There is no harder trick in the world of finance than to let the air out of a bubble gently. The Chinese authorities are trying to do just this and much is riding on their success.
This week saw the monthly download of financial and economic statistics from China. Attention was grabbed by one figure, the supply of new loans. This dropped from Rmb1,530bn ($197.5bn) in June to Rmb356bn ($52bn) in July.
It is hard to fathom how the loans in a large economy can fall by 77 per cent from one month to the next. But aggregate new lending for the first seven months is 173 per cent above its level for the same period of 2008, so it appears that the government is trying to remove the stimulus before it creates a bubble, without creating a crash.