Business

It would appear the Chinese central bank currency squeeze is back as money-market rates are exploding higher once again. With the outpuring of liquidity heading into the new-year holiday, the post-celebration hangover was always likely unless PBOC just kept pumping but judging by the 500bps spike in overnight Yuan interbank rates to 9.3%, more than a few banks are desperate for some liquidity. We note that the last six times that Chinese banks have suffered liquidity constraints, US equities have tumbled...

There are 60 major stock exchanges throughout the world, and their range of sizes is quite surprising.

As Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardin notes, at the high end of the spectrum is the mighty NYSE, representing $18.5 trillion in market capitalization, or about 27% of the total market for global equities.

One look at Japan's bond yields, which moments ago hit a fresh record low for the 20Y maturity as the curve slowly but surely inverts...

.... and one would think Haruhiko Kuroda would be delighted.

After all, when he launched NIRP three weeks ago, a world in which negative rates are now a reality, it should have been clear to everyone even children, that yields would collapse as the scramble for any positive yield was unleashed.

Gold is having one of its best starts to a year in history as investors start to lose faith in central bankers’ ability to deal with economic challenges. Fed skeptics as well as capitulating bullion bears are being drawn to the precious metals as Bloomberg reports,

“The safe-haven demand appears to be where people are focused on, and that is on a loss of faith in central banks being able to manage through this period,” said Klein, executive chairman of Australia’s second-biggest producer.

 

Submitted by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

Normalcy bias is a rather horrifying thing. It is so frightening because it is so final; much like death, there is simply no coming back. Rather than a physical death, normalcy bias represents the death of reason and simple observation. It is the death of the mind and cognitive thought instead of the death of the body.