In April 2009, the new Obama administration created somewhat of a political controversy when it was originally reported by the Wall Street Journal that the US was providing $2 billion or more to fund offshore drilling – in Brazil. To many on the “right”, that seemed quite hypocritical given the public stance on all things oil. My interest is entirely [...]
China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) reported a slight decline, -$3.6 billion, in foreign “reserve” assets in July. That followed a $13 billion “inflow” in June, which was the largest since early last year, maintaining the same pattern that we have observed for some time. A positive month isn’t so much an “inflow” as very likely forward operations from [...]
The Ricardian theory of free trade has dominated economics philosophy for good reason. It has a sound basis in common sense and offers a theoretical guide to understand the nature of exchange from a systemic standpoint. It does not, however, cover all such basis for all such manner of trade. Comparative advantage is somewhat straightforward where nations exchange goods, but [...]
Japanese officials including those at the Bank of Japan have been acting very erratic of late, eschewing the more traditional financial setting of vagueness. First it was NIRP that immediately blew up in their face, leading to very loud rumors of additional bank “stimulus” to offset NIRP only to have the BoJ instead do nothing at its last policy meeting. [...]
China’s official reported reserves rose in March for the first time in five months. Though reserves had fallen to barely $3.2 trillion in February, that was down just $28.6 billion from January, being already hailed as a success and a step in the right direction since that was less than a third of the shocking decline in January (-$99.5 billion). [...]
It is quarter end, so illiquidity irregularity is to be expected except that it isn’t irregular really. Eurodollar futures have been heavily bid for three days in a row now, leaving four consecutive up days for the first time since the liquidations. And because I am a sucker for fractal behavior, repo markets proved that quarter end is still what [...]
The yield on the Japanese government’s 10-year paper traded negative yesterday for the 17th straight session. When Haruhiko Kuroda first announced his negative rate experimentation, the 10-year JGB was low but still safely positive, yielding 22.9 bps on January 28. It would be negative for the first time on February 9 right as the rest of the world started to [...]
In the summer of 2014, repo fails suddenly surged out of nowhere. Between the events of the violent taper selloff in June 2013 and the first half of 2014, fails had been particularly calm if somewhat gently rising as the trend had it dating back to the QE’s. It had become common to find total fails (meaning both “to receive” [...]
The Central Bank of Egypt auctioned $200 million at 8.85 per Egyptian pound rather than the prevailing 7.73. The inflationary move of devaluation is intended to help the country gain a more solid financial background due to a persisting “dollar shortage” that nobody seems to hold in much curiosity. Despite the fact that this is a widespread and growing problem, [...]
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