Ben Bernanke once admitted how the job of the post-truth “central banker” is to try to convince the market to do your work for you. What he didn’t say was that this was the only prayer officials had for any success. Because if the market ever decided that talk wasn’t enough, only real money in hand would do, everyone’d be [...]
Xi Jinping’s earlier “stimulus” promises had originally stimulated the Keynesian-addled imaginations of Western observers and Economists. Hearing only that single word, they didn’t appear much interested in any of its details. Like how Emperors facing increasingly grave difficulties historically tend to stimulate their own capacity for remaining Emperor above everything else.For a very brief moment, as Shanghai reopened, there were [...]
Rate hikes weren’t even a twinkle in Chairman Powell’s eye, not really. Taper was barely on the table at that time, let alone double-taper or today’s rush into QT. Back in October, they all (correctly) still used the word transitory, therefore officials were taking their sweet time winding down QE6.With the Fed barely evolving from full-on – so it couldn’t [...]
It’s a broken a record, the macro stylus stuck unable to move on, just skipping and repeating the same spot on the vinyl. Since Xi Jinping’s lockdowns broke it, as it’s said, when Xi is satisfied there’s zero COVID he’ll release the restrictions and that will fix everything. The economy will go right back to good, like flipping a switch.Where [...]
Xi Jinping’s true aim, in my view, isn’t to severely limit the spread of the coronavirus, seeking its ultimate eradication, rather to curtail dissent particularly any views contrary to his handling of China’s increasingly desperate economy. Mao’s Xi’s purpose is to completely eliminate all opposition. This intentional security policy has now been extended to the People’s Bank of China itself. [...]
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 [...]
This is basically a rhetorical question drawn from a generally rhetorical exercise. We’ll never know for sure, this is about China, after all. Transparency is a Western obsession and a curse for the committed Communists. Particularly when the Party of “Science” starts to lose control of the situation when such a possibility has been treated as pure blasphemy.Did the Chinese [...]
For the third month in a row, China’s PBOC refrained from guiding its quasi-credit benchmark lower. This seemed out of line with what Premier Li Keqiang, in particular, had stated last week before authorities did drop the RRR rate on Friday. Saying that China would “step up” support for its faltering economy, however the RRR cut was half of what [...]
What everyone is saying, because it’s convenient, is that China’s zero-COVID policies are going to harm the economy. No. Economic harm of the past is the reason for the zero-COVID policies. As I showed yesterday, the cracking down didn’t just show up around 2020, begun right out in the open years beforehand, born from the scattering ashes of globally synchronized [...]
If only the rest of the world could have such problems. Chinese consumer prices were flat from February 2022 to March, even though gasoline and energy costs predictably skyrocketed. According to China’s NBS, gas was up 7.2% month-over-month while diesel costs on average gained 7.8%. Balancing those were the prices for main food staples, especially pork, the latter having declined [...]
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