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 [...]
The first time the global economy was all set to boom, officials were at least more cautious. Chastened by years of setbacks and false dawns, in early 2014 they were encouraged nonetheless. The US was on the precipice of a boom (the first time), it was said, and though Europe was struggling it was positive with a more aggressive ECB [...]
The competition was fierce. Vying for the eventual affections of Indonesia’s traveling public, Japan and China were locked into an auction of one-upmanship. Businesses from both countries had submitted bids to build the first high speed rail line in the growing emerging market center. As a first step, there would be bullet train service between Jakarta and Bandung. Ultra-fast trains [...]
A little less than three weeks ago, the overnight unsecured money market rate for Chinese renminbi (RMB), SHIBOR, had fallen sharply to 1.417%. This was among the lowest in history, though it has been happening more frequently since last summer. That sounds like a good thing, only the low rates don’t ever last. Instead, over the next eight market sessions [...]
Ever since the widespread adoption of the rules, so to speak, of Positive Economics the discipline has been trading intuitive sense for mathematics. The equations of econometrics are, for Economists, more “real” than reality. To get to those statistical regressions it requires a whole lot of subjectivity. It doesn’t seem that way at first, or that it could be this [...]
This will serve mostly as an update to what is going on inside the Chinese monetary system. The PBOC’s balance sheet numbers for February 2019 are exactly what we’ve come to expect, ironically confirmed today on the domestic end by the FOMC's dreaded dovishness. Therefore, rather than rewrite the same commentary for why this continues to happen I’ll just link [...]
Najib Tun Razak was elected as Malaysia’s Prime Minister in early 2009. Taking office that April amid global turmoil and chaos, Najib’s first official visit was to Beijing in early June. His father, also Malaysia’s Prime Minister, had been the first among Asian nations to open formal diplomatic relations with China thirty-five years before. Celebrating the milestone might’ve been the [...]
China’s central bank was given more independence to conduct monetary policies in late 2003. It had been operating under Order No. 46 of the President of the People’s Republic of China issued in March 1995, which led the 3rd Session of the Eighth National People’s Congress (China’s de facto legislature) to create and adopt the Law of the People's Republic [...]
China’s yuan just isn’t a stable currency. I don’t mean its exchange value, either. CNY floats up and down on the whims of the eurodollar. The PBOC can and does limit the daily trading band, but often at tremendous cost (ticking clock). Therefore, the internal constraint governing this dynamic is a symptom of a world that isn’t going to accept [...]
While oil prices rebounded in January 2019 around the world, outside of crude commodities continued to struggle. According to the World Bank’s Pink Sheet, base metal prices fell another 1.8% on average from December. On an annual basis, these commodities as a group are about 16% below where they were in January 2018. The last time they had fallen by [...]
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