Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel has a lot on his plate these days between soaring murder rates, failing pension systems and the worst domestic migration trends in the country as residents see the tax-hike writing on the wall and are moving out of the 'Windy City' by the 1,000s. Now, it seems he can add a failing taxi industry and millions in additional annual tax revenue losses to his list of woes.
Australians are dialing back their spending on everything from clothes to cars as sky-high housing costs, the result of a housing bubble fueled by Chinese buyers, threaten to finally derail the country’s twin asset bubbles - housing and stocks.
But rising mortgage debt isn’t the only thing squeezing Australian customers, as Reuters reports. Inflation on essential items like food, electricity and insurance is accelerating, meaning Australians are also paying higher prices for basic consumer goods.
As its foreign reserves dwindle to less than $10 billion, the government of Venezuela – desperate for any kind of financial lifeline - has partnered with a Chinese brokerage to try and resell $5 billion in bonds that it initially issued at a deep discount, according to the Wall Street Journal. The brokerage, Haitong Securities USA, a unit of China’s Haitong Securities, is quietly marketing the bonds to yield-starved hedge fund managers.
Authored by Kevin Muir via The Macro Tourist blog,
This morning’s big news is the Chinese announcement they would they would buy more US Treasuries as the Yuan stabilizes. From Bloomberg:
China is prepared to increase its holdings of U.S. Treasuries under the right circumstances, as officials judge the assets are becoming more attractive than other sovereign debt and as the yuan stabilizes, according to people familiar with the matter. Treasuries rose, driving yields to the lowest since November.
Here's another example of when cornered hacks blame "fake news" or in this case, the "irresponsible media" for their gross incompetence, only to prove the media very much responsible and unfake.