And perhaps more frightening is a report published by the London Telegraph on Monday that China oil prices threaten the “blowing-up” of the Chinese economy and the demise of the Chinese economic model, as distance from markets threatens to impose a harsh tyranny. And, before we take heart in the hope of cheaper oil, China’s banks, controlled as they are by the Communist Party, are not exactly models to follow, except for those elements in the US Government that seem to be uncovering new and exciting ways to nationalise or socialise that country’s banking system. On Monday, a US website posted a translation of a German newspaper report from Marco Zanchi, a noted European writer and editor of Finanz und Wirtschaft of Zurich, commenting that his “dire” predictions for world markets had “echoes of Japan written all over it, with the spectre of zombie banks slowing the US for years” unless its mess was cleared away. Along with news of the huge strains Vietnam is experiencing — I believe no sharemarket in history has, like Vietnam, fallen every day for a solid month — the news out of China might result in a blow to the lucky country’s glass jaw. The Telegraph report follows a weekend Reuters story, “Asia’s exporters suffering as global demand weakens”, which quotes a Deutsche Bank estimate that 20% of China’s low-end exporters will go belly-up this year. Read More