This question is quickly reaching cliche status, but is somewhat irrelevant.
First, a bit about Lehman, and then I'll talk about China ...
Lehman is at times seen as the "colossal error" that triggered the 2008 Great Recession (GR)
But this is a case where the narrative has sprinted ahead of reality
Of course Lehman did not help, nobody wants meltdowns
But the roots of GR ran much deeper
e.g. the decline in spending that resulted in GR was in full force *before* the fall of Lehman in Sep 2008.
NBER dates the start of GR as 4th quarter 2007
The collapse in residential investment was already in full swing in 2006, a full 2 years before Lehman
The real issue then was - and the real issue now in China is - that the economy became dependent on household credit creation for sustaining aggregate demand
*This is the thing to focus on*
China can sort out the financial mess - almost all its debt is local, and China has no net external liabilities
So the real issue is not where there is a Lehman moment or not
The real question is that when credit spigots dry up, post "three red lines" mandate of the Chinese government, where will spending come from?
It had to happen sooner or later, but such transitions are not easy - they often do leave a bite mark ... Lehman or not.
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Afghanistan is experiencing the mother of all "sudden stops"
i.e. economic collapse resulting from a sudden stop of foreign money that was financing a large trade deficit
Afghanistan was financing a trade deficit of ~ 25% of GDP
How large is 25%? It is about 3 times as large as the largest sudden stops in recent history such as east asia, southern europe, mexico etc.
And it gets even worse
~9B$ of their reserves have also been frozen, and there's no other credit line
So what happens when there's a sudden stop?
in the absence of foreign money, the only way left for the economy to balance its imports is to contract, i.e. GDP falls so demand falls, so imports fall
We all know what it is at a personal level: I get 100$ check and might save 20$ out of it
But what is savings in the aggregate? Say for the world as a whole?
That's where it gets tricky.
e.g. people talk about a "global saving glut". But can we measure it?
Not really - at least not in a direct sense
The reason is that when a person (say Adam) "saves", someone else (say Eve) uses that saving, i.e. "dissaves", by borrowing it and spending it for one purpose or another
So, aggregate total saving is always exactly zero!
Now you might say, that according to the world bank worldwide saving is about 25% of GDP historically.
Some broad takeaways for development from 20 years of Afghan economic experience
The Afghan economy stalled in 2012 after foreign aid started receding from a high of about 50% of GDP.
The big injection of foreign money did not translate into sustainable growth. Why?
Because foreign money artificially raised domestic spending power - artificial in the sense that it was not associated with increased domestic productivity
We can see this in Afghan trade statistics. Imports rise three-fold, while exports are stagnant.
There was a temporary spending boom, that vanished when foreign flows dried up.
The spending boom is actually harmful when it is artificial, because it hurts exports via real exchange rate appreciation and other misallocations