China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) reported a large drop in forex assets in October. This was unsurprising given what we already know of “dollar” conditions from the behavior of the exchange rate itself. The pattern is by now very well established and quite predictable. At -$45.73 billion for the month, it was by far the largest decline in [...]
There are many facets to gold, which is as it should be. In trying to discern what ones are moving prices at any given moment, the complexities and really its duality can cloud the matter, often greatly. From the post-1971 traditional perspective, it is believed the preeminent inflation hedge. In financial terms, it is sensitive to shifts in relative interest [...]
There bond selloff intensified the past few days in the wake of the election. I still believe that the potential Trump represents, rather than anything that has been specifically proposed, is the likely catalyst. I am also quite certain that goes along with the change in Chinese behavior where RMB are far more plentiful now than just a few weeks [...]
Back in June I mused about a Trump election: Forget for a minute that Donald Trump is the Republican nominee. Think about the policies he is likely to propose as President and how they might affect the markets. Forget the campaign rhetoric for a minute, the things he’s proposed that can’t get done because the US President isn’t a dictator [...]
The BLS reported that the rate of hiring in the US continues to be sluggish and sideways. Total hiring across the labor market was estimated to be 5.08 million (SA) in September, down from August and the second slowest rate this year. Since first surpassing 5 million back in September 2014, the overall pace of employer engagement has been largely [...]
Wholesale sales were flat in September, and flat overall for the quarter. They had declined sharply in July, rebounded in August, only to go nowhere for all the trouble. It is perfectly reminiscent of this whole economy, which fell in 2015 and then despite all projections otherwise never got back up. The best that can be said of it is [...]
When I first started some years ago, the guy I worked for told me to prepare myself because this business is so often just stupid. It does make sense given the high stakes and pressure, where everybody is literally trying to outsmart everybody else every minute of every day. And those kinds of conditions, variable as they are, lead to [...]
I never quite understood the “audit the Fed” trend that gained perhaps its widest acceptance as one of the final acts of Congressman Ron Paul’s career. He introduced H.R. 1207 as an amendment to Dodd-Frank, of all things, and even garnered 320 co-sponsors which aided the Congressman in getting it passed by the House. The Senate version was pared back [...]
The cost of this economy cannot be strictly measured by statistics or even the massive deviations of those statistics. As noted earlier today, China’s exports in the twelve months ending October 2016 were figured to be just $2.2 trillion. Had the Great “Recession” actually been a recession, where the world resumed growth even modestly like that from the pre-crisis period, [...]
In early November 2012, China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported that China’s exports were figured by the Customs Bureau to have been about $175.57 billion for October that year. It represented a year-over-year increase of 11.5% which only sounds good as compared to the economy that followed. The rate was down sharply from recovery-like growth that everyone had expected would [...]
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