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While its largest property developer Evergrande is at risk of collapsing, China is facing a seemingly impossible task.

Temporary housing bubble while maintaining economic growth.

You're listening to money talks from the economist, our weekly podcast on the markets, the economy and the world of business.

I'm Patrick Lane. Also on today's show, more on property, but from Europe and America, where financial institutions are becoming landlords.

Real estate investment trusts, private equity firms, insurance companies and pension funds are all investing in the single family rental market.

And historian Adam Toos looks back on the unfolding COVID-19 crisis.

The Fed should have seen the Treasury market disturbance building and should have gotten in harder with larger repot provisions a week sooner.

Evergrande China's biggest property developer has been in the thick of the country's long real estate boom.

But cracks in its business appeared last August when the government started clamping down on excessive corporate debt and it owes $300 billion.

Now it's in deep trouble. Last week it missed a US dollar bond payment to investors outside China and it may be nearing collapse.

That was kind of one of the most watched moments in this whole saga that kicked off several months ago.

Don Wyland is the economist's China business and finance correspondent.

Just going back a couple months, Evergrande has been struggling to pay some of its suppliers to pay back bank loans.

The government has put in restrictions on how much debt it can take on.

And given its business model, which is heavily reliant on increasing its debt load, this has kind of put it into a downward spiral.

It's a pretty strong signal that everything that we thought was going to happen is actually now playing out.

Today it actually owes another payment on an offshore US dollar bond and we still don't know if that's going to be paid but it's highly likely that it will also miss that payment.

Don, how are financial markets in China and elsewhere reacted to Evergrande's troubles?

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