There is an understandable tendency to just write off this weekend’s disastrous Chinese data as nothing more than pandemic politics. After all, it has been Emperor Xi’s harsh lockdowns spreading like wildfire across China rather than any disease (why it has been this way, that’s another Mao-tter). Open the cities back up, as many are doing right now, the world [...]
They zig when they were supposed to zag. China’s PBOC was widely expected to drop its MLF rate, triggering the same for bank LPR (loan prime rate) which will be published this upcoming Monday morning (Beijing time). It would have been the third rate cut since December, though it should be noted Chinese authorities had already refrained from action in [...]
Chinese Communists, like their counterparts everywhere around the world, they do love their metaphors. Speaking virtually at Davos again in 2022 like he had in 2021, the theme was largely the same. A year ago, China's dictator had warned about the uncertainty of the global recovery, a celebratory party only then getting going around those parts; he got that one [...]
How much Mao is too much? If you’re like me, the answer is anything above zero. Introducing Maoism is quite like the adage of ice cream mixing dog poo; the former cannot improve the latter even a tiny drop. On the contrary, the smallest helping of feces leaves the whole thing smelling like it, rendered completely inedible no matter how [...]
Those pesky base effects. For most of the world’s economic data, these have contributed much to creating the misimpression the global economy is doing well, if not on fire. By comparing data now (or a month ago) to the same a year earlier, boy can it look splendid. In the stock business, they’re called easy comps.The Chinese, however, have just [...]
You don’t hear about China’s “ghost cities” nearly as much anymore. Around 2012, thereabouts, suddenly social and regular medias alike were alive with pics of all sorts of empty buildings all around the vast urban Chinese landscapes. Unlike America’s Rust Belt, these spectral landmarks were brand new; built recently yet eerily unoccupied. Claimed to be a symbol of burgeoning asset [...]
These are not the numbers to put anyone’s (rational) mind at ease. China’s data dump wasn’t terrible, but it didn’t need to be in order to amplify concerns about the state of the global economy. What the inflationary case required of the Chinese government instead was unambiguous, inarguable acceleration more consistent with the idea its economy is somehow performing up [...]
The FOMC’s “hawkish” dots for their June 2021 assessment weren’t an acknowledgement of recent inflation data in the US. That’s how many are characterizing the change, modest as it actually was. Inflation is about emotion in most places, especially when CPI’s and PCE Deflators, a healthy dose of producer prices, all seem to point to an overheating economy on the [...]
Given the historic data for US retail sales, “somehow” the bond market ignored them yesterday (and today). Yields globally fell for the most part, with real yields (TIPS) really discounting the significance of consumers in March. Bonds aren’t buying that this is anything other than temporary.Not surprisingly, the mainstream media refuses not to buy what bonds aren’t. I mean, for [...]
At the monthly press conference China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) now regularly gives whenever the Big Three economic accounts are updated (this time along with quarterly GDP), spokesman Liu Aihua was asked by a reporter from Reuters to comment on how the global economic recession might impact the Communist government’s long range goal of reaching its assigned GDP target. [...]
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