Business

Following months of warnings that China's economy is slowing down as a result of not only a collapse in China's credit impulse but also tighter monetary conditions, as well as rolling over loan growth which has pressured both CPI and PPI - i.e., the global "reflation trade" - as the following chart from Bloomberg's David Ingels shows...

... and culminating over the weekend with a warning in no uncertain terms from Citi, which said that at least four key economic indicators are "starting to wave red flags" among which:

While equity volatility has collapsed to record lows (amid the biggest increase in net VIX shorts in 9 months), positioning across bond, FX, money market, and commodity markets has been shifting massively in recent weeks.

As US Macro data has crashed to its weakest and most negative in 12 months...

US equity complacency has hit record lows...

As Speculators add to VIX shorts by the most in 9 months...

Authored by EconomicPrism's MN Gordon via Acting-Man.com,

Bernanke Redux

Somehow, former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke found time from his busy hedge fund advisory duties last week to tell his ex-employer how to do its job.  Namely, he recommended to his former cohorts at the Fed how much they should reduce the Fed’s balance sheet by.  In other words, he told them how to go about cleaning up his mess.

It was supposed to be China's day of celebrating massive infrastructure spending for the sake of spending (read ghost towns, only now outside China's borders) as Xi Jinping pledged $124 billion on Sunday for his new Silk Road plan to forge "a path of peace, inclusiveness and free trade" while calling for the abandonment of old models based on rivalry and diplomatic power games. However, it did not go quite as smoothly as expected.

Having single-handedly hounded Home Capital Group - the company which we predicted in 2015 would be "ground zero" for any potential Canadian financial crisis, and has emerged as the Canada's equivalent to the infamous New Century which in 2007 presaged the upcoming global financial crisis - into near oblivion, noted chicken-farmer and short-seller, Marc Cohodes, over the weekend revealed the full details behind his latest short thesis: Canadian oil and gas service provider, Badger Daylighting.