Michael Pento: China's 3% economic growth in 2022 is QUESTIONABLE
By kevinhughes // 2023-01-26
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Money manager Michael Pento claimed the three percent economic growth reported by China in 2022 was questionable. During a recent interview on the "Liberty and Finance" podcast, Pento expressed his doubts about the matter to host Dunagan Kaiser. "I don't believe anything that comes from this communist state's mouth. This is not an indictment of the people of China, this is an indictment of the leadership of China," he said. "So China came up with some statistics of late. You should know that China claims that in 2022 … their economy grew by three percent. How is it possible that China's economic growth increased? It grew, the economy grew even though they locked down the entire nation practically. You couldn't go outside; people were limited in where they could travel, and they had to be sequestered in their work environment." The communist nation's gross domestic product (GDP) missed Beijing's official growth target of 5.5 percent. Besides the start of the pandemic in 2020, when one-year GDP only expanded 2.2 percent, growth was the weakest since 1976. Pento also said that China's reopening in early January is a little bit earlier than predicted, since it was supposed to start reopening in March. According to the president and founder of Pento Portfolio Strategies, China's population is now decreasing for the first time since the early 1960s and its labor force has been shrinking for years. This is interesting because half of China's GDP growth supposedly came from an increase in the number of people in the labor force. This could be possible in a couple of ways: people immigrating to China and people starting to work from organic population growth. But none of those things are happening in China since the labor force and the population growth are shrinking. Pento stated that the other half of GDP growth is productivity. China now claims that its people have been more productive in their homes that it offset the decline in the labor force from 2020. The portfolio creator and consultant commented that China becoming a more productive nation when people were locked in their houses is hard to believe, and letting the Chinese people out of their homes is going to lead to a decline in productivity. (Related: China’s economy continues to collapse as domestic car sales plunge a whopping 92% on spread of Wuhan coronavirus.) Ultimately, Pento remarked that that people should not trust the numbers from China and the communist nation ending the lockdowns is not going to bring the global economy out of the coming inexorable recession.

Pento blasts central bank policies

According to Pento, China is the European Union's largest trading partner – so the country reopening would be better for Europe as it would bring the dollar down. Pento cited another problem – that of the Consumer Price Index inflation dropping from 9.1 percent in the summer to 6.5 percent recently. He called this phenomenon disinflation and explained that this is happening because the monetary reserves – both the base money supply in the banking system and the M2 money supply – are running low. Given the disinflation, the money manager remarked that the Federal Reserve could pursue a less aggressive monetary policy that is dollar-friendly. The money manager also expressed outrage over the Bank of Japan's (BOJ) plan to remove yield curve control completely. According to Pento, Japan as a nation has over a quadrillion yen in outstanding debt. Moreover, the country's core inflation is going to four percent and higher. He told Kaiser that the BOJ removing removing complete yield curve control would send yield skyrocketing not only domestically, but also internationally. It would be very bullish for the Japanese yen and put more weakness on the dollar, he continued. Follow MarketCrash.news for more news about the global markets. Watch the full conversation between Michael Pento and Dunagan Kaiser below. This video is from the Pool Pharmacy channel on Brighteon.com.

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