Similar to parents who realize after a period of no adult supervision, someone has to watch the kids to make sure they don’t get into too much trouble, after their stock market close yesterday China’s State Council said they want the steel, cement, coal, glass and power industries to reverse the excess capacity that has built up. China bank loans in the first half of ’09 exceeded all of ’08 as their stimulus plan was massive and up to now effective in maintaining growth. But, the content of the growth was predominantly in fixed asset investment and channeled thru state enterprises and China has been slowly moderating the strength of the stimulus to prevent a nasty hangover. In response, Asia markets traded lower and Europe shrugged off good economic data and did too. German consumer confidence rose to the highest since June ’08, Italian confidence rose to the most since Mar ’07, and a UK home price index was also much improved.
