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This Wednesday, the Bank of Canada has a decision to make.

Canada’s oil “dream” is dying thanks to the inexorable slide in crude prices and as the IEA made clear earlier today, the pain is set to persist for the foreseeable future as the world “drowns in oversupply.”

“Lower for longer” has hit the country’s oil patch hard. We’ve spent quite a bit of time documenting the plight of Alberta, where job cuts tied to crude’s slide have led directly to rising suicide rates, soaring property crime, and increased food bank usage (not to mention booming business for repo men).

Adding insult to injury for Canadians is the plunging loonie. Because the country imports most of its fresh fruits and vegetables, the weak currency has triggered a sharp increase in the price of many items in the grocery aisle as documented in a hilarious series of tweets by incredulous Canadian shoppers.

The question for the Bank of Canada is this: is the risk of an even weaker loonie worth taking if a rate cut has the potential to head off the myriad risks facing the economy?

We’ll find out what the BOC thinks tomorrow, but in the meantime, analysts have weighed in. JP Morgan’s Daniel Hui says CAD needs to fall further lest producers should simply close up shop. “[W]ith West Canada Select (WCS) now sitting just a dollar above the average per-barrel operational cost of $20 (Canadian), the risk is that any further decline will cause a whole new host of spillovers including potential shutdown and retrenchment of energy extraction and exports (with its attendant growth and balance of payment effects) or the potential of highly leveraged companies running operational losses, and the more contagious financial impact that might have in Canada, with broader spillovers.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Fed’s Stunning Admission Of What Happens Next

January 17, 2016

The Fed’s Stunning Admission Of What Happens Next

Following an epic global stock rout, one which has wiped out trillions in market capitalization, it has rapidly become a consensus view (even by staunch Fed supporters such as the Nikkei Times) that the Fed committed a gross policy mistake by hiking rates on December 16, so much so that this week none other than former Fed president Kocherlakota openly mocked the Fed’s credibility when he pointed out the near record plunge in forward breakevens suggesting the market has called the Fed’s bluff on rising inflation.

All of this happened before JPM cut its Q4 GDP estimate from 1.0% to 0.1% in the quarter in which Yellen hiked.

To be sure, the dramatic reaction and outcome following the Fed’s “error” rate hike was predicted on this website on many occasions, most recently two weeks prior to the rate hike in “This Is What Happened The Last Time The Fed Hiked While The U.S. Was In Recession” when we demonstrated what would happen once the Fed unleashed the “Ghost of 1937.”

As we pointed out in early December, conveniently we have a great historical primer of what happened the last time the Fed hiked at a time when it misread the US economy, which was also at or below stall speed, and the Fed incorrectly assumed it was growing.

We are talking of course, about the infamous RRR-hike of 1936-1937, which took place smack in the middle of the Great Recession.

Here is what happened then, as we described previously in June.

[No episode is more comparable to what is about to happen] than what happened in the US in 1937, smack in the middle of the Great Depression.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Switzerland’s Referendum on Fractional Reserve Banking

January 13, 2016

Switzerland’s Referendum on Fractional Reserve Banking

A Warmed-Up “Chicago Plan”

Many of our readers may be aware by now that a Swiss initiative against fractional reserve banking has gathered the required 100,000 signatures to force a referendum on the matter. Is is called the “Vollgeld Initiative”, whereby “Vollgeld” could be loosely translated as “fully covered money”.

logo_vollgeld-initiative_mit_Titel_hoch_2014_05 Swiss initiative against fractional reserve banking

Austrian School proponents will at first glance probably think that it sounds like a good idea: After all, it is the creation of uncovered money substitutes ex nihilo that leads to the suppression of market interest rates below the natural rate and consequently to a distortion of relative prices, the falsification of economic calculation and the boom-bust cycle.

However, a second glance reveals that the initiative has a substantial flaw. One may for instance wonder why the Swiss National Bank hasn’t yet let loose with a propaganda blitz against it, as it has done on occasion of the gold referendum. The answer is simple: the “Vollgeld” plan only wants to prohibit the creation of fiduciary media by commercial banks.

The power to create additional money from thin air is to be reserved solely to the central bank, which would vastly increase its power and leave credit and money creation in the hands of a few unelected central planning bureaucrats. In other words, it is a warmed-up version of the “Chicago Plan” of the 1930’s, which Chicago economists led by Irving Fisher and Frank H. Knight presented in the wake of the Great Depression (the debate over the plan led to the establishment of the FDIC and the Glass-Steagall Act, but its central demand obviously remained unfulfilled).

Irving and Knight Irving Fisher and Frank H. Knight, the lead authors of the original Chicago plan

As Hans Hermann Hoppe has pointed out, the Chicago School (F. H. Knight is today regarded as one of its most important founders), was seen as “left fringe” in the 1940s.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Opinion: The banking system faces an existential threat — and it’s not bitcoin

January 5, 2016

Opinion: The banking system faces an existential threat — and it’s not bitcoin

A movement in Europe would require banks to fully back deposits

In 1666, King Charles II put control of the money supply into private hands. The privatization of the money-creation process gave birth to the system we use today.

Christmas did not offer much good cheer to the world’s bankers, who have received a sustained kicking since the financial crisis erupted in 2008.

In the latest blow, Switzerland announced that it would hold a referendum on a radical proposal that would strip commercial banks of the ability to create money, depriving them of a great deal of their profit-making capabilities. If the Swiss proposal catches on around the world, it could shred core business assumptions that have underpinned the banking model over the past three centuries.

From Babylon to central bank

The earliest banks we know of, in ancient Babylon, were temples that doubled as repositories where one could store wealth. At some point, the guardians of the stored treasure realized they could put this accumulated wealth to work, and banks accordingly began to lend capital. Borrowers would pay interest on what they borrowed, and this interest would ultimately find its way back to the lenders after the banks had taken a cut. The banks became trusted intermediaries that brought lender and borrower together and ensured neither would be cheated. Paper money emerged after people found it was easier to buy things using deposit slips from their bank than carrying gold around.

The next evolution happened when bankers realized that since depositors almost never simultaneously withdrew all their funds, banks could lend more capital than had been deposited. This allowed banks to “create” money in the sense that bankers could issue loans not necessarily backed up by hard deposits.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Swiss Army Chief Warns Of Social Unrest, Calls Upon Citizens To Arm Themselves

December 30, 2015

Swiss Army Chief Warns Of Social Unrest, Calls Upon Citizens To Arm Themselves

Swiss army chief André Blattmann warned, in a Swiss newspaper article on Sunday, the risks of social unrest in Europe are soaring. Recalling the experience of 1939/1945, Blattman fears the increasing aggression in public discourse is an explosively hazardous situation, and advises the Swiss people to arm themselves and warns that the basis for Swiss prosperity is “being called into question.”

As Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten reports, speaking on the record for the first time since the November Paris terror attacks, Blattmann told the paper that despite a rise in security incidents over the past two years Switzerland’s means of defence were being reduced.

The situation is growing increasingly risky, Blattman begins.

“The threat of terror is rising, hybrid wars are being fought around the globe; the economic outlook is gloomy and the resulting migration flows of displaced persons and refugees have assumed unforeseen dimensions.”

The situation is growing increasingly risky, Blattman begins.

“The threat of terror is rising, hybrid wars are being fought around the globe; the economic outlook is gloomy and the resulting migration flows of displaced persons and refugees have assumed unforeseen dimensions.”

Blattmann: “Social unrest can not be ruled out”, the vocabulary in public discourse will “dangerously aggressive.”

“The mixture is increasingly unappetizing” Blattmann sees the basis of Swiss prosperity, “has long been once again called into question.”

He recalls the situation around the two world wars in the last century and advises Switzerland, to arm themselves.

The Swiss Armed Forces had held many years ago maneuver, in which the starting point was focused on social unrest in Europe.

* * *

Swiss politicians, of course, responded with disbelief to the army chief and hold his warnings are exaggerated.

The Mystery Of Dubai’s Vaporized Gold: The Plot Thickens

December 27, 2015

The Mystery Of Dubai’s Vaporized Gold: The Plot Thickens

Earlier this week, we told a fascinating story about an unprecedented, multi-year smuggling ring involving Turkey, Iran, and Dubai (as well as China, Russia and countless other nations) which saw corruption reaching to the very top of the political and financial establishment: from president Erdogan in Turkey, to one of Turkey’s richest people, Iran-born Riza Sarraf, to Sheikh Sultan Bin Khalifa Al Nahyan, the son of the ruler of Abu Dhabi and one of the world’s richest people. The smuggled object in question was gold, billions of dollars worth of gold.

The focus of the story was the previously unknown Dubai gold trading house, Gold.AE, until recently managed by one Mohammed Abu-Alhaj, which as we showed was the primary conduit by which Turkish physical gold found its way “legally” in Dubai, from where it subsequently left for Iran but not before pocketing millions in “commissions.”

As we reported, Gold.AE – a subsidiary of Gold Holding, the largest gold-focused investment holding company headquartered in Dubai – and the company perhaps best known for launching gold ATMs in the Emirates back in 2010…

… announced a few days ago that it had suddenly and unexpectedly gone out of business, after an inquiry by minority shareholders announced that the entire old “management team abruptly resigned with no notice” and that “there had been substantial withdrawals from the company’s account to the personal accounts of some of the management and the majority shareholders.”

In other words, the company which was used as a cover for billions in gold transactions over the last several years in the Turkey-Iran gold smuggling trade, was suddenly not only insolvent but had been thoroughly plundered of all its holdings, including a thorough plundering of client accounts.

Think the Corzining of MF Global, only on steroids, goes to Dubai.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Exclusive: “And It’s Gone… It’s All Gone” – The One Gold Scandal That Goes To The Very Top

December 25, 2015

Exclusive: “And It’s Gone… It’s All Gone” – The One Gold Scandal That Goes To The Very Top

Long before Turkey was flagrantly arming and funding the CIA-created “terrorist organization” known as ISIS, there was another, far more elaborate way in which Turkey was flaunting international sanctions against an ostracized state – in this case Iran – which involved an epic gold smuggling triangle of Hollywood-thriller proportions, all made possible thanks to the United Arab Emirate city of Dubai.

Best known known for its luxury shopping, ultramodern architecture including the world’s tallest building, a lively nightlife scene, and a facade of openness and decorum, what Dubai is less known for is its unprecedented seedy underbelly of corruption and untouched criminality among the handful of billionaire oligarchs, princes, sheiks and sultans, who quietly dominate the local (and global) power and financial structure.

But first, a little history.

It may seem like a distant memory now, but just a few short years ago, instead of a close ally of Barack Obama, Iran was a pariah state subject to international financial sanctions due to its nuclear program development, one which Israel had repeatedly (and famously) threatened would attack preemptively to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Iran, of course, had no choice but to find ways to keep its economy going, and in order to circumvent these sanctions, it resorted to the oldest form of trade known to man: gold.

This, in itself, is not surprising. What is surprising is how and with whom Iran collaborated to breach the international embargo in order to obtain this valuable and much needed gold, which it could then barter with other countries – notably those along the Pacific Rim – in exchange for any and all needed products and services.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Switzerland To Vote On Ending Fractional Reserve Banking

December 24, 2015

Switzerland To Vote On Ending Fractional Reserve Banking

One year ago (and just two months before the shocking announcement the Swiss Franc’s peg to the Euro would end, dramatically revaluing the currency, and leading to massive FX losses around the globe and for the Swiss National Bank) the Swiss held a referendum whether to demand that their central bank should convert 20% of its reserves into gold, up from 7% currently. After the early polls showed the Yes vote taking a surprising lead, the Diebold machines kicked in and the result was a sweeping victory for the No vote, without a single canton voting for sound money.

Ironically, this unexpected nonchallance about the Swiss central bank’s balance sheet by one of Europe’s more responsible nations took place just before the same bank announced CHF30 billions in losses on its long EUR positions following the revaluation of the CHF. It also took place when not just Germany, but the Netherlands and Austria announced they would repatriate a major portion of their gold in a move which, all spin aside, signals rising concerns about the existing monetary system.

We wonder if the Swiss have changed their mind about just how prudent it is to have their central bank operate as one of the world’s largest – and worst – after its CHF 30 billion loss in Q1 FX traders, and hedge funds with $94 billion in stock holdings, since then.

We may soon have the answer, because in what is shaping up to be another historic referendum on the treatment of money, earlier today the Swiss Federal Government confirmed that it had received enough signatures and would hold a referendum as part of the so-called “Vollgeld”, or Full Money Initiative, also known as the Campaign for Monetary Reform, which seeks to ban commercial banks from creating money, and which calls for the central bank to be given sole power to create the money in the financial system.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“Perverse, Unpredictable Effects” of Negative Interest Rates: Mortgage Rates Soar in Switzerland

December 17, 2015

“Perverse, Unpredictable Effects” of Negative Interest Rates: Mortgage Rates Soar in Switzerland

The unintended consequences of NIRP.

Negative interest rates – called “punishment interest” in Germany – have morphed from sheer impossibility to solid reality in Europe. Having seen how they work, the Bank of Canada has invoked them now, and Fed Chair Janet Yellen, has put them “on the table” before a House of Representatives committee.

In Europe, after they became established as the latest method of flogging savers until their mood improves, all kinds of absurdities saw the light of the day. For example, bailed-out national governments can now fund their deficits at negative rates, extracting money from their bondholders, rather than paying them. Perhaps the coolest notion was that banks would be “paying your mortgage.”

That may have been an illusion – at least in Switzerland, where the Swiss National Bank slashed its benchmark rate on “sight deposits” to negative 0.75% on January 15, the day of the epic “Frankenschock.” That day, the SNB abandoned its cap on the franc, which within the blink of an eye, soared nearly 40% against the euro and the dollar, wiping out currency speculators in the process and shaking up global currency markets.

The negative benchmark rate had the effect that by now, 70% of franc-denominated corporate bonds trade with negative yields, according to Credit Suisse. And the theory was that mortgages would certainly head that way.

Initially, interest rates on 10-year fixed-rate mortgages plunged to about 1%, with some quoted below 1%, and folks were already speculating about 0% mortgages or negative-rate mortgages. But then something funny happened on the way to the bank: unintended consequences kicked in.

Swiss banks somehow decided, for whatever inexplicable reason, to make a living. That’s hard to do for banks when they lend out money in a negative interest-rate environment. So the biggest Swiss banks accomplished a unique feat: they’ve jacked up mortgage rates since then, with the 10-year fixed-rate now at about 2% and the 15-year fixed-rate at about 2.5%.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

This Is What Happened The Last Time The Fed Hiked While The U.S. Was In Recession

December 2, 2015

This Is What Happened The Last Time The Fed Hiked While The U.S. Was In Recession

Back on June 17, Bank of America started its 66-day countdown to the moment it was convinced the Fed would hike rates, September 17, 2015. We, correctly, said that “we disagree entirely” with BofA’s conclusion that the Fed would hike rates, and sure enough, it did not after the Chinese August devaluation unleashed the ETFlash crash, the EM debt rout, a surge in the VIX and a correction in the S&P500, which crushed the Fed’s carefully laid rate-hike plans.

But while we disagreed with BofA’s countdown timing, we agreed with something its strategist Michael Hartnett said, namely that “gradual or otherwise, the first interest rate hike by the Fed since June 2006 marks a major inflection point for financial markets.”

BofA then laid out several key factors why “this time is indeed different” when evaluating the global economy’s receptiveness to a rate hike:

Central banks now own over $22 trillion of financial assets, a figure that exceeds the annual GDP of US & Japan
Central banks have cut interest rates more than 600 times since Lehman, a rate cut once every three 3 trading days
Central bank financial repression created over $6 trillion of negatively-yielding global government bonds
45% of all government bonds in the world currently yield <1% (that’s $17.4 trillion of bond issues outstanding)
US corporate high grade bond issuance as a % of GDP has doubled to almost 30% since the introduction of ZIRP
US small cap 5-year rolling returns hit 30-year highs (28%) in recent quarters
The US equity bull market is now in the 3rd longest ever
83% of global equity markets are currently supported by zero rate policies

However, to the Fed none of these matter: only the price action of the S&P500 does, which as everyone knows, is trading just shy of its all time highs so “all must be well.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Did Mario Draghi Just Leak The Bazooka? Two-Tiered NIRP System May Presage Big Rate Cut

November 25, 2015

Did Mario Draghi Just Leak The Bazooka? Two-Tiered NIRP System May Presage Big Rate Cut

Back in September (and on several subsequent occasions), we discussed the implications of a further cut to the ECB’s depo rate. A plunge further into NIRP-dom would have serious consequences for the Riksbank, the SNB, the Nationalbank, and the Norges Bank.

In world dominated by beggar-thy-neighbor monetary policy, one cut begets another in race to the bottom as everyone scrambles to, i) keep their currency from soaring and ii) keep the inflationary impulse alive.

As Barclays explained in great detail several months ago, another ECB depo rate cut would have an outsized effect of the franc:

A cut in the ECB’s deposit rate further into negative territory likely would have a significant impact on the EURCHF exchange rate and provoke a more immediate response from the SNB. Indeed, we expect that a cut in the ECB’s deposit rate may have a greater effect on EURCHF than on other EUR crosses. Switzerland applies its negative deposit rate to only a fraction of reserves, currently about 1/3rd of sight deposits by our calculation. In contrast, negative deposit rates apply to all reserves held at the ECB, Riksbank and Denmark’s Nationalbank. Consequently, a cut to the ECB’s deposit rate likely has a larger impact both on the economy and on the exchange rate than a proportionate cut by the SNB.

Now, it appears Mario Draghi may be about to go the Swiss route by introducing a tiered system for the application of negative rates. As Reuters reports, “Euro zone central bank officials are considering options such as whether to stagger charges on banks hoarding cash ahead of the next European Central Bank meeting, according to officials.”

“Officials are discussing a split-level rate,” Reuters goes on to note, adding that the “contested step would impose a higher charge on banks depending on the amount of cash they deposit with the ECB.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Withdrawals Of Gold From NY Fed Jump To 20 Tons In September, Total 276 Tons Since 2014

October 31, 2015

Withdrawals Of Gold From NY Fed Jump To 20 Tons In September, Total 276 Tons Since 2014

First it was Germany who redeemed 120 tons of physical gold in 2014; then it was the Netherlands who “secretly” redomiciled 122 tons of gold; then this past May, we learned that Austria would be the third “core” European nation to repatriate most of its offshore gold, held primarily in the Bank of England, redepositing it in Vienna and Switzerland.

Thanks to the latest NY Fed data released yesterday, we now know that beginning in 2014 and continuing through yesterday, the gold “bleeding” from the vault located 90 feet below street level at 33 Liberty Street (and which may or may not be connected by a tunnel to the JPM gold vault located just across the street at 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza) is not only continuing but accelerating.

As the chart below shows, while central banks assure the population that there is nothing to worry about when it comes to paper money, and in fact it is the evil ISIS terrorists who plot and scheme to crush the benevolent Fed with their terroristy “gold dinars” and if not that then their made in Hollywood propaganda movies, they have been quietly pulling gold from the biggest centralized depository of global gold in the world: the New York Federal Reserve.

According to the latest just released monthly update of foreign official assets held in custody at the NY Fed, in July the total holdings of foreign earmarked, i.e., physical, gold declined to just over $8 billion when evaluated at the legacy “price” of $42.22 per ounce. In ton terms, this means that after declining below 6000 tons in January, for the first time since FDR’s infamous gold confiscation spree…

… the total physical gold held at the NY Fed dropped another 19.9 tons in September, down to 5,919.5 tons.

This was a doubling in gold withdrawals from 10 tons in August, and
is the highest withdrawal since January.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why Europe Is About To Plunge Further Into The NIRP Twilight Zone, And What It Means For Depositors

October 22, 2015

Why Europe Is About To Plunge Further Into The NIRP Twilight Zone, And What It Means For Depositors

In some respects, today’s ECB presser was a snoozer. Reporters asked the same old questions (some of which we’ve been asking for years) and, more importantly, there were no glitter attacks.

Our ears did perk up however, when Mario Draghi admitted that, unlike the governing council’s last meeting, cutting the depo rate further into negative territory was indeed discussed.

This is significant for a number of reasons. At the general level, it shows that DM central bankers are ready and willing to plunge the world further into the Keynesian Twilight Zone. As we outlined last month, this means the Riksbank and the SNB are now on watch. If the ECB cuts again, the Riksbank will be forced to act as well and as Barclays recently opined, the SNB may be compelled to go nuclear on depositors, as removing the negative rate exemption for domestic banks would force them to pass along the “cost” to customers:

“In contrast, a cut in the ECB’s deposit rate further into negative territory likely would have a significant impact on the EURCHF exchange rate and provoke a more immediate response from the SNB. Indeed, we expect that a cut in the ECB’s deposit rate may have a greater effect on EURCHF than on other EUR crosses. Switzerland applies its negative deposit rate to only a fraction of reserves, currently about 1/3rd of sight deposits by our calculation. In contrast, negative deposit rates apply to all reserves held at the ECB, Riksbank and Denmark’s Nationalbank. Consequently, a cut to the ECB’s deposit rate likely has a larger impact both on the economy and on the exchange rate than a proportionate cut by the SNB. An SNB response to an ECB deposit rate cut could take one of two forms:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Snowden Has A Simple Solution To Get To The Bottom Of The US Afghan Bombing “War Crime”

October 7, 2015

Snowden Has A Simple Solution To Get To The Bottom Of The US Afghan Bombing “War Crime”

Overnight, Medecins Sans Frontiers, or the “Doctors without Borders” medical group which suffered a tremendous loss of life at the hands of US bombardment this past Saturday, stepped up its criticism of what it has previously called a US “war crime.”

As Reuters reports, earlier today it called for an independent international fact-finding commission to be established to investigate the U.S. bombing of its hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, which it deems a war crime, and which it would use to decide whether or not to file criminal charges, although it was unclear against whom precisely: perhaps 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama?

Why independent: because as MSF said “we cannot rely on internal investigations by U.S, NATO and Afghan forces.”

Instead, the medical charity said that the commission, which can be set up at the request of a single state under the Geneva Convention, would gather facts and evidence from the United States, NATO and Afghanistan. MSF said it sent a letter on Tuesday to the 76 countries who signed up to the additional protocol of the Geneva Convention that set up the standing commission in 1991.

There is one problem: neither the United States nor Afghanistan are signatories and Francoise Saulnier, MSF lead counsel MSF, said that the consent of the states involved is necessary.

Good luck getting it.

Assuming the US does “agree” to comply with this fact-finding mission, we expect the full data dump – after all the necessary scrubbing of the evidence of course – to take place, some time in 2019.

For now, however, the MSF is not backing down: “If we let this go, we are basically giving a blank check to any countries at war,” MSF International President Joanne Liu told a news briefing in Geneva. “There is no commitment to an independent investigation yet.”

MSF is in talks with Switzerland about convoking the international commission of independent experts.

“Today we say enough, even war has rules,” Liu said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

It’s Official: China Confirms It Has Begun Liquidating Treasuries, Warns Washington

August 27, 2015

It’s Official: China Confirms It Has Begun Liquidating Treasuries, Warns Washington

On Tuesday evening, we asked what would happen if emerging markets joined China in dumping US Treasurys. For months we’ve documented the PBoC’s liquidation of its vast stack of US paper. Back in July for instance, we noted that China had dumped a record $143 billion in US Treasurys in three months via Belgium,leaving Goldman speechless for once.

We followed all of this up this week by noting that thanks to the new FX regime (which, in theory anyway, should have required less intervention), China has likely sold somewhere on the order of $100 billion in US Treasurys in the past two weeks alone in open FX ops to steady the yuan. Put simply, as part of China’s devaluation and subsequent attempts to contain said devaluation, China has been purging an epic amount of Treasurys.

But even as the cat was out of the bag for Zero Hedge readers and even as, to mix colorful escape metaphors, the genie has been out of the bottle since mid-August for China which, thanks to a steadfast refusal to just float the yuan and be done with it, will have to continue selling USTs by the hundreds of billions, the world at large was slow to wake up to what China’s FX interventions actually implied until Wednesday when two things happened: i) Bloomberg, citing fixed income desks in New York, noted “substantial selling pressure” in long-term USTs emanating from somebody in the “Far East”, and ii) Bill Gross asked, in a tweet, if China was selling Treasurys.

Sure enough, on Thursday we got confirmation of what we’ve been detailing exhaustively for months. Here’s Bloomberg:

China has cut its holdings of U.S. Treasuries this month to raise dollars needed to support the yuan in the wake of a shock devaluation two weeks ago, according to people familiar with the matter.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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