Reuters (May 14)
Banks mainly seem to be provisioning for consumer debt, but “bad-debt risks could easily spread beyond consumer finance. Commercial real estate could face a brutal reckoning if white-collar workers in major cities decide not to return to the office when lockdowns lift.” When stimulus measures wind down, it will leave “over-indebted small and medium-sized enterprises vulnerable. Mass unemployment would lead to increased mortgage defaults.”
Tags: Bad debt, Banks, Commercial real estate, Consumer finance, Lockdowns, Mortgage, Office, Over-indebted, Provisioning, Risks, SMEs, Stimulus, Unemployment, Vulnerable, White collar, Workers
Barron’s (January 12)
“President Xi Jinping’s men thought they’d escaped 2015’s woes, only to see the floor fall out from under them in the first 10 days of this year. The root causes of instability that’s panicking global markets can be traced back to Jan. 1, 2015, when Xi opted for a muddle-through policy akin to Tokyo’s in the late 1990s.” Xi and crew can still conceivably avoid Japan’s fate by “acting assertively to restructure the economy and repair the bad-debt-heavy national balance sheet. Increasingly, though, Xi’s government is acting like Tokyo’s, circa 1998.”
Tags: Bad debt, Economy, Global markets, Instability, Japan, Panic, Restructure, Tokyo, Xi Jinping
