China

One month ago, we first highlighted a troubling development for China's banking system, one which we called the "Great Shadow Unwind" and which showed that entrusted loans, a broad proxy for China's unregulated ‘shadow banking’ system, contracted for the first time since 2007, confirming Beijing's ongoing crackdown of China's runaway $8.5 trillion shadow banking system. Well, overnight, the PBOC released its latest Chinese loan data, and it had several notable highlights, most of which got lost in today's overall noise.

With last Friday's "tech wreck" now a distant memory, this morning the "FOMC Drift" described yesterday, which "guarantees" higher stock prices and a lower dollar heading into the Fed announcement is in full effect, with European and Asian stocks rising for a second day, led by rebounding tech shares, while S&P futures are modestly in the green and stocks on Wall Streets hit a record high overnight.

Anbang Insurance, China's hyperacquisitive insurance rollup, which was responsible for a sizable portion of China's merger spree between 2014 and 2016, and which has since been accused of being a money laundering vehicle, of wreaking "havoc" with the Chinese insurance market, and was a potential investor in Jared Kushner's 666 Fifth Avenue building until the deal fell apart in March, announced that its billionaire Chairman Wu Xiaohui, is "unable to perform his duties" due to personal reasons, confirming Chinese media reports that the tycoon had recently been detained by aut

In his last interview as part of the Barron's Roundtable, from which he is retiring at the end of the year after three decades of participation, Felix Zulauf, owner of Zug-based Zulauf Asset Management had some parting words of caution.

Demonstrating China's creeping geopolitical dominance, on Monday night Panama’s President Juan Carlos Varela announced that Panama has established diplomatic ties with China while breaking relations with Taiwan in a major victory for Beijing, which continues to lure away the dwindling number of countries that have formal relations with the self-ruled island.