Business

The frenzied trading that smashed Chinese commodity markets through the roof in the last month has begun to unfurl rapidly as authorities crackdown on the speculative fever and force exchanges to curve excess 'churn'. Of course, there are still some who cling to the belief that any of this was 'real' demand, real buying, and real economic growth (just don't look at The Baltic Dry in the last few days) but, as Bloomberg reports, it was nothing but "churn baby churn" as trading volume exploded but open-interest remained flat.

Authored by James Grant via Grant's Interest Rate Observer,

April 15 comes and goes but the federal debt stays and grows. The secrets of its life force are the topics at hand— that and some guesswork about how the upsurge in financial leverage, private and public alike, may bear on the value of the dollar and on the course of monetary affairs. Skipping down to the bottom line, we judge that the government’s money is a short sale.

Calling himself 'the king of debt' in his business dealings, Donald Trump warned correctly this morning that the national debt would be troublesome if the cost of borrowing increases, asking rhetorically, "we're paying a very low interest rate. What happens if that interest rate goes up 2, 3, 4 points? ...We don't have a country." The U.S.

Via Larry Lindsey of The Lindsey Group...

Negative Rates and the Austrians' End Game

Our training and bias have always been toward policy activism -- that tweaking this or changing the dial on that can always make things better.  [But] critics of activism, often lumped into the 'Austrian School,' argue that this will inevitably end badly.

The chairman of British arms manufacturer, BAE systems, has defended his company’s extensive deals with Saudi Arabia, describing the Saudi monarchy as an appropriate customer for its weapons and services. “We are not here to judge the way that other governments work, we are here to do a job under the rules and regulations we are given,” Sir Roger Carr said Wednesday, after being confronted by shareholders affiliated with Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) movement, during an annual general meeting.