Tag Archives: japan

Markets hold breath as China’s shadow banking grinds to a halt

 

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

By

7:47PM GMT 10 Mar 2014

Fresh loans in China’s shadow banking system evaporated to almost nothing from   $160bn in January

A slew of shockingly weak data from China and Japan has led to a sharp   sell-off in Asian stock markets and the biggest one-day crash in iron ore   prices since the Lehman crisis, calling into question the strength of the   global recovery. 

The Shanghai Composite index of stocks fell below the key level of 2,000 after   investors reacted with shock to an 18pc slump in Chinese exports in February   and to signs that credit is wilting again. Iron ore fell 8.3pc. 

Fresh loans in China’s shadow banking system evaporated to almost nothing from   $160bn in January, suggesting the clampdown on the $8 trillion sector is   biting hard. 

“It seems that rising default risk has started to erode Chinese investors’    confidence,” said Wei Yao, from Societe Generale. “Together with continued   regulatory tightening on banks’ off-balance-sheet activity, we are certain   this slowing credit trend has further to go and will inflict real pain on   the economy.”

Japan’s economy is losing steam as the monetary stimulus from “Abenomics”    wears off and the country braces itself for a rise in the consumption tax   from 5pc to 8pc. Economic growth slumped from 4pc in early 2013 to 0.7pc in   the fourth quarter, while the country racked up a record trade deficit.

The Economy Watchers Survey saw the steepest drop last month since the March   2011 tsunami and is now lower than when Abenomics began. Marcel Thieliant,   from Capital Economics, said Japan faces a “sharp slowdown”. 

The renewed jitters in China come after the authorities allowed solar company   Chaori to default last week, the first ever failure in the country’s   domestic bond market. The episode is a litmus test of President Xi Jinping’s   new regime of market discipline, though the central bank has been careful to   cushion the blow by engineering a fall in interbank interest rates. “Such   adjustments are necessary for China in the long run, but are nothing if not   risky in the short term,” said Ms Wei. 

It is extremely hard to calibrate a soft landing of this kind, and the sheer   scale of China’s credit boom now makes it a global headache. China accounts   for half of all the $30 trillion increase in world debt over the past five   years. 

Zhiwei Zhang, from Nomura, said the central bank will be forced to loosen   monetary policy this year with repeated cuts in the reserve asset ratio to   head off a deeper slowdown. 

Nomura said China’s $23bn trade deficit in February masks capital outflows,   while data was in any case distorted by the Chinese New Year. 

Even so, there are signs that deflationary forces are taking hold in China.   Producer prices (PPI) fell by 2pc in February from a year earlier. Haibin   Zhu, from JP Morgan, said it is “disturbing” the PPI index has been negative   since November, a sign that China is struggling to cope with excess   manufacturing plant. 

China invested $5 trillion last year, as much as the US and Europe combined.   There are already signs that the country is trying to export its   over-capacity overseas by pushing down the yuan. If this amounts to a   competitive devaluation policy, it risks sending a fresh deflationary   impulse across the globe.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/10688667/Markets-hold-breath-as-Chinas-shadow-banking-grinds-to-a-halt.html

China Sold Second-Largest Amount Ever Of US Treasurys In December: And Guess Who Comes To The Rescue

 

Submitted by Tyler
Durden
on 02/18/2014 20:15 -0500

While we will have more to say about the disastrous December TIC data shortly, which was released early today, and which showed a dramatic plunge in foreign purchases of US securities in December – the month when the S&P soared to all time highs and when everyone was panicking about the 3% barrier in the 10 Year being breached and resulting in a selloff in Tsy paper – one thing stands out. The chart below shows holdings of Chinese Treasurys (pending revision of course, as the Treasury department is quite fond of ajdusting this data series with annual regularity): in a nutshell, Chinese Treasury holdings plunged by the most in two years, after China offloaded some $48 billion in paper, bringing its total to only $1268.9 billion, down from $1316.7 billion, and back to a level last seen in March 2013! 

This was the second largest dump by China in history with the sole exception of December 2011.

That this happened at a time when Chinese FX reserves soared to all time highs, and when China had gobs of spare cash lying around and not investing in US paper should be quite troubling to anyone who follows the nuanced game theory between the US and its largest external creditor, and the signals China sends to the world when it comes to its confidence in the US.

Yet what was truly surprising is that despite the plunge in Chinese holdings, and Japanese holdings which also dropped by $4 billion in December, is that total foreign holdings of US Treasurys increased in December, from $5716.9 billion to 5794.9 billion.

Why? Because of this country. Guess which one it is without looking at legend. 

That’s right: at a time when America’s two largest foreign creditors, China and Japan, went on a buyers strike, the entity that came to the US rescue was Belgium, which as most know is simply another name for… Europe: the continent that has just a modest amount of its own excess debt to worry about. One wonders what favors were (and are) being exchanged behind the scenes in order to preserve the semblance that “all is well”?

Click here for graphs/pictures:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-18/china-sells-second-largest-amount-us-treasurys-december-and-guess-who-comes-rescue

 

America’s Karma and World War Two Gold Theft

 

source:  http://philosophyofmetrics.com/2014/01/30/americas-karma-and-world-war-two-gold-theft/

And the Gold Recovery Attempts of the Korean and Vietnam Wars

Jan 30, 2014

By JC Collins

Missouri_Fires_16inch_Broadside!

This essay serves as an Addendum to one of my previous posts titled “China to Purchase the Federal Reserve”.  The article itself has generated a lot of interest and many questions.  Such things are not easy to prove and take book length discourses to fully understand and grasp the complexity of not just the process, but also the history behind it.  Such are the expectations of pivotal events.

Let’s back track 100 years to 1913 and the creation of the Federal Reserve.  The Fed was set up as the central bank of the United States.  It has a 100 year mandate (there are questions about extensions) and quickly went to work printing money and building up the American war machine for World War One which began the very next year.

 

The hidden purpose of World War One was the take down of one of the two last monarchies in Europe.  The Austro-Hungarian Empire was a “dual monarchy” created in 1867 as an agreement between Hungary and Austria for the purpose of defense against the onslaught of revolutions initiated by banking powers.  These revolutions started with the French Revolution as a means to overthrow Europe’s monarchy’s and plant the design of the modern state in the minds of the people.  The form of government and banking systems that spewed forth from this injustice slowly crawled from country to country, digging its roots into the industries and cultures of the conquered lands.

The second monarchy was Russia.  Also by design, the bankers created dismal economic conditions within Russia which in turn, through propaganda, was blamed on the Romanov royal family.  This, as we know, led to the Bolshevik Revolution and the installation of the synthesis to democracies thesis, communism.  See my previous post for a brief explanation on the usage of the Hegelian Dialectic.

The bankers quickly went to work in Austria on a plan to economically destroy Germany and build it back up as the Third Reich.  Similar patterns were unfolding in Asia with the rise of Imperial Japan.

World War Two officially began in September of 1939.  Like World War One, there was a hidden purpose.  This time it was the theft of gold held in both Europe and Asia.  The lands conquered by both armies were stripped of their gold reserves which were then sent back to the vaults of the western banks.  Most of this gold eventually ended up in Fort Knox as both official and unofficial gold deposits of the Federal Reserve System.  There is plenty of information available on Nazi Gold to satisfy the inquisitive mind so I will not elaborate here.

Gold Storage

Once the gold hoards were shipped west, America finally became embroiled in the war to help clean up the debris left over from the bankers gold theft.  This afforded the bankers another opportunity to earn great returns as they funded both sides of the war and literally made a killing.

But the Japanese did something unexpected.  They hid some of the gold in the tunnels and caves of the lands they conquered in Asia.  The bankers quickly caught on to this scam riding under their scam and became furious enough to drop two atomic bombs on Japan.  Fat Man and Little Boy aside, the bankers never got the gold and it was quietly moved into other locations.  Most likely it never stayed in one place for too long.

Not to be deterred, the bankers continued to build up their war machine into the American military industrial complex and set it loose upon Korea and eventually Vietnam in search of the Yamashita Gold.

There are many reasons why the bankers wanted this gold.  Traditionally gold moves towards regions that manufacture and the western world was modernizing with manufacturing as the driving force.  In order for manufacturing to continue increasing, it needed funding.  Funding came from the debt creation system that put money into circulation.  In order to print more debt, somebody needed to hold it.  The U.S. could not hold all the debt within the country because it would cause too much inflation.  As such, inflation needed to be exported to countries with markets which had been “engineered” specifically to import that inflation.  Obviously the people of these countries suffered the inflation through poor living standards and working conditions.

Note:  This is exactly what has been happening and will continue to happen in America as manufacturing has fled its shores too cheaper markets.  The gold soon followed and the living and working conditions have been getting poorer and poorer for the majority of average Americans.  This is the karma which is being exacted upon America for endless war and debauchery.

vietnam-war-rare-incredible-pictures-history

The history of our world and its wars is the history of the movement of gold.  From ancient Babylon to today, gold is the backbone of development and economic security.  Anything you hear different is simply propaganda spewing forth from the feces spigots of television sellouts who are milking an almost empty system before discarding the carcass upon the heap of history.

Gold is on the move once again.  In a big way.  Much of it going to the Chinese government and the People’s Bank of China.  Things have increased even more dramatically in the last few weeks as the Shanghai Gold Exchange has had 159 tons of gold withdrawn since January 1st. The JP Morgan gold vault has seen 44% of its inventories depleted just in the last 4 days.  Let’s not forget that the JP Morgan vault is now owned by China. Where is this gold going?

China has been setting up gold vaults throughout Asia. Vaults will not sit empty for long.

The new economic system being slowly implemented through the I.M.F. with the support of China is paying greater attention to the geographical locations of central bank gold vaults.  These locations will be in the ASEAN members as well as mainland China.  Some of the countries importing gold into central bank vaults are Vietnam, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia.

The gold which was stolen is being returned.  It took a world war to get the gold but there will be no war to get it back.  It’s already moving.  This deserves repeating, there will be no major war over this gold movement.

In the near future the Comox will no longer price gold as the Shanghai Gold Exchange will set the fixed rates along with the I.M.F. SDR framework agreements. Gold trade settlements will be structured in SDR’s but managed through the Shanghai Free Trade Zone.  From there we drop another level to the RCEP, or Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, comprised of the ASEAN members as well as Japan (no war with China), South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and India.

In a future essay I will be focusing on the re-emergence of Vietnam into the global economy.  But for now I’d like to bring notice to the fact that their economic growth is astounding with a middle class that is swelling and an economy that is attracting huge investment.  Vietnam has the lowest unemployment rate on the planet. Samsung is moving its factories into Vietnam.  Russia has signed an agreement with Vietnam to build a $28 Billion oil refinery, the second largest in all of Asia, with more to come.  Even Starbucks is getting into the Vietnam craze.

Hanoi vietnam city

The Vietnamese people hold 300 to 400 tonnes of personal gold.  That is equal to or greater than the gold holdings of Great Britain. The State Bank of Vietnam is planning on converting this gold into dong deposits with the intent of strengthening the currency.  Add this to the gold that will be imported into the vaults of the central bank through the Shanghai Gold Exchange, and you have the makings of a very strong regional power.  I would suspect that Vietnam will become a contributing member too the BRICS Development Bank and the SDR compositions for the region.

A long way Vietnam has come from the American military onslaught and attempted Yamashita gold theft.  It’s almost fitting that the small country and its people which were bombed and killed by the Federal Reserve military machine will now be the partial holder of the official gold that once sat within the hollowed walls of the now empty Fort Knox.

Could this be the ultimate triumph of Confucianism over Platonism? The shame of the Asian Confucian cultures once subjected to the western idealism of Plato. And now the guilt that the west must feel as the karma is balanced.

And now the Federal Reserve System is almost dead, as the Chinese pick at the bones of what was once their tormentor.  The new Federal Reserve will issue the U.S. foreign bonds in the form of SDR compositions.  These bonds will be for international use only.  The Trans Pacific Partnership will be the pipeline for these international SDR’s as they are spewed forth from the Federal Reserve.  The allocation will be structured around the SDR basket compositions as I’m detailing in “SDR’s and the New Bretton Woods”.

The internal U.S. dollar will be issued through the Treasury.  Guess who will purchase these bonds?  If you guessed your pension fund, then you’re on the right track.  The timing of the MyRA announcement was not coincidental.  Nothing is.  – JC

http://philosophyofmetrics.com/2014/01/30/americas-karma-and-world-war-two-gold-theft/

go read some other articles on that site, good stuff.