT: Think China]
from Zero Hedge:
Earlier today, CNBC invited Kyle Bass, the man who correctly predicted and profited from the subprime collapse, to discuss what he thought was the biggest threat to the global financial system.
“… what we are going to see next is a credit cycle, and in a credit cycle you see some losses, but if China’s banking system loses 10%, you are going to see them lose $3.5 trillion.”
Here is the highlight of what he said:
What I think the narrative will swing to by the end of this year if not sooner, is the real issue in China is not simply that profits have peaked. The real issue is the size of their banking system. Do you remember the reason the European countries ended up falling like dominoes during the European crisis was their banking systems became many multiples of their GDP and therefore many, many multiples of their central government revenue. In China, in dollar terms their banking system is almost $35 trillion against a GDP of $10 and their banking system has grown 400% in 8 years with non-performing loans being nonexistent. So what we are going to see next is a credit cycle, and in a credit cycle you see some losses, but if China’s banking system loses 10%, you are going to see them lose $3.5 trillion.
He then puts this number in the context of China’s “massive” foreign reserves:
What’s the magic number in their FX reserve pile today? When you look at banking system assets divided by their foreign exchange reserves, China is 7x, it’s one of the worst in the world. I think people are mypoically focused on a giant number of reserves, of $3 trillion or thereabouts, and no one is really paying attention to the size of the system and what’s about to happen.
Actually that’s not true: we first pointed this out more than 2 years ago, when we showed “How China’s Stunning $15 Trillion In New Liquidity Blew Bernanke’s QE Out Of The Water.”
