As one of Africa’s largest copper producers, it seemed like a no-brainer. Financial firms across the Western world, pension funds from the US or banks in Europe, they lined up for a bit of additional yield. This was 2012, still global recovery on the horizon – at least that’s what “they” all kept saying. Zambia did what everyone does, the [...]
Milton Friedman wasn’t trying to be cagey. Quite the contrary, he was recognizing the complexity of the world we actually inhabit and then stating this in perfectly clear language. Things aren’t so simple as positive versus negative, especially when it comes to moving progress forward – or stopping in its tracks. What if progress merely slows; worse, what if it [...]
When the eurodollar system worked, or at least appeared to, not only did the overflow of real effective (if virtual and confusing) currency “weaken” the US dollar’s exchange value, its enormous excess showed up as more and more foreign holdings of US$ assets. Mostly US Treasuries, especially in official hands, but not entirely those. That much is perfectly clear; you [...]
For the first time, it was encouraging to see and hear quite a lot of people talking about the September calendar quirk. That’s progress; a small but noticeable segment of the financial public setting aside the mythical dogma of bank reserves and asking the right questions. However, I fear that having been “disappointed” by this year’s version of it, how [...]
Tomorrow, the Treasury Department is going to announce the results of its latest bond auction. A truly massive one, $47 billion are being offered of CAH4’s notes dated August 31, 2020, maturing out in August 31, 2027. In other words, the belly of the belly, the 7s.We’ve already seen them drop for two note auctions this week, both equally sizable. [...]
Before getting into the why of the dollar’s stubbornly high exchange value in the face of so much “money printing”, we need to first go back and undertake a decent enough review of the guts maybe even the central focus of the global (euro)dollar system. I’ve written before that the repo market is the lender of last resort, not central [...]
Little noticed at the time, October 2012 was quite the roller coaster. Most anyone cared about was QE3, the wonderful, awesome flood of liquidity kindly wise-man Chairman Bernanke had restarted for reasons that didn’t seem so important. Did it matter to the public that the repo market went haywire late in that very same month, at the very same time [...]
The lack of issuance and supply over the last almost year or so, that’s what makes the TIC data so fascinating. And relevant, if for other reasons, too. CLO issuance, according to a bunch of sources, peaked back last June. Remember that whole “recession scare” with the yield curve last summer? It wasn’t just a scare, at least not in [...]
On March 2, the Bank of Japan leapt into the stock market, Haruhiko Kuroda burnishing his Superman cape as he flew in to rescue the Nikkei. Purchasing a record amount of ETF’s that day, shares in Tokyo surged. It was a clear message, or so everyone thought. Don’t fight the Fed nor the Bank of Japan, not when they can [...]
An internal combustion engine that is leaking oil presents a difficult dilemma. In most cases, the leak itself is obscured if not completely hidden. You can only tell that there’s a problem because of secondary signs and observations.If you find dark stains underneath your car, for example, or if your engine smells of thick, bitter unpleasantness, you’d be wise to [...]
Stay In Touch