It appears that the party is over for many Chinese and international investors who thought, just like America a few years ago, that the housing market would continue to expand and home prices rise forever. The credit and housing bubbles upon which a lot of Chinese growth depends appear to be bursting. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: It is hard to obtain good data in China, but something is wrong when the country's Homelink property website can report that new home prices in Beijing fell 35pc in November from the month before. If this is remotely true, the calibrated soft-landing intended by Chinese authorities has gone badly wrong and risks spinning out of control. The growth of the M2 money supply slumped to 12.7pc in November, the lowest in 10 years. New lending fell 5pc on a month-to-month basis. The central bank has begun to reverse its tightening policy as inflation subsides, cutting the reserve requirement for lenders for the first time since 2008 to ease liquidity strains. The...(Read Full Post)