It was the clash of all clashes, the textbook up against practice in a real world falling apart. Theory’s chance to save the day and prove itself, what should’ve been the legend’s finest hour. Time to put up, or... On the one side, there was the “money” we’re all told is easily created, and on the other what may have [...]
The Treasury Department released its broad TIC data today for the month of December 2022. Omicron fears, bond yields dropping despite the Fed’s rate hikes and an accelerating US CPI. Sure enough, more than a few segments of TIC consistent with those general outlines.Let’s begin with one of those which doesn’t have an immediate explanation; or, put another way, can’t [...]
Everyone was really confused. China was the unstoppable monster, the economic powerhouse that had quite easily, it seemed, survived the Great “Recession” with barely a scratch. Its ascent to the dominant world position had been written long ago in stone, carved macro graffiti left in place especially as the so-called developed world struggled mightily after 2009.The Chinese were widely thought [...]
In the earliest days of the eurodollar, its purpose was primarily as a global reserve medium to intermediate and finance trade. To surmount Triffin’s Paradox, this ledger system arose as demand for the reserve currency outstripped the Bretton Woods arrangement’s ability to supply it (because it was constrained by US gold reserves). Rebuilding first from WWII and then an explosion [...]
With the first Federal Reserve rate hike widely anticipated (all but confirmed) for the March 15-16 FOMC meeting, this means that every one of the bill tenors with the exception of the 4-week are now inside that window. The 8-week maturity moved into it last week, on January 20, so its equivalent yield is now pricing higher alternative money rates [...]
When growth stops being growth, or the same growth, what do you do? The Keynesian textbooks all say “stimulus”, but what happens if the stimulus doesn’t stimulate? Worse, when it doesn’t stimulate because it can’t due to other pre-existing and intractable impediments.This is Xi Jinping’s dilemma and it only begins with the textbook’s missing chapters on eurodollar money.So, let’s start [...]
Stop me if you’ve heard this before. Longtime readers/followers/enthusiasts will be forgiven for immediately thinking I’m quoting myself again, as I so often do: Following its emergence, the eurodollar market played a big role in the Bretton Woods system and also its breakdown and eventual demise in the early 1970s. The primary reason I refer so much to my own [...]
Why are US banks borrowing hundreds of billions of US “dollars” (quotation marks fully deserved given the nature of these borrowings which are neither physical currency nor easily identifiable even on the global ledger, too many classified here as “other”) from themselves? Technically, for regulatory and accounting purposes “American” banks (a classification which includes domestic subsidiaries of foreign banks) are [...]
Dark leverage, that’s the real stuff. In a ledger-based monetary system, money creation comes from expanding leverage. Simple. Clean. Obvious. How it gets done, that’s the genius, the beauty, and the disaster. Call it money of account, or ghost money, fictional currency, whatever. It’s the secret sauce which, when you see it, you just can’t un-see it. This is the [...]
A full part of the inflation hysteria, the first one, was the dollar’s looming crash. The currency was, too many claimed, on the verge of collapse by late 2017, heading downward and besieged on multiple fronts by economics and politics alike. Basically, the Fed had “printed” too much “money” and the Chinese playing some “long game” were purportedly ready at [...]
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