The Bank of Japan raised its growth outlook, keeping monetary policy unchanged at its latest meeting. In the latest to be swept up in “reflation”, Japan’s central bank even trumpeted (pardon the pun) the expected Trump “stimulus” as a reason to be more optimistic. Why wouldn’t they? After all, there is no place on Earth that more appreciates government spending [...]
November was the month where global bonds, particularly sovereign bonds, were routed in synchronized liquidation. As such, we would expect to find among various data sources evidence to suggest a monetary “dollar” background consistent with that fact. What that has meant in the months (and last several years) leading up to it was the foreign official sector in overdrive “selling [...]
There are a great many great things afoot, so it might be understandable some transferred excitement (or dread) into the realm of global currencies. The British are set to leave the European Union, though nobody really knows what that means let alone what it might lead to. While the US was closed for MLK remembrances, sterling was all over the [...]
Then-Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testified before Congress on May 22, 2013, that taper was for officials a strong consideration. Though QE4, the UST portion of the restored balance sheet expansion, wasn’t yet six months old and he had promised, sort of, at the start of QE3 that both would be open-ended, sort of, his message to the legislature was [...]
After being pummeled by a concurrent stock and real estate crash, Japanese officials by late 1992 felt that enough was enough. The Nikkei 225 stock index that was nearly 40,000 toward the end of 1989 had crashed to below 15,000 by August 1992. From that point, however, Japanese stocks had started rising again. Through the summer of 1992, things looked [...]
Just over a week ago, the world (at least in chemistry) celebrated Mole Day. Rather than acknowledge the small underground mammal that immediately springs to mind, Mole Day is in honor of Amadeo Avogadro, the Count of Quaregna and Cerreto, who lived in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and contributed one of the major international base units in [...]
In conventional thinking, China’s problems are China’s problems. As those related to its currency, it is believed a mere matter of either intentional policy (devaluation = export stimulus) or the outflow of “hot money” because of China’s unique circumstances. From this position, one populated by policymakers, what has transpired over the past year plus was all very confusing. It is [...]
You can only pick one. Going back to around July 11, the People’s Bank of China decided for whatever their reasons CNY had gone far enough and that the central bank would intervene to all over again to obtain a stable currency importantly against the dollar. This was nothing new, however, as the PBOC had interceded on several other notable [...]
If I was forced to guess what it was that specifically set off this “something” of growing “dollar” illiquidity since July, I would have to go back to the July 28 and 29 BoJ policy meeting. Initially, that was the decision that so disappointed at least against the backdrop of expectations of maybe the “helicopter.” But while the mainstream saw [...]
In the summer of 2013, the mainstream media was already convinced that Japan’s QE amplification, the true shock and awe “money printing”, was not just working it was doing so convincingly. The yen was down sharply against the dollar, feeding what looked like a surging export sector. Even though QQE was barely a few months old, it was talked about [...]
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