The Chinese Boom-Bust Cycle

By Simon Johnson

Should we fear some sort of financial crash in China, along the lines of what we saw in 2008 in the US or after 2010 in the euro area?

Given the rate of growth in credit and the expansion of the so-called shadow banking sector over the past five years in China, some sort of financial bust seems hard to avoid.

But this need not be the hard landing seen in more developed countries – and the impact on the world economy will likely be much more moderate.  At the same time, however, bigger problems await in the not-too-distant future.

Peter Boone and I review the details in a column for NYT.com’s Economix blog.