The Euro$ curve inversion of 2018 wasn’t an isolated case by any means. Along with all the other “bond market” stuff, these together had been a useful warning three years ago for reality as it unfolded the opposite way from the narrative about accelerating growth and inflation. Not just the one curve kinked, an escalating stream of alarms. There was [...]
Over the past week and a half, Treasury has rolled out the CMB’s (cash management bills; like Treasury bills, special issues not otherwise part of the regular debt rotation) one after another: $60 billion 40-day on the 19th; $60 billion 27-day on the 20th; and $40 billion 48-day just yesterday. Treasury also snuck $60 billion of 39-day CMB’s into the [...]
For several years now, we’ve been harping constantly and consistently about what’s on the PBOC’s balance sheet; or, really, what conspicuously isn’t in very specific line-item numbers. Briefly, simply, if dollars are being extended into China, as has been claimed over the years, particularly the last few, they’re going to show up on the Chinese central bank’s balance sheet. Specifically, [...]
We are going to start here with Europe before heading to Australia and then getting to China – and then currency. Why the ECB? It is going through the same pangs of dissatisfaction as its cousin the Federal Reserve had last summer. Like the Fed in 2020, Europe’s central bank in 2021 has climbed to the end of its grand [...]
It’s not necessarily a discrepancy so much as maybe looking at the same thing from a different point of view. China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) reports on, among other things, the widest definition of foreign assets being under its whole national umbrella. Yet, the agency publishes balances denominated not in CNY, either US$’s or SDR’s (hey, they can [...]
There are three letters you never want to see hit the Chinese news. Actually, it’s the same letter just repeated three times. If the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), the country’s central bank and top bank regulator, ever decides to reduce or cut their RRR you know things are getting serious. And not in a good way.This, of course, won’t [...]
For the month of May 2021, China’s central bank reported almost exactly the same as it had in April (or March). In the case of foreign assets, as has become standard, nearly identical. Despite reflation dollar flows being described and talked about, they still haven’t reached the official PBOC balance sheet which after so many months of this simply reduces [...]
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 [...]
China’s economy is nowhere near recovered from 2020’s steep recession, yet, contrary to textbook demands, the Chinese central bank is winding down its support. This is especially important given that monetary policy last year hadn’t actually been all that supportive to begin with (see below). The two major money outlets, currency and bank reserves, were allowed a noticeable yet only [...]
My entire premise was to make this mockingly simple. Econometrics demands mathematical precision yet always comes up empty because its calculations, no matter how elegantly complex, proceed from the falsest of subjective assumptions. It won’t matter how awesome the computing power if the thing you’re trying to compute doesn’t work or act the way you believe (because everyone says so [...]
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