Is what we're seeing now the hard landing that you've called in the past?

Is this it?

Yeah, well this is certainly a hard landing, because China is not growing at the 7.0% that Beijing claims,

it's not even growing at the 2.2% that they are privately talking about in China.

It could very well be even lower than that, but if I'm wrong, and I could be

'cause no one really knows where China is.

It'll be there in a couple of months, because what we're seeing is a severe deterioration in the economy.

You know, there's a devaluation, there is a plunge in the stock market but most important, there's the money coming out of China.

You know, there're various estimates somewhere between 520 to 800 billion dollars in the last five quarters,

that's a lot of money, that's the Chinese people voting with their feet.

That's what basically they're saying is, this economy, it doesn't have a future.

We spoke to David Wu, head of global rates and currency research at Bank America of Merrill Lynch yesterday.

Talking about China's stock market and what's gonna keep it rising in the near term though. Take a listen.

People not realizing, what now basically four five days away from the parade in Beijing, to celebrate the end of the second world war,

presumably the reason why the Chinese started to intervene in the stock market directly,

is because they don't want the president to look bad when the foreign dignitary start to show up in Beijing.

What do you think about that?

Absolutely, I mean, because you know, they did not intervene on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and we saw the stock market fall.

But lo and behold in the last hour on Thursday, it went up 5.3%.

Yesterday, 4.8%, that's completely inexplicable, that this is government buying in the last hour of the afternoon session.

One of the things that Woo said in the interview is that we could see a return to further UN weakness after the parade

and that maybe the devaluation we saw was just the beginning, here's even talking about the government letting the currency go completely.

What's do you... What's your take on the government's currency policy at this moment?

Well, eventually they're gonna have to do that, because that's the way the economy is going,

and the currency is at an unsupportable level.

You know, they're spending if FT (Financial Times) says of about 10 billion dollars a day to support the value of the currency.

And that means in 21 weeks, you go through a trillion dollars of reserves,

and that number could actually increase, because as people start to realize how bad things are in China,

you can see the pessimism build both inside and outside China,

therefore you can see even more money coming out of the country.

We did see a, if you take a look at their FX (Foreign Exchange) reserves, a socgen had a note out this week,

talking about the extra firepower that China has that they don't actually need to support their currency.

Well that's not quite it, but yeah, there you go.

And basically they're saying that they had about 900 billion that they can play with, to support their currency and help with capital outflows.

Would you agree with that?

You know, who knows what they have, because we can't really trust what they say about their foreign exchange reserves.

But obviously look, they say they've got 3.65 billion, at least through the end of last quarter.

They probably have a lot less now, with their burn rate, and that burn rate, as I said, will probably increase.

So, you know, this country which looks invulnerable now, could very will end up being the real basket case of next year.

Or maybe even the end of this year with the way things are going.

Because the economy doesn't have any support there.

Deutsche Bank was out with a note this week, in which they used the term "quantitative tightening."

And they basically made the argument, that China's reserves have grown

roughly out of the same paces of the federal reserves assets during quantitative easing.

But now, they are coming down, as you can see on the chart it's the purple line, has started to decline

and so Deutsche Bank is saying that this is an issue for the entire world:

China's reserves starting to head down.

Do you see global ramifications from this?

Only because of the panic, but I actually think China is less important to the global economy than most people think.

'cause you know, everyone says it's an engine of global growth.

Well, to be an engine, you gotta buy the goods and services of other countries to create growth elsewhere.

But China through mercantilist policies is actually been taking growth from other places.

And you know the manufacturing that is done in China, well, that'll be done in Vietnam and India and elsewhere.

So the global economy will adjust, but people will panic, because there is this perception that China is critical to everything.

And I think that's wrong, but that's the way the world works these days.

So, therefore, there will be problems when China has even more difficulties that are more evident.

But in terms of the actual stock market, do you think that actually has an effect on Chinese consumption?

I mean, they can still grow that, they're really invested more in real estate

than they are with their assets which are under 10% according to some analysts?

Yeah, well it has a marginal effect on consumption, you know, we've seen the reporting about people not buying luxury cars

and even not buying mid-sized cars, because of the falls in the stock market.

People have put their money in there, they had hoped that it would ride,

they take it out when they get something they want to buy, that's not happening right now.

But also you know, consumption really hasn't been as vibrant as the retail numbers suggest.

I think that it's been growing, but it's not been growing at the rate that everybody thinks.

So it hasn't really been the pole for the rest of the world.

We see that in the really bad import numbers for instance.

Alright, so you already have a very gloomy assessment of China.

A realistic assessment of China.

Fair enough, but what's your nightmare scenario for China that keeps you up at night?

Well, basically that they have a 1930 style crash, see, leaders there cannot affect the downward trend in the economy.

They can slow it, and they have been slowing it for a number of years, but everything, nothing's working.

Monetarism stimulus is not working. Fiscal stimulus would be dangerous, cause it creates debt.

They can't reform because of problems in the political system. The stock market boom was a bust and now they're devaluing their currency.

This is a country where the leaders really cannot affect the economy for the better.