Tag Archives: balance sheet

Overview: The combination of falling Chinese imports and exports, Moody's downgrade of ten US small and medium-sized banks is serving to squash risk appetites. Equities are weak, but bond markets are strong despite the surprise tax on Italian banks announced yesterday and the kick-off of the US $103 bln refunding today. Outside of Japan and Australia, Asia Pacific equity markets were lower led by a 1.8% drop in the Hang Seng and a nearly 2.2% loss of the mainland...

(Traveling and unable to provide a technical overview this week.) Rising price pressures, stronger and more persistent than generally expected, has been the main challenge for consumers, businesses, and policymakers. It will stay top of mind in the week ahead as both the world's two largest economies, the US and China, report July consumer and producer prices.  During the Great Depression, the central governments discovered their balance sheets, and budget deficits...

If there is a better, more fitting way to head into the Christmas holiday in the United States than by digging into the finances and monetary flows of the People’s Bank of China, then I just don’t want to know what it is. Contrary to maybe anyone’s rational first impression that this is somehow insane, there’s much we can tell about the state of the world, the whole world and its “dollars”, right from this one key data source. And the timing is equally as festive;...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.05% to 1.0623 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, July 9(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: Investors continue to clamor into risk assets. Led by Chinese shares, the MSCI Asia Pacific Index pushed higher for the third session this week to new five-month highs. Europe’s Dow Jones Stoxx 600 is trying to snap a two-day decline with the help of better than expected revenues for its...

On his blog, Stephen Williamson discusses the Fed’s plan to maintain a much larger balance sheet in the future than before the crisis. He is not convinced that this plan is a good one. But what’s the harm in a large Fed balance sheet? The larger the balance sheet, the lower is the quantity of Treasury securities in financial markets, and the higher is reserves. Treasuries are highly liquid, widely-traded securities that play a key role in overnight repo markets. Reserves are highly liquid...

On his blog, Stephen Williamson discusses the Fed’s plan to maintain a much larger balance sheet in the future than before the crisis. He is not convinced that this plan is a good one. But what’s the harm in a large Fed balance sheet? The larger the balance sheet, the lower is the quantity of Treasury securities in financial markets, and the higher is reserves. Treasuries are highly liquid, widely-traded securities that play a key role in overnight repo markets. Reserves are highly liquid...

On the FT’s Alphaville blog, Matthew Klein reviews Swiss monetary policy over the last years and its effect on the real economy. He concludes that it seems the SNB’s relentless accumulation of foreign assets has been pointless — at best. More likely, the behaviour qualifies as predatory mercantilism at the expense of the rest of the world, especially Switzerland’s hard-hit neighbours. SNB Holdings, 2001 - 2017(see...

On the FT’s Alphaville blog, Matthew Klein reviews Swiss monetary policy over the last years and its effect on the real economy. He concludes that it seems the SNB’s relentless accumulation of foreign assets has been pointless — at best. More likely, the behaviour qualifies as predatory mercantilism at the expense of the rest of the world, especially Switzerland’s hard-hit neighbours.

The mainstream narrative as it relates to Chinese money is “tightening.” Having survived the economic downturn last year, we are to believe that the PBOC is once again on bubble duty. They raised their reverse repo rates, considered to be their policy benchmarks, three times up to mid-March. The central bank also increased the rate on its Medium Term Lending Facility (MLF) which has been a main source of RMB liquidity...

On his blog, John Cochrane reports about a Hoover panel including him, Charles Plosser, and John Taylor. Cochrane focuses on the liability side. He favors a large quantity of (possibly interest bearing) reserves for financial stability reasons. Plosser focuses on the asset side and is worried about credit allocation by the Fed, for political economy reasons. Taylor favors a small balance sheet. Cochrane also talks about reserves for everyone, but issued by the Treasury.