SOME economic experts are predicting that the Chinese bubble could be the next to burst. If this happens the consequences for the whole world could be catastrophic.
You might ask why? Should we be concerned? It won't affect us.
If the bubble that busted in Ireland is anything to go by you should be concerned.
Any country with 1.2 billion people is an important factor when it comes to buying and selling products. It mightn't register too much in our brains because we have become accustomed to reading about individuals who lost €2.2 billion in one or two years.
So what can the Irish experts do to stave off a bubble bursting exercise in China? Feck all, and I would suggest we keep them as far away from the Chinese economy as possible, not that I don't still have great faith in the Irish system of regulating of banks and others.
One has to give credit where credit is due (if you pardon the pun) but in reality these guys in Ireland weren't paid a proper salary to do the job properly where as in China everyone is paid an honest day's pay for a day's work.
China's economy has expanded by over 10 per cent every year since 1976 which is reminisce of the Irish housing market, and we all know the results of that bubble-bursting exercise. The world now depends on China to supply its needs and the Chinese have taken up the opportunities.
With the exception of cars, televisions, healthcare and food products, they control the production of most other commodities we all use on a daily basis. Can you just imagine trying to live and operate without a mobile phone, a laptop or a video? The world as we all know it would just end.
Issues like the problems China or other economies are facing have little concern to a lot of people. The three most important issues often are prices, prices, prices. You can buy a product cheaper from China than we can produce it here at home. China has the wealth to buy up scarce products and stockpile them.
They have the technology to produce the products cheaply because of low wages and cheaper costs, which is strictly controlled. There's talk of deceleration of the economy, there's talk of soft and hard landings, there's talk of inflation and strikes by workers for better wages and conditions and there's the threat of businesses defaulting because of a downturn in businesses. 'Default', a word that only entered our vocabulary in the past two years.
Are warning signs like these a wake up call for Europe who are China's biggest customers? Should we not look at our own ability to produce goods for our own people before a Chinese bubble burst?
Have we been spoiled because of cheap prices? We are always advised to look for the best price regardless of the consequences for local employers who keep our country afloat. Since December fuel prices have risen three times and China's consumer price index rose 5.5 per cent.
Truck drivers are picketing China's largest port of Shanghai at these government sponsored rises. It's the same old story the world over. America and China are holding talks because of China's large trade surplus which is disabling the dollar and promoting western businesses to set up shop in China.
It's not something that may cause too many headaches for the European economy for the moment at least. We're too occupied in trying to keep its members from defaulting on loans.
China may be a vast country thousands of miles away but they still dictate what products go on our supermarket shelves, the quality of their products and the price we pay. In every way that's business, good business for some, not so good for others.
Britain recorded its worst month in history recently for public sector borrowing, while its national debt rose by 20 per cent with no jump in national output to pay off these debts. So it's understandable China, as a major supplier of goods, should be concerned about getting paid on time. It's the same old vicious circle of money going around and none to go around.

 

Closer to home Spain, is now hovering on the brink of a bailout. Who will take up the tab for a fallout of this magnitude? Somebody has to pay. Will it be the Irish scenario bailout where generations will be left carrying the can while the process lasts?
The biggest challenge for the IMF is funding banks and funding governments. Both of these organisations collect vast sums of money from customers, mostly on their own terms. They use the money to make more money yet somewhere along the line the lot goes missing and we're not allowed to ask questions or question the answers. We never see the records of where it was spent.
Did someone drink it, did someone gamble it, did someone rob it or was it just lost somewhere? We'll never know and if you did know you'd be better off if you never knew. So let's leave it all to the IMF to sort it out. They have loaned out over €2.2 trillion. I don't know how many noughts are in €2.2 trillion but it's enough to worry the IMF.
So relax, there's no point in all of us worrying about lots of paper money with writing on it that none of us ever read.