“There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, ‘Fool me once, shame on… shame on you. Fool me…’ You can’t get fooled again!” — George W. Bush

On Tuesday, one mainstream financial media outlet cited the ubiquitous people familiar with the matter in reporting that — and stop me if you’ve heard this before — China’s preparing a raft of “measures” aimed at bolstering the country’s perpetually beleaguered equity market.

The media outlet was Bloomberg and Tuesday wasn’t the first time they’ve run such a story. I don’t have an exact count, but suffice to say if Beijing’s selling it, Bloomberg’s buying it when it comes to stories about soon-to-be rescue packages for equities and the Chinese economy.

Allegedly, the latest plan involves tapping into the offshore coffers of SOEs to “mobilize” two trillion yuan, which would be funneled into A-shares through the links. In addition, authorities are considering the deployment of another 300 billion yuan into onshore markets via China Securities Finance and/or Central Huijin Investment.

Markets weren’t buying it. Well, they were for a little while, but intraday gains on the “news” were faded.

The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index, which sank near the worst levels since 2005 on Monday, trimmed a 4.1% gain to a 2.9% gain by the close. The CSI 300 managed a meager (0.4%) advance.

A series of articles published over the past two or three days by Bloomberg relived various state-sponsored initiatives aimed at shoring up domestic equities, including steps taken during 2015’s infamous crash during which Beijing introduced the so-called “National Team,” a confederation of government entities which bought stocks to arrest a truly harrowing slide. The Party also resorted to literal arrests, including the detention of financial journalists. At one point, Beijing halted around three-quarters of the market.

More recently, stock-support efforts were less overt, or at least less comprehensive and thus a bit less cartoonish. In a separate article published Tuesday, Bloomberg counted at least 10 attempts to bolster equities via rhetoric, policy tweaks, state-buying and short-selling restrictions in 2023. You can make an annotated chart if you want (Bloomberg did), but there are better uses of time. Long story short: Nothing’s worked.

As a reminder, the Mainland benchmark’s on track (it’s early, obviously) for a fourth consecutive annual decline.

A characteristically wordy read-out from a State Council meeting convened Monday “to study measures related to comprehensively promoting rural revitalization,” included what sounded like a quote from Li Qiang.

Several paragraphs into the Xinhua summary, a passage mentioned “the need to… vigorously improve the quality and investment value of listed companies.” “We must take more powerful and effective measures to stabilize the market and confidence,” Li apparently said.

Fool me once.