From Bloomberg two days ago:

..."There's no hope for export demand to recover any time soon," said Wang Qian, a Hong Kong-based economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. "How fast imports recover depends on how soon the government's stimulus package kicks in and creates real demand in major industries."

Figure 1: Log Chinese exports (blue) and imports (red), and 12 month moving averages (dark blue, dark red). In millions USD, not seasonally averaged. US NBER defined recession dates shaded gray. Source: IMF, International Financial Statistics, updated with newspaper reports, NBER, author's calculations.

Regarding imports, Willem Thorbecke has pointed out to me that the deviations from trend have been most pronounced for imports for processing, and processed exports. Ordinary imports and exports have been less affected -- at least through 2008.

Figure 2: Source: Personal communication from Willem Thorbecke; paper presented ...

JPMorgan Cuts 2,800 WaMu Jobs; GM Post $30-Billion Loss; Hong Kong Exports Sink; IGM Retains 2009 Outlook; Jobless Claims Spike; Oil Rises for Second Day in a Row

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) will eliminate 2,800 jobs at Washington Mutual through attrition, Bloomberg reported. In December, the company slashed 9,200 jobs at WaMu, which it bought for $1.9 billion last year. General Motors Corp. (GM) posted a loss of almost $31 billion in the fourth quarter, and said its auditors will likely doubt its viability. The company burned through $5 billion during the quarter, and warned that its pension plans were underfunded by $12.4 billion, Reuters reported. Hong ...

JPMorgan Cuts 2,800 WaMu Jobs; GM Post $30-Billion Loss; Hong Kong Exports Sink; IGM Retains 2009 Outlook; Jobless Claims Spike; Oil Rises for Second Day in a Row

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) will eliminate 2,800 jobs at Washington Mutual through attrition, Bloomberg reported. In December, the company slashed 9,200 jobs at WaMu, which it bought for $1.9 billion last year. General Motors Corp. (GM) posted a loss of almost $31 billion in the fourth quarter, and said its auditors will likely doubt its viability. The company burned through $5 billion during the quarter, and warned that its pension plans were underfunded by $12.4 billion, Reuters reported. Hong ...

China’s giant $585 billion (4 trillion yuan) economic stimulus package is showing signs of taking effect. Economists now project that China will be the likely leader of an elusive worldwide economic recovery.

Chinese banks heeded the government’s call to extend more credit to support the economy as they issued $237 billion (1.62 trillion yuan) in new loans in January, up a whopping 101% year-over-year, the People’s Bank of China said. The surge provides evidence that state-owned banks are heeding the government’s call to extend more credit to support the economy.

“The banks are fighting for the best projects in the government’s stimulus package,” Ha Jiming, chief economist of China International Capital Corp, told China Daily. “It’s not surprising to see that an array of the deals were sealed in the past month.”

The massive jump in lending is equal to …