The “Great Accumulation” Is Over: The Biggest Risk Facing The World’s Central Banks Has Arrived
To be sure, there’s been no shortage of media coverage regarding the collapse in crude prices that’s unfolded over the course of the past year. Similarly, it’s no secret that commodity prices in general are sitting near their lowest levels of the 21st century.
When Saudi Arabia, in an effort to bankrupt the US shale space and tighten the screws on a recalcitrant Moscow, endeavored late last year to keep oil prices suppressed, the kingdom killed the petrodollar, a move we argued would put pressure on USD assets and suck hundreds of billions in liquidity from global markets.
Thanks to the fanfare surrounding China’s stepped up UST liquidation in support of the yuan, the world is beginning to understand what we meant. The accumulation of USD assets held as FX reserves across the emerging world served as a source of liquidity and kept a bid under things like US Treasurys. Now that commodity prices have fallen off a cliff thanks to lackluster global demand and trade, the accumulation of those assets slowed, and as a looming Fed hike along with fears about the stability of commodity currencies conspired to put pressure on EM FX, the great EM reserve accumulation reversed itself. This is the environment into which China is now dumping its own reserves and indeed, the PBoC’s rapid liquidation of USTs over the past two weeks has added fuel to the fire and effectively boxed the Fed in.
On Tuesday, Deutsche Bank is out extending their “quantitative tightening” (QT) analysis with a look at what’s ahead now that the so-called “Great Accumulation” is over.
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