Tag Archive: eurodollar system

Everything Comes Down To Which Way The Dollar Is Leaning

2019-12-21

Is the global economy on the mend as everyone at least here in America is now assuming? For anyone else to attempt to answer that question, they might first have to figure out what went wrong in the first place. Most have simply assumed, and continue to assume, it has been fallout from the “trade wars.”

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Nothing Good From A Chinese Industrial Recession

2019-11-30

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2019-11-30

October 2017 continues to show up as the most crucial month across a wide range of global economic data. In the mainstream telling, it should have been a very good thing, a hugely positive inflection. That was the time of true inflation hysteria around the globe, though it was always presented as a rationally-determined base case rather than the unsupported madness it really was.

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Seriously, Good Luck Dethroning the (euro)Dollar

2019-11-24

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2019-11-24

Scarcely a week will go by without some grand prediction of the dollar being dethroned. Set aside how if anything is to be deposed it would have to be the eurodollar, these stories typically follow the same formulaic approach: Country X is moving away from dollar reserves, “diversifying” its holdings because of the geopolitics of Y.

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More Than A Decade Too Late: FRBNY Now Wants To Know, Where Were The Dealers?

2019-09-24

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2019-09-24

US Money Markets: Equivalent Rates, 2008-2009

I’ve said it all along; focusing in on bank reserves would leave you dazed and confused. It’s just not how the system works. After all, as I pointed out again not long ago, “our” glorious central bank had the audacity to claim that there were “abundant” reserves during the worst financial panic in four generations. “Somehow” despite that, it was a Global Financial Crisis that lived up to its name – global.

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Is The Negativity Overdone?

2019-09-10

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2019-09-10

Give stimulus a chance, that’s the theme being set up for this week. After relentless buying across global bond markets distorting curves, upsetting politicians and the public alike, central bankers have responded en masse. There were more rate cuts around the world in August than there had been at any point since 2009.

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Proposed Negative Rates Really Expose The Bond Market’s Appreciation For What Is Nothing More Than Magic Number Theory

2019-05-23

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2019-05-23

By far, the biggest problem in Economics is that it has no sense of itself. There are no self-correction mechanisms embedded within the discipline to make it disciplined. Without having any objective goals from which to measure, the goal is itself. Nobel Prize winning economist Ronald Coase talked about this deficiency in his Nobel Lecture:

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Why 2011

2019-04-12

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2019-04-12

The eurodollar era saw not one but two credit bubbles. The first has been studied to death, though almost always getting it wrong. The Great Financial Crisis has been laid at the doorstep of subprime, a bunch of greedy Wall Street bankers insufficiently regulated to have not known any better. That was just a symptom of the first. The housing bubble itself was more than housing.

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Phugoid Dollar Funding

2019-04-04

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2019-04-04

On August 12, 1985, Japan Airways flight 123 left Tokyo’s Haneda Airport on its way to a scheduled arrival in Osaka. Twelve minutes into the flight, the aircraft, a Boeing 747, suffered catastrophic failure when an aft pressure bulkhead burst.

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LIBOR Was Expected To Drop. It Dropped. What Might This Mean?

2019-02-08

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2019-02-08

Everyone hates LIBOR, until it does something interesting. It used to be the most boring interest rate in the world. When it was that, it was also the most important. Though it followed along federal funds this was only because of the arb between onshore (NYC) and offshore (mainly London, sometimes Caymans) conducted by banks between themselves and their subs (whichever was located where).

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Wasting the Middle: Obsessing Over Exits

2018-12-28

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2018-12-28

What was the difference between Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers? Well, for one thing Lehman’s failure wasn’t a singular event. In the heady days of September 2008, authorities working for any number of initialism agencies were busy trying to put out fires seemingly everywhere. Lehman had to compete with an AIG as well as a Wachovia, already preceded by a Fannie and a Freddie.

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The Relevant Word Is ‘Decline’

2018-12-18

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2018-12-18

China Industrial Production, Nov 1998 - 2018

The English language headline for China’s National Bureau of Statistics’ press release on November 2018’s Big 3 was, National Economy Maintained Stable and Sound Momentum of Development in November. For those who, as noted yesterday, are wishing China’s economy bad news so as to lead to the supposed good news of a coordinated “stimulus” response this was itself a bad news/good news situation.

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US Banks Haven’t Behaved Like This Since 2009

2018-12-14

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2018-12-14

Total Credit Market Assets 1953 Q1 - 2018 Q1

If there is one thing Ben Bernanke got right, it was this. In 2009 during the worst of the worst monetary crisis in four generations, the Federal Reserve’s Chairman was asked in front of Congress if we all should be worried about zombies. Senator Bob Corker wasn’t talking about the literal undead, rather a scenario much like Japan where the financial system entered a period of sustained agony – leading to the same in the real economy, one lost...

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China Going Back To 2011

2018-12-13

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2018-12-13

China PBOC Balance Sheet and CPI, Nov 2006 - 2018

The enormous setback hadn’t yet been fully appreciated in March 2012 when China’s Premiere Wen Jiabao spoke to and on behalf of the country’s Communist governing State Council. Despite it having been four years since Bear Stearns had grabbed the whole world’s attention (for reasons the whole world wouldn’t fully comprehend, specifically as to why the whole world would need to care about the shadow “dollar” business of one US investment “bank”) the...

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Harmful Modern Myths And Legends

2018-11-08

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2018-11-08

Loreley Rock near Sankt Goarshausen sits at a narrow curve on the Rhine River in Germany. The shape of the bluff produces a faint echo in the wind, supposedly the last whispers of a beautiful maiden who threw herself from it in despair once spurned by her paramour. She was transformed into a siren, legend says, a tantalizing wail which cries out and lures fishermen and tradesmen on the great river to their death.

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China Now Japan; China and Japan

2018-11-03

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2018-11-03

Japan Industrial Production, NSA 2000-2018

Trade war stuff didn’t really hit the tape until several months into 2018. There were some noises about it back in January, but there was also a prominent liquidation in global markets in the same month. If the world’s economy hit a wall in that particular month, which is the more likely candidate for blame? We see it register in so many places. Canada, Europe, Brazil, etc.

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China’s Industrial Dollar

2018-10-03

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2018-10-03

In December 2006, just weeks before the outbreak of “unforeseen” crisis, then-Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke discussed the breathtaking advance of China’s economy. He was in Beijing for a monetary conference, and the unofficial theme of his speech, as I read it, was “you can do better.” While economic gains were substantial, he said, they were uneven.

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‘Mispriced’ Bonds Are Everywhere

2018-09-02

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2018-09-02

The US yield curve isn’t the only one on the precipice. There are any number of them that are getting attention for all the wrong reasons. At least those rationalizations provided by mainstream Economists and the central bankers they parrot. As noted yesterday, the UST 2s10s is now the most requested data out of FRED. It’s not just that the UST curve is askew, it’s more important given how many of them are.

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What Chinese Trade Shows Us About SHIBOR

2018-08-10

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2018-08-10

Why is SHIBOR falling from an economic perspective? Simple again. China’s growth both on its own and as a reflection of actual global growth has stalled. And in a dynamic, non-linear world stalled equals trouble. Going all the way back to early 2017, there’s been no acceleration (and more than a little deceleration). The reflation economy got started in 2016 but it never went anywhere. For most of last year, optimists were sure that it was just the...

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Synchronized Global Not Quite Growth

2017-11-10

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-11-10

Going back to 2014, it was common for whenever whatever economic data point disappointed that whomever optimistic economist or policymaker would overrule it by pointing to “global growth.” It was the equivalent of shutting down an uncomfortable debate with ad hominem attacks. You can’t falsify “global growth” because you can’t really define what it is.

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Non-Transitory Meandering

2017-10-12

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-10-12

PCE Deflator Inflation, Jan 2016 - Aug 2017

Monetary officials continue to maintain that inflation will eventually meet their 2% target on a sustained basis. They have no other choice, really, because in a monetary regime of rational expectations for it not to happen would require a radical overhaul of several core theories. Outside of just the two months earlier this year, the PCE Deflator has missed in 62 of the past 64 months. The FOMC is simply running out of time and excuses.

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