Scanning through Bloomberg this morning I came across this scary report. Deutsche Bank AG (DB) is calling China as a big risk for LatAm, bigger than the US and its well-reported slowdown. Check out the article yourself, but basically DB says that rising inflation in China means the gov’t there will shut down the economy by tightening the financial screws and cutting down on capex projects. This will cause a massive drop in commodities demand and we’ll all be royally screwed as prices plummet for copper, soybeans, zinc, iron ore, coal, you-name-it.
The first column in grey is DB’s original forecast on China’s GDP growth for the year in question. The second column in that odd peachy-orangy Excel colour is DB’s mid-year adjusted forecast (in fact they adjust their forecast all through the year, but I’ve tried to choose one that falls as close as possible to the end of each second quarter). The final red column is the actual GDP growth result of each year.
So yeah, they way suck. I mean, last year they called 9% growth for China, and it came in 2.4% higher! That’s a 26.6% miss on a country, guys, which represents about 900 billion dollars (yep, that’s a “B”) of biz they failed to see. That’s….errrr….a lot….like…dudes. And they miss without fail every year.
But you don’t notice it, because for one thing they adjust and adjust and adjust their guesses…OOOPS sorry!…their detailed forecasts until the one published in late November of each year nails the number and suddenly these guys are damn smart on China. And it’s Deutsche Bank making these wild-ass guesses, not some damnfool with a blog in the middle of South America. Y’know….Deutsche Bank! Supposed to be smart, earning big money for this stuff etc.
So Otto sez; stop taking these clowns seriously just cos they wear a decent cut of suit and use all that impressive financial spiel. DB’s China track record is laughable,and when you read reports like this on Bloomie you should have a really big contrary indicator lightbulb going beserk in your cranium.