2011-01-20wsj.com

Something stinks here, about this explanation for today's market action (which seems to be the story the MSM has settled on). First of all, since gold fell (and silver as well), this can't just be about "commodities"; it is more likely to be a monetary event. Stocks also fell. This suggests to me some sort of liquidity/leverage shock is going on (a smaller version of what happened in fall 2008).

Secondly, despite fears of lower commodity consumption, China's latest GDP growth just came in above expectations. So the fear should be of a melt-up. Yet the media is saying the concern is of a further Chinese state clamp-down on monetary expansion and consumption. As per usual, they will shift explanations to the logical opposite in order to deprecate their favored targets ("growth is overheating, therefore commodities demand is likely to be up -- but we don't want to acknowledge that -- so we'll say the concern is that China will successfully clamp down on growth and cause commodities to crash.")

But why would it be any more likely the Chinese could slow down growth and monetary inflation, if they've been unsuccessful so far? At some point the bubble WILL burst, of course, but not necessarily (or even likely) at the behest of the Chinese authorities.



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