China

In the aftermath of last week's disappointing G-20 Shanghai summit, there was much riding on this weekend's start of the China's People's Congress, and specifically what if any stimulus announcement Beijing will make; sadly for stimulus addicts China mostly disappointed and after the unimaginative scope of growth proposals, it is hardly surprising that European stocks and US equity futures have taken a leg lower, even if Chinese stocks rose and certain commodities such as Iron Ore soared overnight on hopes China will either "rationalize" capacity or at least build some more roads to nowhere

After three consecutive declines in China's Foreign Reserves in the November-January period, which averaged nearly $100 billion per month (with particular attention paid to last month's number), consensus expectations were for a moderation in reserve outflows in February to approximately $40 billion in February; moments ago the PBOC reported, that as expected, reserve outflow "slowed down" to just $28.6 billion, bringing China's total foreign reserves to $3.2 trillion, the lowest level since early 2012.

Goldman does it again.

Just hours after the central banker-spawning investment bank issued a report in which it said the iron ore rally is likely to be short lived "in the absence of a material increase in Chinese steel demand, and steel raw materials will once again drive steel prices rather than the other way around", overnight Iron Ore futures traded on the Singapore SGX exploded as much as 19% higher to $58.95 in one session.

As you might have noticed, China’s economic miracle has turned into a nightmare - and it’s dragging the entire world into one big, bad dream characterized by a deeply entrenched disinflationary impulse occasioned by the country’s acute overcapacity problem.

As we wrote early yesterday when we summarized the outcome of the first day of China's National People's Congress (NPC), China failed to deliver any of the major stimulus programs the market was expecting.