http://blog.mpettis.com/2014/07/bad-debt-cannot-simply-be-socialized/
My view is different. Burgeoning debt was not an unlucky accident. It is fundamental to the way the growth model works, and we have arrived at the stage, probably described most imaginatively by Hyman Minsky in his work on balance sheets, in which the system requires an acceleration in credit growth simply to maintain existing levels of economic activity.China’s debt problems, in other words, cannot be resolved administratively, by fixing the shadow banking system, by imposing discipline on borrowers, or indeed by eliminating financial repression (much of which, by the way, has already been squeezed out of the system by lower nominal GDP growth). Without a massive transfer of wealth from the state sector to the household sector it will be impossible, I would argue, for GDP growth rates of anything above 3-4% – and perhaps even less – to occur without a further unsustainable increase in debt, whether that increase occurs inside or outside the formal banking system and whether or not discipline has been imposed on borrowers.
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