Michael Pettis is a professor at Peking University's Guanghua School of Management, where he specializes in Chinese financial markets. He has also taught, from 2002 to 2004, at Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management and, from 1992 to 2001, at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business. He is a member of the board of directors of ABC-CA Fund Management Co., a Sino-French joint venture based in Shanghai.
Pettis has worked on Wall Street in trading, capital markets, and corporate finance since 1987, when he joined the Sovereign Debt trading team at Manufacturers Hanover (now JP Morgan). Most recently, from 1996 to 2001, Pettis worked at Bear Stearns, where he was Managing Director-Principal heading the Latin American Capital Markets and the Liability Management groups. He has also worked at Credit Suisse First Boston, where he headed the emerging markets trading team.
Pettis is the author of several books, including The Volatility Machine: Emerging Economies and the Threat of Financial Collapse (Oxford University Press, 2001). He received an MBA in Finance in 1984 and an MIA in Development Economics in 1981, both from Columbia University.
Recent Blog Posts by Michael Pettis
- Feedback Loops
- The Challenges for China’s New Leadership
- Pettis: What I’ll Be Watching in 2013
- Recognizing the Need for Economic Adjustment
- The IMF on overinvestment
- Is There an Asian RMB Bloc?
- When the Growth Model Changes, Abandon the Correlations
- How to Be a China Bull
- Can China Increase Export Competitiveness?
- By 2015 Hard Commodity Prices Will Have Collapsed
- How Do We Measure Debt?
- Has the Great Rebalancing Already Started?
- The Unacceptable Behavior of the Market
- What Is Financial Reform in China?
- Debating Growth in China
- What Is Globalization?
- Europe’s Depressing Prospects: Two Reasons Why Spain Will Leave the Euro
- Revisiting Predictions for China
- The Ways China Can Rebalance
- Bets on China – The Economist Sees (and Raises)
- The Largest Economy in the World in 2018 – I Would Like to Make a Bet with The Economist
- The Japan Debt Disaster and China’s (Non)Rebalancing
- The World Bank Proposes Tough Medicine for China
- When Will China Emerge From the Global Crisis?
- Building Debt in China
- If No Trade Reversal Now, Then When?
- China: Lots of News, Signifying Nothing New
- How Do We Know that China Is Overinvesting?
- Will Greece Unravel by Christmas?
- Germany Must Do It, Not China
- Expect a Lot More Trade Intervention
- China: Lower Interest Rates, Higher Savings?
- BRICS to the Rescue
- The Euro Once Again
- Big in Japan
- Some Predictions for the Rest of the Decade
- Foreign Capital, Go Home!
- China: No Hard Landing, But No Solution
- Current Account Dilemma
- China: Incentives and Debt
- Small Companies Feel the Pain in China
- How to Become Virtuous and Save More
- Trade and the RMB
- China: Looking for Debt
- China: Rebalancing Through Wage Increases
- Is it Time for the U.S. to Disengage the World from the Dollar?
- Chinese Recycling and U.S. Interest Rates
- China: Reforming the Banks
- Is Loan Growth in China Slowing?
- The Dollar, the RMB and the Euro
- Zaiteku and China’s January Inflation
- Chinese Stock Markets and European Politics
- Currency Manipulation
- How Big Is Chinese GDP?
- The Real Cost of Chinese NPL
- Chinese Growth in 2011
- The Rough Politics of European Adjustment
- Chinese Inflation and European Defaults
- What Happens if Chinese Growth Slows?
- QE2 and the Titanic
- Will Trade Action Bring Back American Jobs
- It Isn’t Easy Being Green
- PBoC Rate Hike Announced
- Xin Fa’an: A Modest Proposal to Resolve the Coming Trade War
- What Happens if the RMB Is Forced to Revalue?
- The Politics of Chinese Adjustment
- You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet?
- Rumors on the PBoC Deregulating Chinese Bank Deposit Rates
- What Do the “Good” Trade Numbers Tell Us?
- Have We Underestimated Chinese Consumption?
- Chinese Consumption and the Japanese “Sorpasso”
- The PBoC Can’t Easily Raise Interest Rates
- Do Sovereign Debt Ratios Matter?
- The Capital Tsunami Is a Bigger Threat Than the Nuclear Option
- What Do Banking Crises Have to Do with Consumption?
- What Might History Tell Us About the Greek Crisis?
- China: Where’s the Inflation?
- The Shanghai Market Isn’t Really Predicting Anything
- Don’t Misread the Trade Implications of the Euro Crisis for China
- Beijing’s Stop-and-Go Measures
- Are you ready for the United States of Germany?
- The RMB and the Magic of Accounting Identities
- Chinese Savings and the Wealth Effect
- Who Will Pay for China’s Bad Loans?
- How Will U.S. Savings Rate Rise if You Don’t Penalize Consumption?
- Be Careful of Bilateral Trade Numbers
- How Will an RMB Revaluation Affect China, the US, and the World?
- Stuck in Neutral – What Japan’s Rebalancing Can Teach Us
- What the PBoC Cannot Do with Its Reserves
- Rising Wages in China are a Good Thing
- Never Short a Country with $2Trillion in Reserves?
- The Myth of China’s Blithe Consensus
- Good Numbers? Or Bad Numbers?
- Everyone Wants to Talk about Currencies
- China New Year, and One More Vote for GDP-Adjusted Bonds
- The Pace of Change
- Is Urban Migration the Solution to China’s Problems?
- The Difficult Arithmetic of Chinese Consumption
- Repairing China’s Financial System
- Lecturing Each Other on Trade
- What Rebalancing of Chinese and American Consumption?
- Chinese Railways and Speculating Pig Farmers
- China’s September Data Suggest that the Long-Term Overcapacity Problem is only Intensifying
- Currency Depreciation and Global Imbalances
- The IMF Warns about Surplus Countries and Global Imbalances
- More Trade Tensions, and the Very Limited Advantage of Relative Poverty
- The Coming Clash in Savings
- China’s Retail Sales Growth Figures are not Consumption Growth Figures
- China’s August Data Confirms both Optimists and Pessimists
- Exports versus domestic demand – the argument rages
- The Shanghai Market Calls the Tune
- It’s Not Yet the End of China’s Massive Stimulus
- The Credibility of Farmers, Priests and Prostitutes – and Bankers?
- What Should have been Discussed During the SED Meetings (Part 2)
- What Should Have Been Discussed During the SED Meetings (Part 1)
- More Debate about the Validity of Economic Data
- Squeezing out the Exporters
- Notes on a Real Estate Trip in China
- RMB 1.5 Trillion in New Chinese Lending — Can We Turn this Thing Off?
- China’s Loan Growth isn’t Boosting my Confidence in China’s “Green Shoots”
- Can the RMB be more undervalued today than it was last year?
- China’s savings problem and the consumption constraint
- Debt is up, trade is down, and we still don’t know which way to list
- Stimulus – at what cost?
- Trade – it’s not just the currency
- Why do Chinese save?
- The coming of a US savings culture?
- Exports versus domestic demand – the argument rages
- Distortions in the Chinese lending environment
- The death of the Asian development model
- This is getting tedious so please let’s declare the crisis over
- New trade and reserve numbers from China
- Is Governor Zhou a closet Bernanke-ite?
- Graduating this year?
- The dollar must be replaced – yet again
- Did China experiencing January hot money outflows?
- Banker? Or Grocer?
- Trade, CPI and other numbers came in this week
- Yes, trade policies do matter
- Beijing’s Consumption Blues
- The NPC meets, and Krugman refers to the savings glut
- Can Smoot-Hawley only happen in the US?
- Chinese real estate is in the headlines again
- The US government frozen in the headlights
- Should China Devalue the Yuan?
- More terrible trade numbers from China
- Will China have to choose between social stability and long-term growth?
- Hooray! China has bottomed out.
- All but the kitchen sink?
- Perhaps canceling purchases of the Financial Times won’t be enough
- There are monetary echoes from the 1930s too
- Monetary conditions might exacerbate the Chinese adjustment
- Is the US trade deficit sustainable? Is China’s trade surplus?
- As deficit countries contract, can surplus countries be far behind?
- How will China deal with the US adjustment?
- The fun part – assigning blame
- Chinese manufacturing numbers reinforce the pessimist’s outlook
- The Ox approaches
- Everyone is working hard to increase global trade imbalances
- Can parochial concerns undermine the global adjustment? It has before
- Germany is fighting with Europe. Can China be far behind?
- I still think its money, not pork, and I think credit is contracting very rapidly
- Asia faces a tough 2009 as output decreases
- No f&#-ing way! These numbers are awful!
- China’s exports contracted in November
- Dani Rodrik is letting the cat out of the bag
- Is China experiencing dollar outflows?
- Should China raise wages?
- More downward revisions
- Can China Adjust to the US Adjustment?
- Why is the balance of payments constraint such a mystery?
- Rising unemployment increases the pressure for misguided trade policies
- Would a trade war help solve the problem of excess capacity?
- Can Smoot-Hawley return in a wholly different guise?
- The RMB 4 trillion fiscal engine seems to be losing steam
- Can China adjust to the US adjustment?
- Don’t count too heavily on China’s domestic market
- Killer balance sheets striking terror
- Rising domestic demand? Declining domestic demand?
- You want volatility?
- Bring on the new financial order and punish the old scoundrels
- China props up property, the rest of the world proposes solutions
- CITIC and risk management practices
- South Korean jitters may make matters worse in China
- Hot money inflows have gone down, nervousness gone up
- China tries again to boost the stock market
- Can fiscal spending save the day?
- Fiscal expansion? Not so fast
- US slowdown = Chinese slowdown
- The currency debate re-ignites?
- Holiday thoughts on misunderstanding data
- New rules for Chinese stock market investors
- Bank run in Hong Kong
- Markets surge, but little has improved
- Worrying about the banking system
- Is China safe?
- CPI inflation was unexpectedly low, the trade surplus unexpectedly high
- Is the PBoC running out of capital?
- Market temporarily breaks below 2500
- China still needs a one-off maxi-revaluation, but smaller than before
