When even that bastion of statist group think and legacy conventional wisdom accuses China of fabricating its most important economic number, then surely some violently volatile event is in the immediate future as China’s goal seeked cognitive dissonance is forced to realign with reality in an event which even the bank that does god’s work on earth implies is now overdue.

From Goldman’s David Kostin:

In China, the government reported 4Q GDP growth of 6.8%. However, during the same time period our China CAI (Current Activity  Indicator) expanded at an average of just 4.5%, 230 bp slower than the official measure. Earlier this week our December CAI reading suggested China economic growth has decelerated to just 4.2%.

And if China is indeed growing at 4.5% (or less), that means that its total debt is now growing three time as fast as the underlying economy, a recipe for not just an epic bubble, but its even more epic collapse.

Meanwhile, as the NYT writes, fears about China’s economy are now “festering” even among the world’s if not brightest then certainly richest.