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 [...]
Back in early July, Bloomberg published a rather curious article that sounded like it was written from within the People’s Bank of China - or any other global central bank for that matter. The most prominent correlation over the past year had been CNY and everything else; or, as I wrote earlier in the year, CNY down = bad. The [...]
Economists setting their expectations for China and PBOC “stimulus” should have been paying attention to retail sales; not Chinese retail sales, but American. They keep seeing a rebound that just doesn’t exist. US consumers, as the central marginal marketplace for the world economy of goods, have steadfastly refused the invitation of the unemployment rate to produce a worldwide economic resurgence. [...]
It’s not an exact fit or correlation, but that’s not the point. One follows the other, though the manner in which they relate is outside of any view. The point here is common sense, unclouded by the increasing absurdity with which this simple relationship is denied: Repo fails are an indication of collateral “tightness.” Dealer net long inventory is an [...]
Though the media rushes to defend it as benign but prudent regulatory changes, there is going to be fallout from rising LIBOR “tightness.” And it will likely start where it can be least afforded, especially after last year’s rout. Payments on floating rate loans issued by dozens of companies are set to increase as US dollar Libor for a period [...]
Economic Reports Scorecard Two reports over the last two weeks epitomize the bifurcated nature of the US economy. The durable goods report last week was just plain awful from top to bottom. Orders down 4% month to month and 6.4% year over year. Ex-transportation -0.5% month to month and -3.6% year over year. Core capital goods orders up slightly month [...]
Last Friday the Statistics Bureau of the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication reported some more bad news for Prime Minister Abe and really Bank of Japan chief Kuroda. Month-over-month, the consumer price index was down again, leaving it 0.48% less in June 2016 than June 2015. This was the third consecutive month of increasingly negative year-over-year CPI estimates. [...]
On January 25, there was sudden burst of MBS repo volume in the DTCC statistics. This only covers the repo market that is visible taking place on the exchange, but without any other data for the vast majority of hidden transactions we have to assume that these are decent approximations for the whole. Since the published GC rates as well [...]
Construction spending had been increasing steadily since the start of 2011. Factoring both the size of the decline due to the housing bust and the timing of the turnaround in sales and prices, the mere fact that construction activity had been recovering was not really economically significant. As with most economic sectors, positive growth even to a substantial degree did [...]
Sticking with today's Japanese theme, there is a lot to further suggest why the BoJ would be attentive to "dollars" and why it matters (for everyone). A more detailed explanation is here (subscription required). "Dollar", not dollar. BONUS CHART (to add some pertinent scale):
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