A Hong Kong court has ordered one of China’s biggest property developers, Evergrande Group, to liquidate after it was unable to reach a restructuring deal with creditors over hundreds of billions of dollars it owes.
Key points:
- Evergrande has been ordered to liquidate after failing to come up with a restructuring deal with creditors over US$300 billion in debts owed
- The liquidator will now attempt to take control of Evergrande assets outside China, but there are fears that could pave the way for other lawsuits
- It could take years for the offshore liquidator to take control of subsidiaries across mainland China
I’ll take “Shit that Doesn’t Effect Me at All”, for $400 Alex.
That category is sparser than you might think. If China’s economy collapses you will definitely see an affect on what you pay for stuff. And there’ll be other geopolitical impacts too, as the countries around the world readjust priorities to account for this change.
I’m fine with paying more, if it doesn’t come from China.
Okay, so you’re fine with it. Bully for you. There are a lot of people in your society who are living much closer to the edge and will find themselves in a lot of trouble if prices for the stuff they need go up.
The point of why this is a problem is ripple effects. None of us own shares in Evergrande. But Evergrande’s collapse could cause such big ripples that it’s bound to affect us anyway, even way out at the fringes of seemingly unrelated economies. Your lifestyle may not be impacted directly but you’ll find yourself wondering “why are there suddenly a bunch of wars in southeast Asia?” Then “why are gas prices through the roof?” And then “why are all the prices through the roof?” And finally “why are the poors rioting in the streets and burning my house? Don’t they know how expensive it is now?”
You mean, “Why are gas prices so damn low?”, because a giant economic recession in China will CUT gasoline prices as huge swaths of Chinese citizens run out of money for gasoline cars and switch to busses or other cheaper forms of transit.
Economic calamity causes lower gasoline prices typically.
Its not all bad. The real issue is that bad loans can be transferred to other countries through unknown means. Ex: Apple may have had some Evergrande bonds for some real estate issue in China, and then Apple suddenly loses a lot of money affecting S&P500 funds and then cutting people’s 401k accounts or something.
But economic calamity == less consumption of gasoline (fewer trips, fewer vacations, fewer cruises) == lower gas prices typically. As some people like to point out: all an economic recession is, is when the value of cash grows dramatically (meaning the value of everything else: vacation packages, luxury cars, technology, etc. etc. declines). This “everything else” includes oil, because when no one is going on vacation, oil builds up faster than we can use it.
It could shoot back up when the Strait of Malacca gets blockaded, or when it turns out that major oil production companies depend on Chinese-made equipment, or when Russia collapses and stops selling oil to India because China dropped its military support for them, or any number of other possible knock-on effects.
The exact details are not the important thing in what I was talking about. The point is that China’s economic woes will have an effect on you, not what precisely what those effects will be.
And my point is that effects are often deflationary. IE: The great depression dropped the price of goods.
That means when one country has an isolated recession or isolated depression, its something the rest of the world could easily benefit from. Its not all bad. The full effects are extremely unpredictable, and assuming worst-case scenario over-and-over is counterproductive.
Deflation is bad for people too.
Oh you sweet summer child