Happy Blood Moon! Hope everything worked out and that everyone is safe! Here, the clouds graciously provided some cover so people didn’t run around in the ancient East Asian belief that a dragon or wolf or other nasty beast had eaten the moon and that said beast would then come after more earthly fortunes, but people still largely stayed in (it’s raining, after all).
Pretty ironic then of Business Insider to post something about how “China’s economy is now larger than the US!” Well, PPP adjustments are fun and all, and maybe better than GDP in some ways, but it’s still like comparing apples and oranges here. 4-to-1 population scale does a few funny things, but it does highlight that the Chinese are only behind the US by that sort of scale in PPP-adjusted GDP/capita. A larger amount of that goes in to various state owned enterprise coffers because of financial repression, but on the other hand the government isn’t into a debt hole that easily fits the economy either.
Also, I would really be interested in seeing some analysis that incorporates terms of trade and trade balance and applies that to GDP. You still need to buy influence around the rest of the financial world in exchange-traded terms after all. Thinking of this could perhaps kill some boredom before the Fed rocks the financial markets again.
