China: embryonic tightening

The world is nervous about China putting the brakes on its bubbling financial system. Beijing has this week ordered some banks to slow their lending. Markets did not take it well. But as tightening goes, the moves are pretty limited. Some 1 trillion yuan ($161 billion) of new loans were already advanced during the first half of January, compared with 1.6 trillion yuan for the first month of 2009. That is well above the pace that the authorities’ 2010 loan limit of 7.5 trillion yuan for the curre...