Where central banks are concerned, it’s not conspiracy theory so much as the term “off-balance sheet.” There’s a reason Enron kicked off that mass-migration into the footnotes. For monetary officials, there’s the choice to be like Montagu Norman and what he thought of good practice at central banks. Silence.For years, the Chinese have tried it the other way. Big Mama [...]
India like many emerging market countries around the world holds an enormous stockpile of foreign exchange reserves. According to the latest weekly calculation published by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the country’s central bank, that total was a bit less than half a trillion. While it sounds impressive, when the month began the balance was much closer to that [...]
What’s going on in China? It’s a question that is on everyone’s mind. While most attention is focused on the unfolding human tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic, the potential for it to be compounded by any economic fallout makes for even more urgency. The sad truth is that China was in rough shape heading into the coronavirus. How rough, though? [...]
As far as recent times may be concerned, June 2019 wasn’t that bad of a month. Compared to some this year, it was downright uninteresting. Starting with the UST market, there was a plunge in yields (bad sign for global dollar shortage) in the second half of April and throughout May. June saw more steady trading which continued into July [...]
One of the very few central pillars supporting the hopes for a second half rebound was China’s “stimulus.” Since we’ve been conditioned to just accept whatever a central bank does as equal to it, throughout the last thirteen months since the first RRR cut was initiated that one as well as the four which followed (five for smaller and medium [...]
In a period when weird and unusual are commonplace, it was one of the more noteworthy and interesting outliers. Late in August 2010, a media report attributed to Hong Kong’s Ming Pao news agency suggested Zhou Xiaochuan was on the run. Supposedly, the Governor for the People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, was defecting to the United States [...]
Central bankers will often tell you exactly what you want to know, at least when it comes to their intentions. You can first begin by reading Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz’s 1963 monetary bible A Monetary History. It’s all in there. From it, central banks all over the world have devised technical schemes intended to hold fast to the old [...]
Banking regulation is never easy. Shifting regimes and tightening things up a bit during a rip-roaring global economy, however, makes it much less stressful. Among global banking systems the one in India has lagged. Much of the rest of the world had moved on to higher capital requirements in addition to (sappy) liquidity constraints long ago so as to keep [...]
In another sign of repeating 2015, the Chinese are beginning to mobilize their “reserves” again. Three years ago, in a futile attempt to staunch CNY’s stubborn “devaluation” various government authorities blew through just about $1 trillion. It didn’t work. You would think that everyone could learn from this episode. I think the Chinese did, which is why in 2017 they [...]
On June 10, 2013, Brazil’s central bank announced an allotment of 40,000 currency swap contracts at auction. This was the second operation carried out in short order that month, following weakness in the real, Brazil’s currency (BRL), against the dollar. In order to forestall any further declines, central bank intervention has long been a frontline tool in EM arsenals. But [...]
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