Tag Archive: China

Hard Assets In An Age Of Negative Interest Rates

2017-10-04

Time is the soul of money, the long-view - its immortality. Hard assets are forever, even when destroyed by the cataclysms of history. It is the outlook that perpetuated the most competent and powerful aristocracies in continental Europe, well up through World War I and, in certain prominent cases, beyond; it is the mindset that has sustained the most fiscally serious democratic republic in the Western world, that of Switzerland.

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“This Is A Crisis Greater Than Any Government Can Handle”: The $400 Trillion Global Retirement Gap

2017-10-03

by John Mauldin

2017-10-03

Size of the retirement savings gap, 2015 - 2050

Today we’ll continue to size up the bull market in governmental promises. As we do so, keep an old trader’s slogan in mind: “That which cannot go on forever, won’t.” Or we could say it differently: An unsustainable trend must eventually stop. Lately I have focused on the trend in US public pension funds, many of which are woefully underfunded and will never be able to pay workers the promised benefits, at least without dumping a huge and unwelcome...

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Not Political Risk For China, But Unwelcome Reality

2017-10-01

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-10-01

China’s Communist Party concluded the Third Plenum of its 18th Congress in November 2013. It was the much-discussed reform mandate that many in the West took to mean another positive step toward neo-liberal reform. At its center was supposed to be a greater role for markets particularly in the central task of resource allocation. In some places, the Party’s General Secretary Xi Jinping was hailed as the great Chinese reformer.

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The Global Housing Bubble Is Biggest In These Cities

2017-09-30

by Tyler Durden

2017-09-30

Two years ago, when UBS looked at the world's most expensive housing markets, it found that London and Hong Kong were the only two areas exposed to bubble risk.What a difference just a couple of years makes, because in the latest report by UBS wealth Management, which compiles the bank's Global Real Estate Bubble Index, it found that eight of the world's largest cities are now subject to a massive speculative housing bubble.

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It Was Collateral, Not That We Needed Any More Proof

2017-09-30

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-09-30

Eleven days ago, we asked a question about Treasury bills and haircuts. Specifically, we wanted to know if the spike in the 4-week bill’s equivalent yield was enough to trigger haircut adjustments, and therefore disrupt the collateral chain downstream. Within two days of that move in bills, the GC market for UST 10s had gone insane.To be honest, it was a rhetorical exercise.

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Little Behind CNY

2017-09-28

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-09-28

The framing is a bit clumsy, but the latest data in favor of the artificial CNY surge comes to us from Bloomberg. The mainstream views currency flows as, well, flows of currency. That’s what makes their description so maladroit, and it can often lead to serious confusion. A little translation into the wholesale eurodollar reality, however, clears it up nicely.

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PBOC RMB Restraint Derives From Experience Plus ‘Dollar’ Constraint

2017-09-27

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-09-27

Given that today started with a review of the “dollar” globally as represented by TIC figures and how that is playing into China’s circumstances, it would only be fitting to end it with a more complete examination of those. We know that the eurodollar system is constraining Chinese monetary conditions, but all through this year the PBOC has approached that constraint very differently than last year.

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Swimming The ‘Dollar’ Current (And Getting Nowhere)

2017-09-26

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-09-26

The People’s Bank of China reported this week that its holdings of foreign assets fell slightly again in August 2017. Down about RMB 21 billion, almost identical to the RMB 22 billion decline in July, the pace of forex withdrawals is clearly much preferable to what China’s central bank experienced (intentionally or not) late last year at ten and even twenty times the rate of July and August.

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Swiss National Bank Bubble Regains Lead Over Bitcoin

2017-09-22

by Tyler Durden

2017-09-22

But as Bitcoin rebounded from its China challenges, it overtook The SNB once again as bubbliest bubble. However, a 13% spike in the share price of The Swiss National Bank today has put an end to that leaving the central bank back in first place among the melter-uppers...

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A Clear Anchor

2017-09-21

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-09-21

China Fixed Asses Investment, 2014 - 2016

All the way back in January I calculated the total size of China’s 2016 fiscal “stimulus.” Starting in January 2016, authorities conducted what was an enormous spending program. As it had twice before, the government directed increased “investment” from State-owned Enterprises (SOE). By my back-of-the-envelope numbers, the scale of this fiscal side program was about RMB 1.45 trillion, or nearly 2% of GDP

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One-Tenth Of Global GDP Is Now Held In Offshore Tax Havens

2017-09-19

by Tyler Durden

2017-09-19

Accurately measuring the scope of global wealth inequality is a notoriously difficult undertaking – a fact that was brought to light last year when the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published the Panama Papers, exposing clients of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

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Moscow Rules (for ‘dollars’)

2017-09-02

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-09-02

In Ian Fleming’s 1959 spy novel Goldfinger, he makes mention of the Moscow Rules. These were rules-of-thumb for clandestine agents working during the Cold War in the Soviet capital, a notoriously difficult assignment. Among the quips included in the catalog were, “everyone is potentially under opposition control” and “do not harass the opposition.” Fleming’s book added another, “Once is an accident. Twice is coincidence. Three times is an enemy...

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Data Dependent: Interest Rates Have Nowhere To Go

2017-08-18

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-08-18

US Employment Cost Index, Jan 2001 - Aug 2017

In October 2015, Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Bill Dudley admitted that the US economy might be slowing. In the typically understated fashion befitting the usual clownshow, he merely was acknowledging what was by then pretty obvious to anyone outside the economics profession.

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U.S. Export/Import: Losing Economic Trade

2017-08-17

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-08-17

The oil effect continued to recede in late spring for more than just WTI prices or inflation rates. US trade on both sides, inbound and outbound, while still positive has stalled since the winter.

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China: Losing Economic ‘Reflation’

2017-08-16

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-08-16

China Fixed Asset Investment Jul 2012-2017

If “reflation” was born last year in Japan, and I think it was, it was surely given its most tangible dimensions in China. The idea that the Bank of Japan was going to do something magnificent was perhaps always a longshot, but enough given the times for people to hope (sentiment) they might try (helicopter). The Chinese, however, have been relatively more pragmatic. Authorities began 2016 with an actual rather than imagined “stimulus” injection...

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The Secret History Of The Banking Crisis

Accounts of the financial crisis leave out the story of the secretive deals between banks that kept the show on the road. How long can the system be propped up for? It is a decade since the first tremors of what would become the Great Financial Crisis began to convulse global markets. Across the world from China and South Korea, to Ukraine, Greece, Brexit Britain and Trump’s America it has shaken our economy, our society and latterly our politics.

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The West lost at least another 1000 tonnes of large gold bars in 2015

2017-08-14

by Ronan Manly

2017-08-14

Over the last number of years, one of the most interesting trends in the physical gold world is the ongoing conversion of large 400 ounce gold bars into smaller high purity 1 kilogram gold bars to meet the insatiable demand of Asian gold markets such as China and India.

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“Under Any Analysis, It’s Insanity”: What War With North Korea Could Look Like

2017-08-14

by Tyler Durden

2017-08-14

Now that the possibility of a war between the US and North Korea seems just one harshly worded tweet away, and the window of opportunity for a diplomatic solution, as well as for the US stopping Kim Jong-Un from obtaining a nuclear-armed ICBM closing fast, analysts have started to analyze President Trump’s military options, what a war between the US and North Korea would look like, and what the global economic consequences would be.

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Risk Off: Global Stocks Slide As “Fire And Fury” Results In “Selling And Fear”

2017-08-10

by Tyler Durden

2017-08-10

US futures are set for a sharply lower open (at least in recent market terms) following a steep decline in European stocks and a selloff in Asian shares, following yesterday's sharp escalation in the war of words between the U.S. and North Korea. In a broad risk-off move U.S. Treasuries rose, the VIX surged above 12 overnight, while German bund futures climbed to the highest level in six weeks. The Swiss franc gained 1.2 percent to 1.1320 per euro...

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FX Daily, August 09: North Korea lets EUR/CHF Collapse

2017-08-09

by Marc Chandler

2017-08-09

The bellicose rhetoric from the US and North Korean officials is the main driver today. We would qualify that assessment by noting that first, the market moves are rather modest, suggesting a low-level anxiety among investors. Second, pre-existing trends have mostly been extended. Turning to Asia first, the Korea's equity market fell 1.1%. The Kospi has fallen for the past two weeks (~2.2%).

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