This Is The $3.5 Trillion "Neutron Bomb" That Keeps Kyle Bass Up At Night

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/08/2016 16:57 -0500

Earlier today, CNBC invited Kyle Bass, the man who correctly predicted and profited from the subprime collapse, to discuss what he thought was the biggest threat to the global financial system.

Video here: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-08/35-trillion-neutron-bomb-keeps-kyle-bass-night

Here is the highlight of what he said:

What I think the narrative will swing to by the end of this year if not sooner, is the real issue in China is not simply that profits have peaked. The real issue is the size of their banking system. Do you remember the reason the European countries ended up falling like dominoes during the European crisis was their banking systems became many multiples of their GDP and therefore many, many multiples of their central government revenue. In China, in dollar terms their banking system is almost $35 trillion against a GDP of $10 and their banking system has grown 400% in 8 years with non-performing loans being nonexistent. So what we are going to see next is a credit cycle, and in a credit cycle you see some losses, but if China's banking system loses 10%, you are going to see them lose $3.5 trillion. 

He then puts this number in the context of China's "massive" foreign reserves:

What's the magic number in their FX reserve pile today? When you look at banking system assets divided by their foreign exchange reserves, China is 7x, it's one of the worst in the world. I think people are mypoically focused on a giant number of reserves, of $3 trillion or thereabouts, and no one is really paying attention to the size of the system and what's about to happen.

Actually that's not true: we first pointed this out more than 2 years ago, when we showed "How China's Stunning $15 Trillion In New Liquidity Blew Bernanke's QE Out Of The Water."

A few weeks later we followed up with another stunning chart showing "How In Five Short Years, China Humiliated The World's Central Banks." However, we do agree fully with Bass that virtually nobody else is paying attention to this epic question of scale, especially as it relates to another topic we have been covering for the past two years: China's soaring, and dramatically underreported non-performing loans.

More on that in a second, but first a quick reminder that as we also reported over the weekend, for Kyle Bass, "The Greatest Investment Opportunity Right Now" is to short the Chinese currency: a trade which just in the past week has generated tremendous returns (using the embedded FX leverage), and which we are confident will continue to be very profitable, especially since as we first said in August, days before China's devaluation, the only thing that could save China's economy from an even harder landing, is to rapidly devalue their currency. China did just that, and has been doing that ever since.

Earlier today, even Goldman - with a huge delay - finally came to see things correctly, when it said that:

"We are adjusting our USDCNY forecast weaker, to 7.00 on a 12-month horizon (our twelve-month forecast was 6.60 previously) and 7.30 by end-2017 (from 6.80 previously). Though markets have been moving quickly, and today's lower USDCNY fixing suggests the possibility that policymakers may want to stabilize expectations for the CNY, this puts us back on the weak side of market pricing over a twelve-month horizon, consistent with our view that 2016 will be a year of continued “bumpy deceleration” and significant policy easing in the Chinese economy, and that the potential for greater CNY depreciation remains a large source of uncertainty."

So going back to Kyle Bass' thesis, it a relatively simple one: China has been avoiding a credit, or non-performing loan cycle, and fabricating the data, but the time has run out.

"China many years ago attached its currency to the dollar: they hitched their wagon to our star very smartly because back then our goal was to depreciate our dollar through inflation. So we issued debt to the rest of the world to depreciate the dollar. And so now the real problem is China has hitched their wagon to our star, and their currency has effectively appreciated about 60% versus the rest of the world since 2005 and it's killing them... China's effective exchange rate moving up versus the rest of the world made their goods and services a little bit more expensive each year and now that labor arbitrage is gone. And if that labor arbitrage is gone, and the banking system has expanded 400% in 7 years without a nonperforming loan cycle, my view is we are going to see a non-performing loan cycle."

So what exactly is this non-performing loan cycle that Kyle Bass is referring to, and where does he get a $3 trillion potential loan loss - a quantum step in admission of economic failure which we first dubbed China's neutron bomb" in October 2015 - number?

Luckily, we explained all of this two months ago when we showed how "China's Banking Sector Is Sitting On A $3 Trillion Neutron Bomb." For those who missed it, here is the explanation behind what could be the best trade of the next 12-18 months (the best trade of 2015 incidentally was to be long Glencore CDS, as we suggested in 2014) according to Kyle Bass:

* * *

We’ve long contended that official data on bad loans at Chinese banks is even less reliable than NBS GDP prints. Indeed, the lengths Beijing goes to in order to obscure the extent to which banks’ balance sheets are in peril is truly something to behold and much like the deficient deflator math which may be causing the country to habitually overstate GDP growth, it’s not even clear that China could report the real numbers if it wanted to. 

We took an in-depth look at the problem in “How China's Banks Hide Trillions In Credit Risk: Full Frontal”, and we’ve revisited the issue on a number of occasions noting in August that according to a transcript of an internal meeting of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, bad loans jumped CNY322.2 billion in H1 to CNY1.8 trillion, a 36% increase. Of course that’s just the tip of the iceberg. In other words, that comes from a government agency and although the scope of the increase sounds serious, it still translates into an NPL ratio of just 1.82%. Here’s a look at the “official” numbers (note that when one includes doubtful accounts, the ratio jumps to somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-4%):

Source: Fitch

There are any number of reasons why those figures don’t even come close to approximating reality. For instance, there’s Beijing’s habit of compelling banks to roll over bad loans, and then there’s China’s massive (and by “massive” we mean CNY17 trillion) wealth management product industry which, when coupled with some creative accounting, allows Chinese banks to hold some 40% of credit risk off balance sheet.

Well as time goes on, and as market participants scrutinize the data coming out of the world’s second most important economy, quite a few analysts are beginning to take a closer look at the NPL data for Chinese banks. Indeed, if Beijing continues to move toward “allowing” defaults to occur (even at SOEs) and if China’s transition from smokestack economy to a consumption and services-driven model continues to put pressure on borrowers from the manufacturing sector, the situation is likely to deteriorate quickly. If you needed evidence of just how precarious things truly are, look no further than a recent report from Macquarie which showed that a quarter of Chinese firms with debt are currently unable to cover their annual interest expense (as you might imagine, it's even worse for commodities firms). 

Just two weeks after we highighted the Macquarie report, we took a look at research conducted by Hong-Kong based CLSA. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that Chinese banks' bad debts ratio could be as high 8.1%, a whopping 6 times higher than the official 1.5% NPL level reported by China's banking regulator. 

We called that revelation China's "neutron bomb" but it turns out we may have jumped the gun. According to Hong Kong-based "Autonomous Research", the real figure may be closer to 21% when one takes into account the aforementioned shadow banking sector. Here's more from Bloomberg:

Corporate investigator Violet Ho never put a lot of faith in the bad loan numbers reported by China’s banks.

Crisscrossing provinces from Shandong to Xinjiang, she’s seen too much -- from the shell game of moving assets between affiliated companies to disguise the true state of their finances to cover-ups by bankers loath to admit that loans they made won’t be recovered.

The amount of bad debt piling up in China is at the center of a debate about whether the country will continue as a locomotive of global growth or sink into decades of stagnation like Japan after its credit bubble burst. Bank of China Ltd. reported on Thursday its biggest quarterly bad-loan provisions since going public in 2006.

Charlene Chu, who made her name at Fitch Ratings making bearish assessments of the risks from China’s credit explosion since 2008, is among those crunching the numbers.

While corporate investigator Ho relies on her observations from hitting the road, Chu and her colleagues at

Autonomous Research in Hong Kong take a top-down approach. They estimate how much money is being wasted after the nation began getting smaller and smaller economic returns on its credit from 2008. Their assessment is informed by data from economies such as Japan that have gone though similar debt explosions.

While traditional bank loans are not Chu’s prime focus -- she looks at the wider picture, including shadow banking -- she says her work suggests that nonperforming loans may be at 20 percent to 21 percent, or even higher.

“A financial crisis is by no means preordained, but if losses don’t manifest in financial sector losses, they will do so via slowing growth and deflation, as they did in Japan,” said Chu. “China is confronting a massive debt problem, the scale of which the world has never seen.”

As a reminder, here's a look at the scope of the "problem" Chu is describing:

 

And here's a bit more on special mention loans and the ubiquitous practice of "evergreening":

Slicing and dicing the official loan numbers, Christine Kuo, a senior vice president of Moody’s Investors Service in Hong Kong, focuses on trends in debts overdue for 90 days, rather than those classified as “nonperforming.” Another tactic some analysts use is to add nonperforming debt to “special mention” loans, those that are overdue but not yet classified as impaired, yielding a rate of 5.1 percent.

Banks’ bad-loan numbers are capped by “evergreening,” the practise of rolling over debt that isn’t repaid on time, according to experts including Keith Pogson, a Hong Kong-based senior partner at Ernst & Young LLP. Pogson was involved in restructuring debt at Chinese banks in 1998, when their NPL ratios were as high as 25 percent.

So let's just be clear: if 8% is a "neutron bomb", a 21% NPL ratio in China is the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. Here's why: 

If one very conservatively assumes that loans are about half of the total asset base (realistically 60-70%), and applies an 20% NPL to this number instead of the official 1.5% NPL estimate, the capital shortfall is a staggering $3 trillion. 

That, as we suggested three weeks ago, may help to explain why round after round of liquidity injections (via RRR cuts, LTROs, and various short- and medium-term financing ops) haven't done much to boost the credit impulse. In short, banks may be quietly soaking up the funds not to lend them out, but to plug a giant, $3 trillion, solvency shortfall. 

In the end, we would actually venture to suggest that the real figure is probably far higher than 20%. There's no way to get a read on how the country's vast shadow banking complex plays into this but when you look at the numbers, it's almost inconceivable to imagine that banks aren't staring down sour loans at least on the order of a couple of trillion. 

To the PBoC we say, "good luck plugging that gap" and to the rest of the world we say "beware, the engine of global growth and trade may be facing a pile of bad loans the size of Germany's GDP."

We close with the following from Kroll's senior managing director in Hong Kong Violet Ho (quoted above):

"A credit report for a Chinese company is not worth the paper it’s written on.”

Did Something Just Snap In China: Total SOE Debt Rises By $1 Trillion In One Month

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/02/2015 21:50 -0500
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-02/did-something-just-snap-china-total-soe-debt-rises-1-trillion-one-month
We found something unexpected when skimming through the website of China's finance ministry.
While most China pundits keep close track of China's monthly loan creation and, especially these days, its Total Social Financing number to get a sense of what, if any, credit is being created outside of conventional lending channels within China's shadow banking system, one just as critical please to keep track of Chinese credit is the monthly report on national state-owned and state holding enterprises.
Such as this one from October 22, which reports that as of September 30, total liabilities of state-owned enterprises had risen to 77.7 trillion yuan. Why is this notable? Because the monthly update just preceding it, reported a total debt figure of "only" 71.8 trillion yuan: a whopping increase of almost CNY 6 trillion, or USD $1 trillion, in just one month.
This is the biggest monthly increase by a massive margin among China's SOE by orders of magnitude, and yet just to get a sense of the magnitude of debt held at China's SOEs, even this record monthly increase is not even 10% of the total debt held by China's state-owned enterprises which stood at CNY78 trillion or USD $12 trillion at the end of September, more than the total Chinese GDP.


What can explain this snap? There has been very little commentary on this particular surge aside from a report posted on Wall Street.cn, and translated by Chiecon, which reports the following:

China’s state owned enterprises added almost 6 trillion yuan (around 1 trillion dollars) of debt in September, described by Luo Yunfeng, an analyst at Essence Securities, as “an unprecedented increase in leverage”. This means that not only is the government abandoning its deleverage policy, it is actually increasing leverage.

According to Luo “it’s possible that debt that was originally classified as government debt, has been reallocated as SOE debt”.

This might be a reflection of how the government plans to tackle its massive debt. Luo mentions that one of the obstacles to managing government debt is that it remains difficult to draw a line between government and SOE debt. The crux of of current reform plans to increase the role of market forces is aimed at resolving this issue.

If it really is the case of shifting government debt to SOEs, then it represents a step forward for this reform, and the prospect of revaluing credit risk. Another implication, it seems unlikely there will be a pause in government debt increase over the fourth quarter.

This raises the more important question of what will be the impact of this enormous debt? Over the past few years credit expansion has surpassed economic growth, and with the governments aggressive leverage, will this lead to a greater waste of resources?

Ironically, "shifting" the debt - no matter how troubling - would be by far the more palatable explanation. Because if somehow China had quietly "created" $1 trillion in debt out of thin air parked subsequently on SOE balance sheets, that would suggest that things in China are orders of magnitude worse than anyone can possibly imagine.
Still, if China did not create this debt now, it will eventually:

This raises the more important question of what will be the impact of this enormous debt? Over the past few years credit expansion has surpassed economic growth, and with the governments aggressive leverage, will this lead to a greater waste of resources?

[W]ith China experiencing slowing economic growth, and no turnaround on the horizon, its seems likely the Chinese government will continue to increase leverage. In September, China Merchants Securities stated that since Chinese government debt leverage ratio is still low, lower than the US, Europe and Japan, there is still more room for leverage.

It's low? Really? Because according to the following McKinsey chart total Chinese debt was $28.2 trillion as of Q2 2014 (it has since risen well over $30 trillion), and represents nearly 300% debt/GDP.

But there is another implication. If China's is indeed merely stuffing government debt on SOE balance sheets as the report suggests...

Haitong Securities said at the start of the year that in order to prevent systemic risk the focus over the next few years will be on government leverage. Based on the experience of other countries, monetary easing almost certainly follows an increase in government leverage, with interest rates in the long term trending to zero.

... then China, while ultimately having to engage in QE, will last out the current regime as long as possible, offloading government debt in ever greater amounts to SOE until finally their debt capacity is maxed out.
Then, and only then, will China unleash the world's last remaining debt monetization episode, whereby the PBOC will proceed to openly monetize the roughly $3-4 trillion in total debt China creates every year. At that point the "Minsky Moment" of not only China, but the entire world, will have arrived.

Average:

The "Great Unwind" Has Arrived

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/06/2015 20:15 -0400

 http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-06/great-unwind-has-arrived

Submitted by Doug Noland via Credit Bubble Bulletin,

It’s my overarching thesis that the world is in the waning days of a historic multi-decade experiment in unfettered finance. As I have posited over the years, international finance has for too long been effectively operating without constraints on either the quantity or the quality of Credit issued. From the perspective of unsound finance on a globalized basis, this period has been unique. History, however, is replete with isolated episodes of booms fueled by bouts of unsound money and Credit - monetary fiascos inevitably ending in disaster. I see discomforting confirmation that the current historic global monetary fiasco’s disaster phase is now unfolding. It is within this context that readers should view recent market instability.

It’s been 25 years of analyzing U.S. finance and the great U.S. Credit Bubble. When it comes to sustaining the Credit boom, at this point we’ve seen the most extraordinary measures along with about every trick in the book. When the banking system was left severely impaired from late-eighties excess, the Greenspan Fed surreptitiously nurtured non-bank Credit expansion. There was the unprecedented GSE boom, recklessly fomented by explicit and implied Washington backing. We’ve witnessed unprecedented growth in “Wall Street finance” - securitizations and sophisticated financial instruments and vehicles. There was the explosion in hedge funds and leveraged speculation. And, of course, there’s the tangled derivatives world that ballooned to an unfathomable hundreds of Trillions. Our central bank has championed it all.

Importantly, the promotion of “market-based” finance dictated a subtle yet profound change in policymaking. A functioning New Age financial structure required that the Federal Reserve backstop the securities markets. And especially in a derivatives marketplace dominated by “dynamic hedging” (i.e. buying or selling securities to hedge market “insurance” written), the Fed was compelled to guarantee “liquid and continuous” markets. This changed just about everything.

Contemporary finance is viable only so long as players can operate in highly liquid securities markets where price adjustments remain relatively contained. This is not the natural state of how markets function. The bullish premise of readily insurable/hedgeable market risks rests upon those having written protection being able to effectively off-load risk onto markets that trade freely without large price gaps/dislocations. And, sure enough, perceptions of liquid and continuous markets do create their own reality (Soros’ reflexivity). Sudden fear of market illiquidity and dislocation leads to financial crashes.

U.S. policymaking and finance changed profoundly after the “tech” Bubble collapse. Larger market intrusions and bailouts gave way to Federal Reserve talk of “helicopter money” and the “government printing press” necessary to fight the scourge of deflation. Mortgage finance proved a powerful expedient. In hindsight, 2002 was the fateful origin of both the historic mortgage finance Bubble along with “do whatever it takes” central banking. The global policy response to the 2008 Bubble collapse unleashed Contemporary Finance’s Bubble Dynamics throughout the world - China and EM in particular.

There are myriad serious issues associated with New Age finance and policymaking going global. The bullish consensus view holds that China and EM adoption of Western finance has been integral to these economies’ natural and beneficial advancement. Having evolved to the point of active participants in “globalization,” literally several billion individuals have the opportunity to prosper from and promote global free-market Capitalism. Such superficial analysis disregards this Credit and market cycles’ momentous developments.

The analysis is exceptionally complex – and has been so for a while now. The confluence of sophisticated finance, esoteric leverage, the highly speculative nature of market activity and the prominent role of government market manipulation has created an extremely convoluted backdrop. Still, a root cause of current troubles can be boiled down to a more manageable issue: “Contemporary finance” and EM just don’t mix. Seductively, the two appeared almost wonderfully compatible - but that ended with the boom phase. For starters, the notion of “liquid and continuous” markets is pure fantasy when it comes to “developing” economies and financial systems. As always, “money” gushes in and rushes out of EM. Submerged in destabilizing finance, EM financial, economic and political systems become, as always, overwhelmed and dysfunctional. And as always is the case, the greater the boom the more destabilizing the bust.

In general, reckless “money” printing has over years produced a massive pool of destabilizing global speculative finance. Simplistically, egregious monetary inflation (along with zero return on savings) ensured that there was way too much “money” chasing too few risk assets. Every successful trade attracted too much company. Successful strategies spurred a proliferation of copycats and massive inflows. Strong markets were flooded with finance. Perceived robust economies were overrun. Popular regions were completely inundated. To be sure, the post-crisis “Global Reflation Trade” amounted to history’s greatest international flow of speculative finance. Dreadfully, now comes The Unwind.

From individual trades, to themes to strategic asset-class and regional market allocations, speculative “hot money” flows have reversed course. Global deleveraging and de-risking have commenced. The fallacy of “liquid and continuous” markets is being exposed. Faith that global central bankers have things under control has begun to wane. And for the vast majority in the markets it remains business as usual. Another buying opportunity.

Whether on the basis of an individual trade or a popular theme, boom-time success ensured that contemporary (trend-following and performance-chasing) market dynamics spurred speculative excess and associated structural impairment. They also ensured latent Crowded Trade fragilities (notably illiquid and discontinuous “risk off” markets).

Crowded Trade Dynamics ensure that a rush for the exits has folks getting trampled. Previous relationships break down and time-tested strategies flail. “Genius” fails. When the Crowd decides it wants out, the market turns bereft of buyers willing and able to take the other side of the trade. And the longer the previous success of a trade, theme or strategy the larger The Crowd - and the more destabilizing The Unwind. Previous performance and track records will offer little predictive value. Models (i.e. “risk parity” and VAR!) will now work to deceive and confound.

Today, a Crowd of “money” is rushing to exit EM. The Crowd seeks to vacate a faltering Chinese Bubble. “Money” wants out of Crowded global leveraged “carry trades.” In summary,the global government finance Bubble has been pierced with profound consequences. Of course there will be aggressive policy responses. I just fear we’ve reached The Unwind phase where throwing more liquidity at the problem only exacerbates instability. Sure, the ECB and BOJ could increase QE – in the process only further stoking king dollar at the expense of faltering energy, commodities, EM and China. And the Fed could restart it program of buying U.S. securities. Bolstering U.S. markets could also come at the expense of faltering Bubbles around the globe.

It has been amazing to witness the expansion of Credit default swap (CDS) markets to all crevices of international finance. To see China’s “shadow banking” assets balloon to $5 Trillion has been nothing short of astonishing. Then there is the explosion of largely unregulated Credit insurance throughout Chinese debt markets – and EM generally. I find it incredible that Brazil’s central bank would write $100 billion of currency swaps (offering buyers protection against devaluation). Throughout it all, there’s been an overriding certitude that policymakers will retain control. Unwavering faith in concerted QE infinity, as necessary. The fallacy of liquid and continuous markets persisted so much longer than I ever imagined.

I feel I have a decent understanding of how the Fed and global central bankers reflated the system after the 2008 mortgage finance Bubble collapse. The Federal Reserve collapsed interest-rates to zero, while expanding its holdings (Fed Credit) about $1 Trillion. Importantly, the Fed was able to incite a mortgage refinance boom, where hundreds of billions of suspect “private-label” mortgages were transformed into (money-like) GSE-backed securities (becoming suitable for Fed purchase). The Fed backstopped the securities broker/dealer industry, the big banks and money funds. Washington backed Fannie, Freddie and the FHLB, along with major derivative players such as AIG. The Fed injected unprecedented amounts of liquidity into securities markets, more than content to devalue the dollar. Importantly, with the benefit of international reserve currency status and debt denominated almost exclusively in dollars, U.S. currency devaluation appeared relatively painless.

These days I really struggle envisaging how global policymakers reflate after the multi-dimensional collapse of the global government finance Bubble. We’re already witness to China’s deepening struggles. Stimulus over the past year worked primarily to inflate a destabilizing stock market Bubble that has gone bust. They (again) were forced to backtrack from currency devaluation. Acute fragilities associated both with massive financial outflows and enormous amounts of foreign currency-denominated debt were too intense. Markets are skeptical of Chinese official signals that the renminbi will be held stable against the dollar. Market players instead seem to be interpreting China’s efforts to stabilize their currency as actually raising the probability for future abrupt policy measures (significant devaluation and capital controls) or perhaps a highly destabilizing uncontrolled breakdown in the peg to the U.S. dollar.

And as China this week imposed onerous conditions on some currency derivative trading/hedging, it’s now clear that Chinese officials support contemporary market-based finance only when it assists their chosen policy course. How long will Chinese officials tolerate bleeding the nation's international reserves to allow “money” to exit China at top dollar?

...

I wholeheartedly agree with the statement “technical factors can push the market away from fundamentals.” Indeed, that’s been the case now for going on seven years. A confluence of unprecedented monetary inflation, interest-rate manipulation, government deficits and leveraged speculation inflated a historic divergence between securities markets Bubbles and underlying fundamentals. The global Bubble is now faltering. Risk aversion is taking hold. De-leveraging is accelerating.

The yen jumped 2.2% this week. Japanese stocks were hit for 7%. The Brazilian real sank 7.3%. The South African rand dropped 4.2%. The Turkish lira dropped another 2.9% and the Russian ruble sank 5.0%. China sovereign CDS surged, pulling Asian CDS higher throughout. The Hang Seng China H-Financials Index sank another 7.4% this week, having now declined 39% from June highs. From my vantage point, market action points to serious unfolding financial dislocation in China. It also would appear that a large swath of the leveraged speculating community is facing some real difficulty.

After a rough trading session and an ominous week for global markets, I was struck by Friday evening headlines. From the Wall Street Journal: “An Investor’s Field Guild to Bottom Fishing;” “Global CEOs See Emerging Markets As Rich With Opportunity.” From CNBC: “Spike in Volatility Creates ‘Traders Paradise.” And from the Financial Times: “Wall Street Waiting for Those Buy Signals;” “Time to Buy EM Stocks, History Suggests;” “Why I’m Adding Emerging Markets Exposure Despite China Wobble;” “G20 Defies Gloom to Forecast Rise in Growth.”

There still seems little recognition of the seriousness of the unfolding global market dislocation. It’s destined to be a wrenching bear market – at best.