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non-manufacturing

Is There More To It?

By |2022-01-31T18:25:41-05:00January 31st, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Chinese authorities responded to their faltering economy in 2018 by diverging from their Western counterparts. Their PBOC would lean into rate cuts (RRR) at the very same time America's Federal Reserve would accelerate more in the direction of rate hikes. The ECB, for Europe’s part, intended to follow the Fed’s path, reaching December 2018 and terminating its own QE with [...]

Decoupling From ‘Inflation’ Maybe

By |2021-11-01T18:25:12-04:00November 1st, 2021|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

There is no “decoupling”, at least there hasn’t been yet. Why would this time end up any different? The history of the term has itself changed over time, but by doing so has offered further proof this is a fact of global economic life in the post-August 2007 eurodollar era. It always goes like this: globally synchronized reflation (not growth); [...]

From The Blackest of Mouths: China’s (deflationary) Slowdown Picks (way) Up

By |2021-08-31T17:29:21-04:00August 31st, 2021|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

At great risk of upsetting China’s army of censors, I’m going to “slander” the Chinese economy anyway. Were I a comrade within that particular nation, I’d now get labeled a “black mouth” spreading misinformation in the form of actual up-to-date data published by the same Communist government fearing its spread. Rate of change in the economy goes down, rate of [...]

What The PMIs Aren’t Really Saying, In China As Elsewhere

By |2020-06-30T16:55:03-04:00June 30th, 2020|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

China’s PMI’s continue to impress despite the fact they continue to be wholly unimpressive. As with most economic numbers in today’s stock-focused obsessiveness, everything is judged solely by how much it “surprises.” Surprises who? Doesn’t matter; some faceless group of analysts and Economists whose short-term modeling has somehow become the very standard of performance.According to one such group, China’s official [...]

Forget the PMI’s, Understand Xi Jinping’s Inner Mongolian

By |2020-06-01T17:14:27-04:00June 1st, 2020|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

In a scene straight out of the Stalinist playbook, no one dared anything but to do their part pitching in with thunderous applause. Five hundred deputies from across China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region showed up at the regional “people’s” Congress in January 2018 to elect the delegates who would represent them and the region’s 25 million inhabitants at the National [...]

Weekend’s PMI Joy Was Spoiled Before It Ever Got Started

By |2019-12-02T18:12:06-05:00December 2nd, 2019|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The weekend began with pure joy over PMI’s before it ended in deep disappointment early Monday…over a PMI. It started in China. That country’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) released its November 2019 numbers for manufacturing and non-manufacturing sentiment. According to the government’s calculations, the gauge for manufacturing ticked back above 50 last month for the first time since April. [...]

Copper Confirmed

By |2019-09-03T19:33:19-04:00September 3rd, 2019|Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Copper prices behave more deliberately than perhaps prices in other commodity markets. Like gold, it is still set by a mix of economic (meaning physical) and financial (meaning collateral and financing). Unlike gold, there doesn’t seem to be any rush to get to wherever the commodity market is going. Over the last several years, it has been more long periods [...]

The Correlations Behind The Rate Cut(s)

By |2019-07-31T12:37:18-04:00July 31st, 2019|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

In every likelihood, the Federal Reserve today is going to join other central banks around the world who have already cut rates. It is the synchronized signal completing the turn from globally synchronized growth into a globally synchronized downturn. To most people in the United States, at least, this is a puzzling shift.   The unemployment rate says things are [...]

China’s Global Slump Draws Closer

By |2018-12-03T11:56:38-05:00December 3rd, 2018|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

By the time things got really bad, China’s economy had already been slowing for a long time. The currency spun out of control in August 2015, and then by November the Chinese central bank was in desperation mode. The PBOC had begun to peg SHIBOR because despite so much monetary “stimulus” in rate cuts and a lower RRR banks were [...]

The Dreaded Vote of Confidence

By |2018-07-03T11:50:35-04:00July 3rd, 2018|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Chinese officials are getting nervous. Everyone knows that whenever your favorite sports team struggles and fans are calling for the head coach’s head, any owner or general manager who then issues the dreaded (from the coach’s perspective) vote of confidence is essentially sealing his fate. PBOC Governor Yi Gang issued a similar sort of statement today. CNY is in freefall, [...]

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