Business

We’ve spent more time than most documenting China’s wealth management product problem.

WMPs are part and parcel of Beijing’s sprawling shadow banking complex which, until 2014 that is, helped pump trillions of yuan into China’s economy and shouldered the burden when it came to propping up the most important economy on the planet.

But WMPs are dangerous. In fact, we flagged them as an 8 trillion black swan back in August on the way to asking what would happen if China’s shadow banking sector were to collapse altogether.

Via PandaHedge.com,

The price of home price in China’s tier one cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen) started another around of rally in the last couple months, and became “crazy” in Feb as described by the Chinese who form lines to buy the apartments everywhere.

When I saw this online commercial as below, I cannot help asking myself: Really?  This place can be sold as a “home” (I thought it’s just a kitchen), and at this price ($9k per sqf)?

Two days after Japanese yields plummeted on January 29, when the BOJ unexpectedly stunned the world by announcing negative interest rates, the Japanese government sold 10 Year Bonds at what was then a near record low yield of 0.078% in an auction which carried a 0.3% coupon. Since then things have only gotten more... deflationary, and as can be seen on the chart below, as of this moment the 10Y JGB is yielding a record-0.055%

By Glenn Harlan Reyonds, aka Instapundit, a University of Tennessee law professor, originally posted on USA Today

Cash Is The Currency Of Freedom

As Fed inflates away dollar's value, government gains more control to manipulate taxpayers and savers

Former Treasury secretary Larry Summers wants to get rid of the $100 bill. But I think he has it exactly backward. I think we need to restore the $500 and $1000 bills. And the reason is that people like Larry Summers have done a horrible job.

With "significant" financial stress pervading the markets, it is hardly surprising that systemic risk concerns are rising rapidly. What we have been experiencing in markets this year, as BofA's FX team notes, is the impact of multiple shocks, at a time when central banks cannot come to the rescue, in a market that has been addicted to the central bank policy put. This leave cross-asset correlation soaring as shocks become larger leaving market fragility increasing.

With plenty of Tail risks lurking...