Some of China’s stockpiling may well have been due to speculative excess, rather than any rational plan on the ground. That realization played a role in the market carnage seen this week.

As Grant’s Interest Rate Observer has been known to say, “We wrote it. Did you read it?”

My slim hope is that the Chinese really and truly know what they are doing, because, in fueling investor optimism with such flair, they are playing a high stakes game. My worry is that they drop the ball, somehow, and the result shows up as a violent wake-up call for “high beta” assets… emerging market equities, energy, commodities and the like.

What happens next is far from clear. The huge [commodity] stockpiles could continue to grow at a breathtaking pace – after all, Beijing has plenty of greenbacks to work