China

Since taking office in 2013, Xi Jinping has been on a mission to root out corruption among the ranks of the Communist Party.

Xi, whose efforts have affected both high-ranking officials and those lower on the totem pole, is keen on re-establishing party discipline. Policies handed down from on high often lose their teeth while filtering down through the sprawling party ranks. As The Atlantic put it last year, Xi wants to correct that by “reforming [China’s] very political culture.”

Submitted by Sandro Rosa and Mark Dittli via Finanz und Wirtschaft,

According to macro strategist Felix Zulauf, founder and president of Zulauf Asset Management and Vicenda Asset Management in Zug, the almost seven-year-old bull market is over. China is to the current cycle what the US housing market was for the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. It will take years to correct the excesses that were built up in China.

Mr. Zulauf, the markets had a terrible start into the new year. Is the almost seven-year old equity bull market over?

In November of 2014, we announced the quiet death of the petrodollar.

The system which underwrote decades of dollar dominance and kept a perpetual bid under USD assets met an untimely demise when the Saudis moved to bankrupt the US shale complex by deliberately suppressing oil prices.

The implications, we said, would be far-reaching.

Last May, after the "harsh snowfall" of Q1 crushed US GDP (when it was really the bursting of China's shadow banking bubble) leading to sellside analysts first, and then the Bureau of Economic Analysis to decide the time has come to double seasonally GDP data to avoid such embarrassments as a negative print in the middle of a recovery, Bank of America's chief economist Ethan Harris rushed to declare victory.

Explicitly targeting the "perma-bears" this is what Harris said:

In retrospect it appears Tom DeMark was spot on with his Wednesday prediction, made just as the Dow Jones was down some 500 points that that very day was "an interim low" to be followed by a 5-8% rebound (at which point the selling would resume). In fact, those trading Japanese stocks saw virtually the entire predicted rebound take place in just one day as the Nikkei soared by almost 6% overnight, or nearly 1000 points, the biggest jump in 4 months, while risk everywhere else around the globe has likewise exploded higher, as crude has stormed back over $31/barrel.