China

Back in June 2013, when Deutsche Bank opened a gold vault in Singapore which could hold up to 200 metric tons, the German bank was euphoric about the prospects for storing physical gold: "Gold has traditionally been stored in London, Zurich and New York, but there is a serious shift in dynamics going on as the global financial crisis continues to evolve," Mark Smallwood, Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management's head of wealth planning in the Asia-Pacific region, told The Wall Street Journal.

Submitted by Ben Hunt via Salient Partners' Epsilon Theory blog,

I'm a China bull, let's get that out of the way first. But like anything connected with the global industrial and commodity complex today, from Emerging Markets to MLPs to oil prices, it doesn't matter what the Truth with a capital T might be regarding the real world economic or business fundamentals. The story is broken. The stocks are broken.   I've written a lot here in Epsilon Theory about what's happening in China and what it means for the China growth story to break.

Submitted by Harry Dent via Contra Corner blog,

The global markets just reacted to another 7% plunge in Chinese markets – the biggest bubble of our time.

Go on the Internet and look up any article about China’s economy. Nine times out of 10 they’ll acknowledge the problems in overbuilding, real estate vacancies, rising debt and everything else.

As quick primer on China: the more something is "liberalized", the worse it is for local - and global - risk assets since all risk "assets" in China are so grotesquely manipulated, the resulting price discovery is always violent and spills over to the rest of the world as 2016 has so far demonstrated; alternatively, the more the government intervenes to stabilize any given asset, the better it is for local - and global - risk assets, as it means the distortion in price levels and capital allocation will continue at least a little longer, i.e., the proverbial can ki

When we previewed yesterday's Chinese trading session, which far more important to the US market than today's Nonfarm payrolls report (Exp. +200K, 4.9% Unemployment rate), we said to "keep an eye on the Yuan fixing around 8 pm: if the USDCNY sees another substantial jump (i.e., Yuan decline) from last night's 5 year low rate of 6.5646, this could suggest further turbulence and as all self-fulfilling prophecies go, unleash another pukefest which not even the circuit breaker adjustment will fix.