China's Domestic Stock Problems

While some have talked about China and Russia bailing out Greece for a camel's nose in Europe's tent the simple truth is that Russia can't afford it with oil prices this low(more on this later) and China looks to be having some problems of their own.

While all Western eyes remain firmly focused on Greece, a potentially much more significant financial crisis is developing on the other side of world. In some quarters, it’s already being called China’s 1929 – the year of the most infamous stock market crash in history and the start of the economic catastrophe of the Great Depression.

In any normal summer, a 30pc fall in the Chinese stock market – a loss of value roughly equivalent to the UK’s entire economic output last year – after an ascent which had seen share prices more than double within the space of a year would have been front page news across the globe.

Of course if you've been paying attention it might strike you that building cities that nobody lives in combined with sub-replacement birth rates hasn't been a sign of good things economically in the rest of the world so I'm not sure why anyone thinks this is any different in China. Now there are still differences as to where China is on it's demographics bubble compared to Europe, as well as the advantages/disadvantages that a still authoritarian government brings to situations like this.

Still if China goes into a depression that the powers that be can't keep quite it will make the PIIGS of Europe look like a leaky roof on a global economy house that happens to be on fire.