from Zero Hedge
One month ago, the South China Morning Post reported that China’s top economic policymakers have been “engaged in heated debate over whether the country’s central bank should directly buy special bonds issued by the finance ministry to help the government’s economic support measures.”
That “heated debate” appears to have ended with fans of money printing winning, because overnight the PBOC announced a new “credit loan program” which essentially amounts to another form of QE-lite (with Chinese characteristics of the Fed’s Main Street Lending Program and the Paycheck Protection Program Liquidity Facility), and which will “temporarily” purchase loans made to small businesses from some local banks; it represents Beijing’s latest attempt to boost the supply of credit to the real economy without a wholesale rate cut amid fears China’s record debt load (some 317% according to the IIF) can no longer sustain shotgun easing.