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China to inject $174B of liquidity on Monday as markets reopen

• wwwtyro 7y ago
  Here's a map with the latest coronavirus data: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • jmnicolas 7y ago
    According to your link the survivability rate is almost 98% (305 deaths for 14628 cases). (I'm trying to inject a bit of optimism here, people are so gloomy).
    • norrius 7y ago
      Given what appears to be exponential growth, the calculation seems to ignore potential future deaths in the currently known cases. Pardon the morbidity and cynicism, but maybe some of these 14628 people haven't had the time to die yet? Wouldn't it be more appropriate to compare deaths (305) to the number of people successfully recovered (348 as per the same page)? This gives the survivability rate of 53%, which does sound scary (and I'd love to be proven wrong here).
      • jmnicolas 7y ago
        I'm pretty sure you die faster than you can recover from this thing. So we should see a better deaths / recoveries ratio in the coming weeks.
        • koheripbal 7y ago
          You are assuming that the data quality here isn't complete garbage.
      • learc83 7y ago
        In addition to recovery taking much longer, there are likely far more than 15k people who have been infected but haven't been to the hospital since the majority of cases aren't serious.
    • ed_balls 7y ago
      I'd like to see some more granular status e.g. out of 15k cases 1000 are 25-35 years old males that were healthy. The survivability rate is X for that group.
    • grey-area 7y ago
      It depends. NB there are only 300 confirmed recoveries as yet, and figures from China are likely underestimates. It’s probably too early to tell mortality in the initial wave and often viruses mutate as they spread and become more virulent. Still, hopefully mortality will be low and this will pass quickly, we are quite good at dealing with epidemics now. I suspect the economic impact may be important though if things worsen even a little and the lockdown continues.
    • stapled_socks 7y ago
      My interpretation would be that the rate of survival is 53%; 348/(305+348). People don't die immediately, the ones currently infected can go either to the "Recovered" figure or the "Deaths" figure. From the link above: 14628 are currently infected(?) 305 were infected and died 348 were infected and recovered
      • jmnicolas 7y ago
        If this thing was killing half of the infected persons there would already be much more deaths than there is now. Unless most the infections occurred very recently which is pretty unlikely. I think my 98% is probably a bit too optimistic, but your 53% is way beyond pessimistic.
        • moralestapia 7y ago
          >there would already be much more deaths than there is now Why? People can be sick for quite some time (in this case, a month, maybe?) and then ultimately die from the disease, this is actually like ... the most common scenario ... I have been unpleasantly surprised by how much people struggle to understand this simple concept. Recovered / (recovered+death) is how you do it. It's common sense, come on ...
          • caconym_ 7y ago
            Since we are in early days and it probably takes longer to recover than to die of it, and the reporting of infections and recoveries and deaths coming out of China is likely undercounting all three due to different systematic factors, I think it's too early for the results of that formula to be taken at face value. In the end, when everything is tallied up, sure. But in the meantime, in the presence of so much uncertainty, "common sense" is only going to lead you astray.
            • moralestapia 7y ago
              I agree with you that the correct answer is "we have to wait more".
    • arein2 7y ago
      And I am guessing those who died were having already poor health
    • Aperocky 7y ago
      Now, it's too early to say if survivability rate is as high, but here's an observation: In the rest of China, D/C count is 40/10000, however, in Wuhan, it is 240/4000. Which essentially means Wuhan patients are 12 times as likely to die. A simpler explanation would be Wuhan hospitals has been overwhelmed and there are actually ~12 times as many patients there.
      • koheripbal 7y ago
        It takes time to die. The patients in Wuhan have been sick for longer.
    • pmorici 7y ago
      For anyone wanting an accurate perspective on the risks of This virus I'd highly recommend watching the Youtube videos MedCram is doing. Their first two esp explain the basics and they have been putting out a daily update. Citing the fatality rate really buries the lead. The issue is that in a high percentage of cases (~29%), including perfectly healthy people, the virus causes ARDS which is a serious condition that requires hospitalization and putting the patient on a ventilator. Combine that with the highly contagious nature and it isn't hard to imagine a scenario where the number of people that require intensive care overwhelms the healthcare system. There are also other concerning factors like people being contagious for several days before the onset of noticeable symptoms and this could be very serious if not taken seriously. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vMXSkKLg2I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vMXSkKLg2I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCG3xqtcL3c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCG3xqtcL3c
      • oska 7y ago
        These videos are very good. Thanks for the suggestion.
    • GistNoesis 7y ago
      I have made a little reactive app to illustrate the fact that those curves number don't allow to infer much about the virus parameters, because there are quite a lot of freedom in other parameters we don't have good prior about. https://gistnoesis.github.io/nCoV/ https://gistnoesis.github.io/nCoV/ Please don't attach too much weight to it, as there is probably some bugs and I'm no epidemiologist.
    • koheripbal 7y ago
      These data are likely a product of garbage in / garbage out. Hospitals are turning away patients - most patients aren't having samples sent for DNA verification - many patients are too afraid to go to the hospital - etc... We likely will not have a clear picture of survivability for some time.
      • marcosdumay 7y ago
        We will get a clear picture in a week or so, from the cases that appeared outside of China.
    • himinlomax 7y ago
      Even assuming the numbers are right and the virus does not evolve, survival may be that high for people who can benefit from intensive care. What happens when the healthcare system is overflowing with patients?
    • mrtksn 7y ago
      People don't die or survive at the time of infection confirmation, you need to put the time dimension into your calculations. From 14628 conformed cases, we only know that 305 died and 443 survived. For the 13880 people, the outcome is undefined. https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/efe83207-5eaa-4538-ad85-86676f06c172 https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/efe83207-5eaa-4538-ad85-86676f0... But you are right, no need to be gloomy. We have a lot of tools to deal with this, it would be alright eventually.
      • unishark 7y ago
        I think we can say with certainty that ultimately all 14628 of them will die.
    • zelly 7y ago
      total recovered: 472. total deaths: 362. So there's roughly the same chance as recovery as dying.
    • tim333 7y ago
      The vast majority of deaths have been over 50s with other health problems so the risks to a large chunk of the population are quite low.
    • shard972 7y ago
      No because your comparing people who are currently infected and in the woods to people who ended up dead. Plenty of those 14k could still end up dead.
• qeternity 7y ago
  ...most of which is just repos being rolled over yielding a surprisingly small net 150b CNY injection. But I guess there's no reason the PBOC can't legitimately go PPT a la BOJ and just buy equities. They have the reserves.
• wyxuan 7y ago
  Wilbur Ross's comments come off as a little callous but whatever. Anyway, these repo operations are meant to stabilize the markets in the event of a flash crash where there is a major dislocation on the price of equities, due to the coronavirus. Still might be a major downside move, but it should stave any long term move downwards.
  • totalZero 7y ago
    China is a major manufacturing partner and it is Wilbur Ross's job to identify and discuss weaknesses in that setup. What do you expect him to do, quietly put his head in the sand? Repo gives liquidity to banks, which may prevent them from selling other assets in order to maintain operations and meet any balance sheet requirements they may have. It doesn't automatically support equities. China's government may also buy equities when markets open, but that would be kind of foolish because they could simply wait and buy lower, where they probably would have more price impact. China has historically had major issues with liquidity and balance sheet. Look up the 2013 Liquidity Crisis and you'll see what I mean. Not to mention that many banks participate in risky practices like meeting balance sheet requirements only on disclosure deadlines and dealing in loans secured with ghost collateral.
    • appleiigs 7y ago
      Yes, this not about equities. I've been through a couple market disruptions on the corporate side. Our revenue is from retail, our expenses are to other businesses. During a natural disaster, people are preoccupied in paying the bills and are late paying. Meanwhile, my corp had contractual obligations to other businesses to pay on specific dates. With less revenue and same expenses, we borrow from the banks. If all corps are going through the same natural disaster, we're all borrowing from the banks. Those banks run out of cash and borrow it from the gov't.
  • mrscottson 7y ago
    The emergency repo operations were required long before the coronavirus, we have liquidity issues in the US. Economy will start to collapse shortly... Fed can't expand the balance sheet without exacerbating the problems.
• howmayiannoyyou 7y ago
  China = 20% of global GDP -> shutdown until Feb 17th. China = ??% of global supply chain -> shutdown until Feb 17th. This is the current status quo. If the situation isn't controlled by Feb 13th you can kiss at least 1/3 of global GDP goodbye. And, don't get me started on possible outbreaks elsewhere.
  • garaetjjte 7y ago
    What will happen 17th?
    • cagenut 7y ago
      according to various models the infection rate should shift from exponential growth to an s-curve function where growth rapidly falls off, the first stage of containment, somewhere around the 15th. the 17th is the monday after that, so many schools and business and cities are planning for everyone to just stay home until the 17th (at least).
      • blippage 7y ago
        Couldn't that thinking be flawed, though? I mean, it's only not exponential now because of effective containment. You have to maintain containment until the disease no longer exists. If you don't do that, and the disease exists, then the virus will spread exponentially as soon as containment stops. It seems to me that the "various models" assume the non-existence of containment attempts. In that case, you have to be careful you're not drawing the wrong conclusions.
      • sfkdjf9j3j 7y ago
        Which models?
      • gruez 7y ago
        >according to various models the infection rate should shift from exponential growth to an s-curve function where growth rapidly falls off I'm sort of skeptical of such models because the quality of their output is entirely dependent on the data coming in. There were anecdotal accounts of hospitals in China running out of test kits. Limited test kits -> limited diagnosis -> underreported infection numbers -> misleading models. Garbage in, garbage out.
• ttul 7y ago
  A friend of mine is leaving HK today - he lives there, so this is not a casual trip abroad. He said the level of fear is making it impossible to live there as a single person. The shops and restaurants are closed. Even his own employer shut its doors indefinitely - and they’re just a video production company. The virus won’t be what ruins China. It’s the panic itself.
  • tempsy 7y ago
    there's no way that's true in HK. there's images of people waiting in line to buy face masks.
    • user5994461 7y ago
      It's all sold out as of yesterday. If you bought a bunch before it was sold out. You can certainly resell some for a large multiple of what you bought them. Shops themselves started doubling price before they sold out. edit: I am talking about face masks.
      • tempsy 7y ago
        I’m saying HK is not on mandatory lockdown. People are going outside and there are shops that are open. I’m sure there are some closures but it’s not government mandated.
  • DataWorker 7y ago
    Why would that panic be limited to China? They are the world’s second largest economy, there’s no way to isolate the economic impact. Can’t quarantine dollars.
  • heymijo 7y ago
    Speaking of Hong Kong, what impact is this outbreak having on the conflict with Beijing?
    • ksec 7y ago
      The "normal" stuff, HK Government continues to give benefits to all Mainland Chinese, sending all the Face Mask reserve to China instead of giving it to Hong Kong people, ( Or only giving it to its own supporter in HK), refuse to shut its border with China. Basically adding more fuel to the fire.
• bitxbit 7y ago
  They already extended the holidays and I know a lot of manufacturers rely on pre and post Lunar production cycles. We are going to find out what happens when China goes offline which is not going to be pretty. I fully expect some products to run short and prices to double within days. I also think the Chinese govt is trying to throw money at this problem. They got caught mismanaging the epidemic and injecting money into the market isn’t going to calm public panic. It will do the exact opposite.
  • taiwanboy 7y ago
    At this point, small foreign business operating in China will go out of business due to supply chain shutdown and illiquidity. Mid sized businesses will have a huge one time cost/write off moving operations out of China. Large multinationals will move more parts of Chinese supplies to other countries. China law blog can put it better than I can: https://www.chinalawblog.com/2020/02/whats-going-to-happen-with-my-china-dependent-supply-chain.html https://www.chinalawblog.com/2020/02/whats-going-to-happen-w... https://www.chinalawblog.com/2020/01/chinas-coronavirus-and-your-supply-chain-dealing-with-unknowns-and-false-diversification.html https://www.chinalawblog.com/2020/01/chinas-coronavirus-and-...
    • delfinom 7y ago
      >Large multinationals will move more parts of Chinese supplies to other countries. The joke is, there is perhaps no point in the next 2 weeks. If the virus so far is as virulent as it seems, there's going to be alot more shutdown countries coming once the incubation periods run down.
  • eru 7y ago
    > [...] and injecting money into the market isn’t going to calm public panic. It will do the exact opposite. Do you still think so, ten days later?
• testfoobar 7y ago
  The net figure matters. Bloomberg: "The central bank said Sunday it will use reverse repurchase agreements to supply 1.2 trillion yuan of liquidity on Monday, with the figure coming to 150 billion yuan ($21.7 billion) on a net basis, according to Bloomberg calculations." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-02/china-s-22-billion-injection-may-help-ease-global-market-rout?srnd=premium https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-02/china-s-2...
  • fspeech 7y ago
    One needs to look at this on a seasonal basis. Typically they inject a large amount of cash before the Chinese new year and start draining it afterwards. So the effect is larger than the net amount though maybe less than the gross number.
  • bookAlot 7y ago
    It'a prep for robberies and a lot investment properties that will "liquify" an investors ability to create loans. I'll just use my Visa and American Express there.
• bane 7y ago
  The Chinese government's response to this situation (after some initial dithering) has been to move swiftly with big moves. I suspect that the force that overcame the initial delays in local response were powerful central government actors who could some in and simply shut cities and entire areas down and not fool around. There appears to be at least one emergency prefab hospital with about 1600 beds under construction and foreign disease experts have been invited in to help with the situation. And now large liquidity injections into the markets. Compare this to the previous recent epidemics that came from China, SARS, H7N9, some variants of Swine Flu and so on. This response feels very different. I work near some people who are providing some analysis of the disease and the evaluation from that community seems to be that the Chinese government has been doing a really strong job in their response and it seems to reflect a turning point in how the government deals with these things. In the past it appears that even having a rampant disease epidemic was considered so embarrassing that it was everything that could be done to hide it. Now it appears that hiding it and acting like its not happening is so embarrassing that a muscular response is warranted. I suppose that's an improvement.
  • adnzzzzZ 7y ago
    This kind of analysis I'm seeing everywhere is so misguided. The reason the local government didn't report on the situation accurately and even punished some journalists for speaking about it is a flaw of how their country is run and how their command structure incentives are poorly set up. This isn't a new problem and it's why we have converged to a different system in most of the West. The government coming in later after the situation is already out of control and responding aggressively is only a sign of their failure, given that it wouldn't be necessary for this to happen in a country that wasn't so authoritarian. This should be a wake up call to people in the West who think that banning "fake news" and "misinformation" is a good idea, given that the local government used this exact same excuse to punish journalists speaking about the outbreak early, when it could have been controlled properly.
    • cambalache 7y ago
      It seems to me that China can only make wrong in your eyes. If it takes time to act it is because the system causes this failure. If the government acts swiftly, it is because they are in panic. If it does not solve the situation, of course because they have a terrible oppressive culture. If the problem is fixed. Of course, because these are one of the few advantages of having an authoritarian system. No matter what China does, you will say something bad. I know this makes me sound like CCP shill, but I am not. I only want to read an assessment made with the same level of rigour and sympathy, if, instead of China was Denmark or Australia.
• moneywoes 7y ago
  For the economists out there, how much will this help?
  • MR4D 7y ago
    Not much. Might even have the opposite effect. This is like China’s 9-11. They have fear, a travel shutdown, and effectively shut down their businesses for at least a week. The economic impact just driven by the fear is huge. The magnitude probably won’t be truly understood until the second half of the year.
  • buryat 7y ago
    it can prevent flash crash which can rollover everywhere, and instead levels will be lowered gradually until fresh news can spread everywhere and prevent panic
• cltsang 7y ago
  Pardon my lack of economics knowledge. They may be able to keep the stock afloat for a few days, then what's next? Where will the money eventually go? How can this help when economic activities halt?
  • MR4D 7y ago
    This is a liquidity event, not a stock market problem. They have to be solved differently. So you are right that they may help the market for a day or two, but that won’t solve the underlying issue as you suspected. More will be needed. Much, much more.
  • QuesnayJr 7y ago
    It's standard Keynesian monetary policy. There's bound to be some impact on the economy from the coronavirus, but sudden shocks to the system cause the economy to overreact, and far more people get thrown out of work. If the government overstimulates, then you get inflation, but in a crisis unemployment is a bigger problem.
  • bitxbit 7y ago
    Companies will face cash crunch because they temporarily can’t sell (since they can’t make widgets). This will help them bridge that gap in theory.
  • PeterisP 7y ago
    When economic activity is temporarily unexpectedly reduced, companies start running out of cash / working capital. Injecting extra liquidity means that companies are able to get short-term loans to cover expenses and continue functioning, instead of going bankrupt during the chaos (which would also facilitate bankrupting their suppliers and creditors).
• seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  Having lived in Beijing for 9 years, I’m glad I’m not there right now. Not because of a fear of getting sick, but of the sheer boredom of being stuck in my apartment, nowhere to eat, drink, or even walk without an appropriate face mask. Heck, even going to the office is probably off limits right now.
  • capableweb 7y ago
    > being stuck in my apartment, nowhere to eat, drink, or even walk without an appropriate face mask As someone who never been there (or in China for that matter), is "face mask" a synonym for something or you mean literally a face mask? Don't think it's mandatory to wear face masks, just that a lot of people do it, right? If someone knows better, please correct me
    • tlrobinson 7y ago
      I don't know if it's mandatory, but I suspect "a lot of people" means "pretty much everyone" right now.
      • capableweb 7y ago
        I see. So you wouldn't literally "stuck" right? You can still go out, it's not like martial law or something like that.
        • seanmcdirmid 7y ago
          Some cities it is required right now (eg Guangzhou). I’m not sure about Beijing, but I could imagine them doing that. The problem is that in those same places face masks are sold out, and you’d have to go out and buy one even if they weren’t. Not only that, but given their scarcity people aren’t probably replacing their face masks as much as they should be, making them actually more unsanitary. No one will shoot you if you go out without a face mask. However, people will think you are being rude, you might get a lot of stink eye.
        • 7y ago
• notyourwork 7y ago
  > It will do the exact opposite. Hasn’t the Chinese government been doing this for years in one form or another to artificially stimulate the market?
  • QuesnayJr 7y ago
    I don't understand this obsession with "artificial" stimulus. If the economy naturally grows at 2% a year, but "artificial" stimulus causes it to grow at 3% a year, why wouldn't you do it? It's like refusing to get vaccines because they are unnatural.
    • bitxbit 7y ago
      In a way you’re assuming no inflation which has been the case for the past decade. BUT. What happens when China goes offline and takes low cost labor with it? For the record, I believe this situation will resolve within the month but it will certainly reveal global over-reliance on China (this is meant as a positive comment that China has been the single driving force behind economic recovery which they don’t get enough credit for).
      • notyourwork 7y ago
        The lost lives of their blue collar work force deserve the credit.
        • deleted 7y ago
          [deleted]
        • 01100011 7y ago
          Same with any country, I think.
    • staplers 7y ago
      Because natural resources are finite. If you don't understand why runaway inflation is bad then you'll need to educate yourself.
• tempsy 7y ago
  I think they also restricted short selling
• daenz 7y ago
  Maybe this is demonstrates an immediate consequence of having a people (mainland China, not necessarily HK) that is governed primarily by fear: reactions of extreme subordination, which keep things running "smoothly" under normal conditions, can threaten the whole system to collapse under abnormal conditions.
  • user5994461 7y ago
    It's not governed by fear, especially not hong kong. It's more of a cultural reaction that many went to the shop to gather food, detergent, face masks and more for the next month(s) so the shops have run out of things (plus many businesses and transports have closed). The panic wasn't driven by government decision but by people acting individually in concert. It's hard to tell if the same would happen in the US or Europe if and when the first few people will get infected by the virus.
    • bhanhfo 7y ago
      Hongkong, as part of China, is unfortunately governed more and more by fear. Plus the lady in charge is refusing to close the border to China. Compare this to Taiwan, where things are more or less running smoothly. > if and when the first few people will get infected by the virus. ...that already happened
      • user5994461 7y ago
        I should say the first dozen(s) of cases in the same city. Hong Kong is past ten. I don't think any city in the EU or US is approaching that. Noting the Chinese population doesn't believe their government and estimates the numbers of infected to be at least 10 times whatever is reported. Also noting, Hong Kong was already in civil war right before the epidemic, remember it was being annexed by China. That's regular protests, transports/tubes/airports periodically closed and shops unable to resupply, so not everything is attributable to the virus.
        • monoideism 7y ago
• cs702 7y ago
  All I can think is: Good luck to any short sellers who decide to fight that. It will be interesting to watch -- from a safe distance.
  • koheripbal 7y ago
    ...which is why you don't short - you just buy low with limit orders. Betting shorts will eventually burn you.
• thedance 7y ago
  Is that a lot?
• toyg 7y ago
  Gorbachev used to say that Chernobyl was where the USSR really started to crumble. The disaster made clear how morally bankrupt and technically incompetent the system really was, wiping out any remaining goodwill or trust. Similarly, Katrina was where the semi-fascist US consensus under GW Bush went to pieces. I suspect China will experience a similar moment at some point. This might well be it.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • rayiner 7y ago
    > Similarly, Katrina was where the semi-fascist US consensus under GW Bush went to pieces. Leaving aside the offensive comparison of the US to the USSR, you overlook that after GWB, we doubled down on the “US consensus” by electing Barack “drone strike” Obama. (I think Obama was a great President, but he was also very little different than George Bush except in his oration.)
    • yswhhshs 7y ago
      So you think Bush was a great president then?
    • siracusa23 7y ago
      It's interesting to see the American side of the story: "offensive comparison of the US to the USSR" I grew up during the fall of the Iron Curtain in an Eastern European country, building Russian Spectrum (Z80) clones for the bloc, the USSR had positive and negative impacts in our lives. I still live in the apartment that I received during the communist era through my work. However the intervention of the Americans through CIA operations, after the fall of the Iron Courtain, were mostly negative, and we're still suffering because of them. Not everything is black or white in life and the story is much more complicated than the "Russia bad" the media portrays in America. But I guess each one of us is a victim of a propaganda machine.
    • input_sh 7y ago
      At least Obama reported the number of casualties of drone strikes, a rule which the current president got rid of via an executive order.
• saradhi 7y ago
  Ask HN: Should I be worried about the PANIC around the current situations, will they act as a rescission trigger? Can I assume a proportional impact on crypto-currency market as well? More importantly, I'm considering a move from a Bn$ organization to a safety concerned mobile-app product startup, How to access whether a start-up can survive if the situation end-up on the negative side, in the next 6 months.
  • cheschire 7y ago
    People have been saying they expect a recession in the next 2 years for the last 2 years and now is no different. If it was easy to predict when the least risky time is to make a risky decision, then it wouldn't be risky, gambling wouldn't be a thing, and life would be forever boring.
    • allovernow 7y ago
      You're not wrong, but considering other indicators, yield curve in particular, this could be a viable trigger. Depending on how this virus plays out, the only question is not if or when but how long the Chinese industrial complex will be suppressed. Those are the raw and finished manufacturing goods that power a substantial proportion of the world economy, and there will be cascading effects.
    • koheripbal 7y ago
      2016 was supposed to be the year the bubble crashes. "They" also said their would be a double dip in 2012. I've heard so many doom and gloom predictions in the past - but the one thing they all have in common is a complete lack of specifics. WHAT is going to cause the crash? Which industry has a fundamental imbalance? It's always just some vague notion that "something" isn't right.
      • unlinked_dll 7y ago
        >WHAT is going to cause the crash? A black swan, like coronavirus shutting down China. >Which industry has a fundamental imbalance? Consumer debt and financial services. How has our economic output been growing without much inflation or wage growth? How did we sell 17 million vehicles domestically last year when the average American has less than $1k in the bank? How are people buying phones for $600-700 every two years? Debt. Lots of it. And what's going to happen when consumer prices get driven up? Are people going to make their payments? I don't know, but it doesn't look great.
• c789a123 7y ago
  I have warned many times that CCP is an evil regime and will cause big disaster for whole human society. Whoever in the free world still trying to make some profits collaborating with CCP, just remember: dance with the devil, just wait for the music to stop.
  • yibg 7y ago
    While this might be true I’m not sure if we chalk this one up to the CCP. I mean it’s not like a viral epidemic can’t originate from other countries.
    • throw0101a 7y ago
      > I mean it’s not like a viral epidemic can’t originate from other countries. In authoritative countries the messenger of bad news tends to be 'disciplined', and so bad news is not delivered. It still exists, but no one wants to be the individual that creates the (negative) feedback loop that may be contrary to the diktat that came down from on high. Of course hiding bad news happens in less authoritative countries as well (being the "tall poppy", Law of Jante, 「出る杭は打たれる」), but the consequences may be less severe. There was all sorts of secrecy with SARS many years ago, and it seems that China has still not completely broken that 'habit': * https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/early-missteps-and-state-secrecy-in-china-probably-allowed-the-coronavirus-to-spread-farther-and-faster/ar-BBZya9o https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/early-missteps-and-stat...
      • yibg 7y ago
        I wonder if there isn’t a certain element of hindsight bias here. Now it’s clear that more action should’ve been taken earlier. But knowing the panic this has caused, not to mention the economic, global logistics and travel impacts I don’t know if it was such an obvious situation at the time. Especially when the vitality, severity and mechanism of transmission etc weren’t clear. CCP policy and behavioral patterns aside, I can see the local official in charge wanting to avoid being the guy that caused a bunch of public panic over nothing. Imagine if things went the other way. Big announcements of a new virus, people panic and hoard food and supplies. Travel gets restricted and Wuhan gets quarantined. And not much happens. A few people get sick and quickly recover. I’m not sure if the guy will get praises for acting swiftly.
• grecy 7y ago
  > But I guess each one of us is a victim of a propaganda machine I would say the enormous difference is that you are aware of it, while the vast majority of Americas are utterly clueless. In fact they often take extreme offence at the very mention their media contains propaganda.
  • nate_meurer 7y ago
    Stongly disagree. The relevant (and enormous) difference is that Americans are empowered to learn of and discuss their sordid affairs, without fear of punishment by their government. Just like we're doing right now, with me using my real name. In contrast, people in countries like China and the old USSR are empowered only to learn of and share state-approved knowledge, in a state-approved manner. Stepping too far outside these boundaries often leads to imprisonment or worse.
    • siracusa23 7y ago
      Yes, we were afraid of repercussions, but "imprisonment or worse" seems like the same stereotype we had with Americans all walking with guns on the street like it's a western movie, smoking Malboro and listening to rock music. The repercussions were social mostly, your boss would not promote you anymore, your neighbours would avoid you. Only in cases of high-treason, such as Assange from WikiLeaks, you would get "imprisonment or worse". Think to how PC culture works in the US. If you're misoginistic, your friends will start avoiding you, you might even get fired. And no, people did not learn through state-approved knowledge, we had conspiracy theories, we had friends, uncles and friends having friends working inside the government.
      • nate_meurer 7y ago
        > Only in cases of high-treason, such as Assange from WikiLeaks, you would get "imprisonment or worse". So, "high-treason" must have included religious offenses, attempting to leave the USSR, independent journalism, cultural and literary nonconformism, activism of any almost any kind, and any other sort of activity deemed undesirable to the state. Is that right? > And no, people did not learn through state-approved knowledge, we had conspiracy theories, we had friends, uncles and friends having friends working inside the government. Conspiracy theories and rumors are not comparable to the robust freedom of expression we enjoy in the West -- a freedom that we take advantage of on this very forum, where we are free to share information and criticize our Western governments however we please, anonymously or not. If you're interested in learning about the USSR's treatment of people who spoke against the state, the accounts of the dissidents themselves makes excellent reading. There are entire libraries dedicated to preserving the experience of people imprisoned and killed for crimes of expression in the USSR and its satellites, written in their own words. I don't know if you really intended to compare the imprisonment and murder of people for crimes of expression, religion, or ethnicity under authoritarian states to the PC movement in the West, but if you are, I have to question whether you actually experienced the former.
• aazaa 7y ago
  > U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said last week that the virus could force companies to re-evaluate their supply chains, potentially returning some jobs to the United States. The outbreak comes at a time of high vulnerability for the Chinese economy. This is almost certainly just the start of a very aggressive money pumping episode.
• boyadjian 7y ago
  Money cannot be eaten. "Injecting" money brings only inflation.
• aloer 7y ago
  What is the typical return date for Chinese living in Europe and the US regarding CNY? It is my understanding that the CNY was not cancelled and many will have gone back to visit family in China, at least outside the highly affected areas. When will they fly back?
  • slashcom 7y ago
    Quite a few of my colleagues came back Monday the 27th. I imagine many stay longer since the trip is onerous.
  • odiroot 7y ago
    Most people have already started to return from their hometowns. Yesterday was probably the last important day of CNY.
  • kzrdude 7y ago
    One of my friends came back from China this morning. They'll be working from home the next 2 weeks to be safe.
• mark_l_watson 7y ago
  My wife asked me at breakfast why the new virus is such a big deal: hundreds dying vs. the 5K to 10K babies and infants who die everyday in the world from dehydration and/or starvation. My response was exponential growth of viruses and mutation into something very deadly. China is taking the outbreak seriously, locking down large and high population regions. I wondered if some of that is PR since after a previous outbreak they were accused of covering up (if I remember correctly).
  • koheripbal 7y ago
    The most important thing to remember here is that we have ZERO idea how many people are truly infected in China. The Chinese gov't is publishing totally unreliable numbers on "confirmed". ...but the fact that confirmed cases are popping up all around the world, there is ZERO chance that the true number of infected people is 15,000 in China. That just doesn't make sense statistically.
    • markus_zhang 7y ago
      However that's the only number you have.
    • rediguanayum 7y ago
      The healthcare system in Wuhan is overwhelmed. The hospital are turning away patients with symptoms without evening screening unless their deathly ill due to a lack of resources: "Coronavirus Pummels Wuhan, a City Short of Supplies and Overwhelmed" https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/02/world/asia/china-coronavirus-wuhan.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/02/world/asia/china-coronavi... which means that the statistics are going to badly off at this point.
  • himinlomax 7y ago
    The problem is that the numbers we have are those published by the Communist Party of China. They're taking the outbreak seriously ... now ... but they were putting whistleblowers in jail at the start of the epidemic.
  • klenwell 7y ago
• BenoitEssiambre 7y ago
  I wish western world central banks were as competent. In a situation of sudden supply constraints, prices are supposed to adjust up. This is basic supply and demand. Western world central banks tend to pressure prices down during economic shocks by withholding liquidity. This puts private markets in a gridlock and causes untold amount of damage to people's careers.
  • samsonradu 7y ago
    Liquidity has been anything but withheld in the western world. Look at the G4 balance sheets and interest rates in the past decade.
    • BenoitEssiambre 7y ago
      What do you mean? Bernanke himself has estimated that interest rates should have been as low as -4% during the period from 2009 to 2015 (https://www.brookings.edu/blog/ben-bernanke/2015/04/28/the-taylor-rule-a-benchmark-for-monetary-policy/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/ben-bernanke/2015/04/28/the-t... ). They kept them super high at 0%, up to 4% higher than the equilibrium estimate, which caused inflation to perpetually undershoot and people's careers to be stunted. On top of that, they started giving out interest on reserves which further contracted liquidity. The growth in excess reserves happened because money being made artificially too good at retaining value compared to private assets, caused people, businesses and banks to hoard it. If central banks would have been sufficiently aggressive at giving it out, they would ironically have given out a lot less because people would not have event wanted that much and instead would have continued keeping their savings in better functioning private markets.
      • koheripbal 7y ago
        Negative interest rates have other major problems - that are worse than a liquidity shortage.
        • BenoitEssiambre 7y ago
• jdkee 7y ago
  What are the odds that business as usual resumes tomorrow (Monday 02032020) in mainland China?
• andresramon 7y ago
  Trading binary option without any experience is like gambling with your money when you can actually employ a skilled professional manager like Mrs Lisa who has earned me over $57500 over the last three weeks You can reach her via email or WhatsApp Contact@Kay-puncher . com + 1 7 4 0 2 0 6 9 3 9 7
• jijji 7y ago
  This whole disease and infection comes down to a fundamental breakdown of sanitary practices of a society. Things like 1) cutting up and selling wild animal meat with your bare hands, 2) not washing your hands, 3) eating uncooked meat from wild animals like frogs, cats, rats, mice, "bat soup", 4) having open air "squat toilets" like latrines where when someone shoots their diarrhea, it turns into a mist and everyone in the room gets infected... If these conditions were improved, these viral outbreaks either wouldn't happen or wouldn't happen as often as it does in China. All I know is if you try to get away with that kind of stuff in the U.S., you will have the health department, dept of agriculture, the cops would all show up and shut you down and/or get arrested for it.
• craftoman 7y ago
  Reminds me a conversation I had few days ago with a conspiracy theorist talking about who China government developed this virus and released it accidentally...I was telling that theorist about the economical disaster that China would be faced could actually lead them to hardcore scenarios. Here's the first major hits that busted every conspiracy theory. China is actually bleeding right now.
• sytelus 7y ago
  If US or China stock market was to go down, govt will immediately infuse such massive cash that things would be back up in no time. I'm wondering this is why there had been no recession past the entire decade and very likely none ahead. Somehow we have arrived at economic prosperity level where enough wealth is "buffered" to smooth out downturns.
  • hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
    > I'm wondering this is why there had been no recession past the entire decade and very likely none ahead. I'm taking your "we've solved the business cycle!" comment as my sell signal. Everything is rosy until it isn't. I have a very opposite, pessimistic view, that this great fear of even the slightest downtown means we're just putting off the day of reckoning until it really comes crashing down. The fact is the prosperity of the past 10 years has come with huge and growing imbalances that can't continue ad infinitum. Deficits are gigantic, and at some point all this money we've been lending will require higher interest rates for people to buy our bonds. When that happens, watch out.
    • crystaldev 7y ago
      You're absolutely right. You don't have to believe me but I called the last recession. It's not bad news that's frightening. It's a disproportionate government and market reaction. Governments making a lot of noise to protect weak hands. There are a lot of weak hands, many created since we "survived" the last scare, and it's not going to take much to bust them. Stay safe everybody and enjoy living history as usual.
    • kmonsen 7y ago
      Even if you are right, who knows when it will happen? Chances are you cannot time the market, and it can be irrational for far longer than you think.
  • dcolkitt 7y ago
    I think the biggest counter-argument to this is the problem of "mal-investment". In a lot of ways the business cycle operates as an explore-exploit optimizer. During boom periods, credit conditions are loose. Which allows for a large degree of innovation with new and speculative business models. This is important because as conditions and technologies change, the frontier space of what's viable needs to be explored. Tomorrow's economic titans are today's wild-eyed entrepreneurs. However most of these crazy ideas turn out to be just that. That's where the importance of recessions come in. Credit crunches and market downturns impose economic and efficiency disciplines. Firms that were coasting by on good conditions without delivering real productivity gains are culled by the downturn. The entire phase of the cycle is important to maintain a healthy economic ecosystem. My fear is that if we banish recessions to the dustbin of history, we'll find ourselves increasingly burdened with bad investments as a larger and larger share of the capital base. Instead of getting written off during a downturn, jubilant markets will just keep throwing good money after bad managers, broken business models and overhyped vaporware.
• droithomme 7y ago
  They would be better off redirecting that $174B to other things at the moment.
• ShorsHammer 7y ago
  Meta: 185 top comment replies, 278 comments total. The redditfication of this place continues. China articles are essentially broken and there's no point trying to advance the discussion or have healthy debate. Someone should make an extension that collapses all replies and only shows top level comments, think it might be a lot healthier for online discourse.
  • yongjik 7y ago
    Also, about half of the comments are "(China/America/government in general) is evil, because (some superficial observation already known by 99% of visitors here and not directly relevant to the current situation)", or some form of generic refutation. I'm also frequently guilty of the same thing, but this is getting out of hand...
    • koheripbal 7y ago
      Social media websites all suffer from a phenomenon of being flooded low quality content the moment they become popular. Reddit's content quality dropped significantly the moment they deployed their mobile app, though it had been on a downward decline for a while. I've seen HN being discussed at length on Reddit as a better alternative for "adylts", but now we see the same slow decline here. The important questions are... 1. How can social media sites control quality of submitters. 2. What is the next site everyone over 30 is moving to and how do we stop all these teenagers from following us? /s
      • BostonEnginerd 7y ago
        Metafilter has maintained reasonably high levels of discussion and civility. Part of this is active mods, the other part is that an account costs some money to open.
        • beamatronic 7y ago
          I’d pay for HN
• edoo 7y ago
  Adding liquidity (aka printing money) just kicks the can down the road. Supposedly the US GDP last year was up close to 4%, but they failed to account for the 6% increase in the money supply, which means an actual 2% contraction instead which is a huge difference. In the US at least this has been ongoing since 2009. In the long run it causes more losses to the people overall while creating/propping up the upper echelons of a monetary cast system. An analogy could be getting hit on the hand with a hammer. It might be scarier to get a single hard blow but repeated medium energy blows are overall going to cause a lot more damage.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• stazz1 7y ago
  Liquid injection needs to happen but the hard part is knowing where. Micro injections around the whole economy would be better than huge injections into one-door banks. Bailouts do more for citizens directly than for corporations, as is shown time and time again. Liquid injection is basically another name for bailout, no? And where is this money going? Probably not to the best node where it will make the most travel
• jaimex2 7y ago
  China trying to create a perpetual motion machine for its own economy.
• redis_mlc 7y ago
  Most (perhaps all) of the comments for this post are nonsense. As reported for decades, rural China has a problem with small-time farmers living in proximity with livestock, especially pigs. Thus you get the annual "swine flu" as genetically we're very similar, so can pass viruses back and forth and amplify them. So if you want to understand this flu season, just google for past years, especially SARS. This corona virus appears to be an even more communicable analog to SARS, which nations struggled to contain last time.
• bookAlot 7y ago
  And now I will NOT be using the bank of China ever, nor never. That's my exact amount for transporting my businesses. You'll get none of it for conspiring with peng li yuan, China Corporate Trustees. Zero.