Business

Submitted by Tho Bishop via The Mises Institute,

On Wednesday, Jack Lew announced that the US Treasury was following Ben Bernanke’s advice and keeping Alexander Hamilton on the $10, instead deciding to bring Harriett Tubman to the $20. While Lew’s news left America distracted in debate over whose portrait should grace the Federal Reserve’s most popular bank note, Zerohedge was highlighting how China was taking important steps to distance themselves from the dollar.

Submitted by Rakesh Upadhyay via OilPrice.com,

Saudi Arabia single-handedly scuttled the Doha meeting, knowing all along that Iran would not participate, with a valid reason. The Russians and others agreed to proceed without Iran, planning to include them at a later date. So if everything was known beforehand, why did the Saudi’s pour cold water on the aspirations of the remaining members, risking its alienation from Russia and the OPEC community?

Yields on $7.8 trillion of government bonds have been driven below zero by worries over global growth, forcing investors looking for income to flood into debt with maturities of as long as 100 years. Worse still, as Bloomberg reports, central banks’ policy is exacerbating matters, as the unprecedented debt purchases to spur their economies have soaked up supply and left would-be buyers with few options.

Following the early weakness in the Treasury complex, many dealers predicted that today's 2 Year auction may tail the When Issued at pricing, and that is what happened, albeit by the smallest possible amount: today's 2 Year auction closed at 0.842%, stopping through the When Issued 0.841% by the smallest possible increment of 0.1bps.

The internals were nothing to write home about. The Bid to Cover was 2.643, modestly higher than last month's 2.578, if still below the 6 month average of 2.89.

In the aftermath of China's gargantuan, record new loan injection in Q1, which saw a whopping $1 trillion in new bank and shadow loans created in the first three months of the year, many were wondering where much of this newly created cash was ending up.

We now know where most of it went: soaring imports of crude oil.

We know this because as the chart below shows, Chinese crude imports via Qingdao port in Shandong province surged to record 9.86 million metric tons last month based on data from General Administration of Customs.