China’s downturn suggests a special liquidity trap
HONG KONG, July 25 (Reuters Breakingviews) - China is awash with money and its growth is slowing. To avert a prolonged stagnation, President Xi Jinping’s administration may need to spend its way out of the problem. Yet this and other classic remedies to such a malaise may not be effective in Beijing’s “socialist market economy”.
China’s condition may be seen as what economists call a liquidity trap, though the term means different things to different people. Writing a century ago during the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes described a situation where bond yields fall to a lower limit and individuals hoard cash. In 1998 after Japan’s property bubble burst, its economy slid into recession and monetary policy lost impact as interest rates were close to zero, Paul Krugman warned,...