Why Take a Chance?
February 24, 2015·0 comments·game theory
Everyone knows Evergrande is failing. Bonds have been stressed for three years. The Chinese government will likely contain the damage, reassigning projects and protecting depositors. Yet the market reaction has nothing to do with surprise and everything to do with a different question: what if authorities can't convincingly demonstrate control? Once that question enters the room, selling cascades into everything connected to China, Asia, emerging markets, and risk itself. The real test isn't Evergrande's survival. It's whether the market retains confidence in the institutions managing its collapse.
• Markets don't need new information to panic. They need permission to doubt. Evergrande's failure was telegraphed years ago, but panic selling only emerges when enough participants decide they can't afford to be the last one holding the risk.
• Contagion spreads through proximity, not through logic. Investors sell everything remotely connected to Evergrande: Chinese property, Chinese equities, Asian credit, emerging markets generally. The selling accelerates not because each sector is genuinely threatened, but because no one wants to explain why they held it.
• The real danger isn't the original problem, it's the response to the problem. A government that fumbles its containment efforts sends a signal far more damaging than any single company failure. Markets are watching for signs of institutional confusion.
• Currency markets reveal what bond spreads and stock indices obscure. If the Chinese yuan weakens significantly, it signals the market believes authorities have lost control. If it holds, contagion stops and selling reverses, regardless of whether anything fundamental has changed about Evergrande itself.
• Systemic risk arrives not through economic reality but through institutional credibility. Once confidence in the response mechanism fractures, the original problem becomes secondary to the larger question: who else might fail in a crisis if this response fails?
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