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China warns banks on asset bubbles
FT Alphaville — Chinese regulators on Monday ordered banks to ensure unprecedented volumes of new loans go into the real economy and are not diverted into equity or real estate markets where officials say that asset bubbles are forming. The new policy requires banks to monitor how loans are spent, after warnings that they ignored basic lending standards in the first half as they rushed to extend Rmb7,370bn in new loans, more than twice the amount lent in the same period a year earlier.

Asia’s forever blowing bubbles
FT Alphaville — The warnings have been slow but steady - and now both volume and pace are increasing: asset bubbles are back in Asia. As the FT notes on Tuesday , China has warned its banks to ensure that unprecedented volumes of new loans are channelled into the real economy and not diverted into equity or real estate markets where officials say fresh asset bubbles are forming. The new policy, according to the report, requires banks to monitor how their loans are spent and comes amid warnings that banks ignored basic lending standards in the first half of this year as they rushed to extend ...

China's New 'Great Wall' Built on Easy Money, Speculation and Toxic Debt
Yahoo! Finance: Tech Ticker — ... . With $1.2 trillion of new loans made since November there's "basically a wall of money that's not going anywhere," Gamble says, suggesting real estate speculation and bad lending are rampant. Indeed, The FT reports Monday that "Chinese regulators ordered banks to ensure unprecedented volumes of new loans are channelled into the real economy and not diverted into equity or real estate markets where officials say fresh asset bubbles are forming." Because the economy is state-controlled, the ruling Communist Party "might be able to avoid a crash [but] if you make bad economic ...

FT.com: China Warns Banks Over Asset Bubbles
Fund My Mutual Fund — ... Singapore yesterday. But as I said above... “While it’s obvious that the market is in a bubble, the rally could still go on as the government hasn’t stopped the liquidity,” said Wu Kan, a Shanghai-based fund manager at Dazhong Insurance Co., which manages about $285 million.And before we judge others - let's remember, the US government and Federal Reserve is trying to do the EXACT same thing. Via FT.com: Chinese regulators on Monday ordered banks to ensure unprecedented ...

Vladimir Darling
Streetwise Professor — ... behind the fig leaf of “competition policy” to engage in the same type of pressure tactics that Putin is exerting on Russia’s banks.  Great example to follow there, Alistair.  It will almost certainly do nothing to actually help the British economy.  Instead, it is more likely to put British banks even deeper into a hole, thereby hamstringing growth going forward. Russia and Britain are not the only ones who are treading on very dangerous ground when it comes to banking policy.   China is concerned that the huge amount of credit it is pumping through its banks is feeding a real ...

China: A tale of extreme views
FT Alphaville — China - more specifically its short and mid-term future - has been the theme of the week, with much hype and speculation about coming meltdowns or rampant inflation. The truth, as the true experts conclude, is probably somewhere in between. The week began with a report in the FT about how Chinese regulators had ordered banks to ensure unprecedented volumes of new loans are channelled into the real economy and not diverted into equity or real estate markets where, they warned, fresh asset bubbles are forming. In a development that has convinced investors that Chinese banks may ...

China’s land boom, a datapoint
FT Alphaville — ... engineering a rebound in land prices, achieved by resuming auctions of government-held land in May 2009, encouraging banks to expand their lending to state enterprises, and driving up land prices. Private real estate developers have been forced to buy land at increasingly expensive prices because the amount of land for development held by a developer is one qualification for obtaining a development permit from the government.  If MUFG’s argument is true, it would somewhat contradict the idea put out by the Chinese central bank on Monday that it is acting to curb Chinese bank ...