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Canada, the Petroyuan Thesis, and Balance of Trade Issues in Pictures

As NAFTA negotiations linger on, let’s step back and see what Trump’s threats are all about.

The US has had a goods surplus with Canada every month since 1985.

Nonetheless, Trump is incredibly annoyed at Canada and threatens to put tariffs on Canadian cars.

Well, Trump better make that US cars because Canada does not have any Canadian car brands.

The US would lose far more from Canadian tariffs on cars than vice-versa. But both sides would lose in such a war.

Tariffs are a tax on consumers. No one wins from them.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau indicated on Tuesday that Canada would not compromise on key demands at high-level talks this week with the United States to update the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“No NAFTA is better than a bad NAFTA deal for Canadians and that’s what we are going to stay with.”

U.S. President Donald Trump – who signed a NAFTA side deal with Mexico last week – has threatened to impose auto tariffs on Canada or exclude it from the three-nation pact unless an agreement can be struck quickly.

Trudeau made clear, however, he would insist on keeping the so-called Chapter 19 dispute-resolution mechanism that Washington wants to scrap.

“We will not sign a deal that is bad for Canadians, and quiet frankly, not having a Chapter 19 to ensure the rules are followed would be bad for Canadians,” he said.

He also said existing protections that ban U.S. media firms from buying Canadian cultural industries such as television stations and newspapers must be maintained.

Legitimate Gripes and Plain Silliness

Trump has a legitimate gripe about dairy products, but the US sugar, corn, an ethanol lobbies are just as bad if indeed not far worse.

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

Mortgage Prisoners Totally Screwed in Australia as Refinance Rejections Soar

Australia is flooded with “too good to be true” refinance offers. Rejections up 349% since April, 1426% from December.

Looking to refinance your Australian property you wish you didn’t buy?

Not to worry, I can help is the message banks are sending. Oops, strike that.

The total number of monthly rejections went from 2,031 in December 2017 to 30,986 in July 2018, a mere 1426% increase.

The rejection rate itself looks much better percentage-wise. It’s now 40%, up from 5% a year ago.

Debt Distress

Those who cannot refinance are in deep trouble. The Spike Exposes the Number of Australians in Debt Distress.

It’s being described as a “mortgage mirage”. It’s an offer from the bank that looks too good to be true and, as it turns out, for many it is. “About 40 per cent of people who tried to refinance were unable to do so,” Digital Finance Analytics principal Martin North said.”If you go back a year it was 5 per cent.”

The reason this is occurring is that, while those applicants cleared the bar for their original loans, that bar has now become a lot higher, following years of banking reform and the fallout from the banking royal commission. So, now, they simply don’t qualify for the same amount of debt they once did.

“When people took out the loans there was a lot of widespread fudging of the numbers,” chief investment officer with funds management firm, Forager Funds, Steve Johnson said.

“People were getting loans on the basis of a four person family having $30,000 a year of living costs living in Sydney. “And it’s quite clearly impossible to live in Sydney on that much money a year. “The biggest issue is that people have borrowed too much money relative to their income and that is a very difficult problem to unwind.”

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

So Bloody Predictable: Sydney Ground Zero in Interest-Only Mortgage Implosion

Australia’s housing boom is over. A recession is not far away.

It’s “all so bloody predictable” says Australia Macro Business as Western Sydney Ground Zero in Interest-Only Mortgage Bust.

Selling agents are starting to reveal the truth behind recent listings in Sydney’s west with Belle Property Strathfield’s Jimmy Kang saying up to 50 per cent of his clients were asking him to sell their homes in Sydney’s western suburbs because they can no longer afford their new principal-and-interest mortgages.

…A couple asked him to sell a two-bedroom weatherboard home in Veron Street in Wentworthville, 27 kilometres west of Sydney, for $950,000 when it was only worth about between $820,000 and $830,000. They bought the home for $790,000, two years ago.

“I asked them where they got that number from and they said that was the number they need to pay back the $200,000 they borrowed from family to buy the home as well as repay their interest-only loan,” he said.

“A lot of them initially paid $2000 to $2500 a month on their interest-only loans, and now they have to pay $4000.”

Auctions in Western Sydney’s mortgage belt have collapsed. This is exactly what happened in the 2003 Sydney bust. Western Sydney is basically a low income ghetto that occasionally catches the house price bug then is astonished when its paltry income can’t support the prices.

This is going to melt down worse than 2003. Back then it was bailed out by the mining boom, rising rents and wages. As well, other city house prices took off and supported consumption. Today Western Sydney is the epicentre of the mass immigration wages crush and falling rents, and it’s increasingly national.

Correction Just Started

​Home prices are Just Starting to Decline.

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

Next Up: Global Synchronized Easing

Global economic tightening is a pipe dream. It hasn’t happened yet, and likely won’t.

Bloomberg writer Komal Sri-Kumar says, and I agree, Don’t be Surprised by a Switch Global Synchronized Easing.

Global investors are positioned for a coordinated tightening of monetary policy by the world’s major central banks. Although the U.S. Federal Reserve is already far down that path, the others are just getting started. The European Central Bank is set to end its bond purchase program by year-end. The Bank of England is leaning toward hiking interest rates for only the third time in 10 years. Concerns were rising that the Bank of Japan could end the zero yield target for 10-year government bonds at its meeting last month.

A factor that may induce the Fed to delay rate increases after September is the surging dollar. U.S. President Donald Trump has already complained that an appreciating dollar has blunted the “competitive edge” of U.S. exports. By increasing the cost of American exports to foreign buyers, a stronger dollar would increase the trade deficit that Trump considers to be an important measure of how other countries are taking unfair advantage of the U.S. On July 19, he openly criticized the Fed for increasing rates several times despite a long-held tradition that the executive branch avoids commenting on monetary policy.

The ECB has to contend with a deteriorating economic situation in Turkey, which owes $467 billion to foreign creditors, including a large exposure to some of the euro zone’s largest commercial banks. The banks may have to write off a portion of their loans to Turkey, requiring an ECB backstop for vulnerable financial institutions rather than tighten monetary policy into a crisis.

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

It’s the Debt Cycle (And Other Things)

The debt cycle, tariffs, and central bank hubris have created the conditions for a spectacular unwind of risk assets.

Yesterday in Turkey: Lira Bulls and Bears Duke it Out On Twitter I asked, “Is there a bullish case for the Lira? One person thinks so. Most think otherwise.”

I intended to do a follow-up post today, but Saxo Bank’s Steen Jakobsen covered most of the essentials in a recent post that I just saw today.

I have some thoughts at the end in regards to Turkey and the “other things”.

Macro Digest: It’s Not Turkey, It’s the Debt Cycle by Steen Jakobsen, emphasis mine.

There is currently a lot of focus on Turkey, and for good reason, but Turkey is really only a second or third derivative of the global macro story.

Turkey represents the catalyst for a new theme, which is “too much debt and current account deficits equals crisis”. In that sense, we have come full cycle from deficits and debt mattering in the 1980s and ‘90s but not in the ‘00s and ‘10s post- the Nasdaq crash and great financial crisis under the biggest monetary experiment of all time.

In our view, the order of sequence for this crisis is as follows:

  1. The debt cycle is on pause as first China and now the US have deleveraged and ‘normalised’.
  2. The stock of credit or the ‘credit cake’ has collapsed. First it was the ‘change of the change of credit’, or the credit impulse, which tanked in late 2017 and into 2018. Now it is also the stock of credit. Right now, global M2 over global growth is less than one, meaning the world is trying to achieve 6% global growth with less than 2.5% growth in its monetary base… the exact opposite of the 00’s and ‘10s central bank- and politician-driven model.

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

In Praise of a Genuine Gold (Not Gold-Backed) Bond

Buffet dismissed gold because it pays no interest. But what if there was a genuine gold bond that paid interest in gold?

Keith Weiner at Monetary Metals asks Who Would Invest in a Gold Bond?

Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffet famously dismissed gold. “Gold has two significant shortcomings, being neither of much use nor procreative.”

Nevada now has legislation pending, to enable the state to issue gold bonds. Not gold-backed bonds, which are a way to sink deeper into debt, to borrow more dollars using gold as collateral. True gold bonds, which are denominated in gold, pay interest in gold, and return investors’ principal in gold.

Interest. That is what Warren Buffet declared that gold has not got. And now an AA-rated state government is close to paying interest on gold. That is an interesting development (permit me my little pun). But there is a challenge.

Although there is no downside, and no special interest groups are harmed, the bill might not pass. The Democrat majority who controls the state legislature could perceive the gold bond as a Republican partisan measure. I can say that this assumption is totally wrong. Most mainstream Republicans are not especially fond of gold. For example, it took Arizona five years to pass its gold legislation, with three vetoes by two Republican governors.

Unfortunately, politics has become hyper-partisan. If Nevada Democrats perceive this as a Republican bill, they will vote it down. Since they are in the majority, they will kill the bill. That must not happen! The decay in our monetary system is at an advanced stage. No one can predict how much time remains, but I can say one thing with absolute certainty. We need to begin developing an alternative. We need to begin remonetizing gold, and that means gold bonds.

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

Poland, the Next Turkey? Spotlight on the Zloty and External Debt

Emerging markets have taken it on the chin. Is Poland next?

Murray Gunn, Head of Global Research at Elliott Wave International, asks “Is Poland the next Turkey?”

Our outlook for the Polish Zloty suggests that Poland’s developing authoritarianism is likely to accelerate.

In case you have been living on Mars over the last few years and have missed what is going on, people around the world are becoming increasingly angry. This is especially true in the periphery of Europe, where countries like Turkey and Hungary are ruled by governments with an intolerance for people who disagree with them. After long negative trends in social mood, the so-called “populist revolution” has also resulted in the election of governments in Italy and Poland that have radical agendas. In Poland’s case, one policy of the ruling Law and Justice Party (nothing sinister about that name, eh) is to overhaul the judicial system by forcing judges to retire early. This, the European Union argues, is aimed at increasing political influence in the Polish legal system. On Monday, the EU stepped up threats of legal action against the Polish government which remains intransigent on the matter. It’s looking very probable that Poland is on the road to becoming internationally isolated.

Indeed, the chart of the Polish zloty versus the Euro suggests that Poland may be in for the same treatment as Turkey. A multi-year consolidation ended at the beginning of this year. It looks like EUR-PLN is entering a strong advance which should see the pair explode higher. Be prepared for that to be accompanied with a further breakdown in international relations with Warsaw.

The above via email. I do not have a link. The chart, as delivered, had an arrow pointing up. I edited the chart, adding a “? and put in arrows up and down.

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

An Eye on M1, Cyclicals, and Junk Bonds: What Matters?

Rosenberg says “Keep an eye on M1”, others watch Cyclicals, and still others have an eye on junk bonds.

An Eye on M1


All of the monetary aggregates have slowed substantially, and real M1 growth is flagging a 1% stall-speed growth economy once we get passed all the pre-tariff buying activity and fiscal sugar-high that skewed Q2 GDP.


The problem with this story is that it does not match the hype. Nor does M2.

Real M1 and M2

Watching M1 is Useless

If we are supposed to keep an eye on M1, it sure is not clear why. The dashed lines above so instances in which M1 growth turned negative and nothing happened for years.

I also added M2. It’s equally useless.

Watching these monetary aggregates seems downright silly.

Cyclicals vs. Defensives

Seeking Alpha says Cyclicals Vs. Defensives (Aka The Market’s Achilles’ Heel).

​The chart shows the cyclicals vs. defensives relative performance line against the S&P500. The key point is that cyclicals drove the last leg of the bull market, hence why I say this is basically the market’s Achilles’ heel.

The cyclicals vs. defensives line takes the ratio of the equal weighted performance of cyclicals (materials, industrials, technology) vs. defensives (telecoms, utilities, healthcare). As this line seems to trend during the study period, I have added a linear trend line for analytical purposes (the indicator is stretched vs. trend also).

As you can see on the chart, it’s been the solid performance of cyclicals relative to defensives that drove the last leg of the bull market. The extreme runup in the cyclicals vs. defensives relative performance line can unwind in one of two ways: 1. A bullish rotation: where the S&P 500 heads higher but defensive sectors take the lead; or 2. A bearish rotation: where the S&P 500 undergoes a correction/bear market, and defensives simply fall less than cyclicals.

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

Italian Bond Market Crisis Coming Up

Italy’s 10-Year bond yield surged around the Italian election. There’s heavy issuance in Sept and ECB tapering in Oct.

The yield on Italian bonds surged in May on the victory of the League- and Five Star in the national election. The alliance does not intend to follow EU budget rules.

Heavy issuance is coming up in September. And in October, the ECB is scheduled to taper its QE bond purchases. This Combination of Events May Derail the Italian Bond Market.

Bankers lining up new company bonds in September may find that budget and spending discussions in Italy could derail what’s usually the second-half’s busiest issuance month. That’s what happened in May, another typically busy month for sales, when the Italian election result triggered a government bond sell-off and issuance slump.

“If we have something that resembles what we saw in May, the primary market should basically come to a halt,” said Marco Stoeckle, a credit strategist at Commerzbank AG. “If we have the Italian government curve inverting, anything like that would be enough to significantly hamper issuance volumes. I guess the market would be closed.”

Last week, as Italian finance minister Giovanni Tria was said to begin a series of meetings to determine a draft budget, there were already signs of nerves, with 10-year yields breaking above three percent for the first time in nearly two months. Markets fear the nation may be headed for a collision course with European Union partners as the two parties in Italy’s ruling coalition pledge to implement bold spending plans next year.

On May 29, as BTP spreads lurched violently, borrowing costs for all of Europe’s corporate borrowers rose: the Bloomberg Barclays index of corporate spreads widened 100 basis points in a single day — its largest jump in almost two years.

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

Not Just Fangs: Manias and Echo Bubbles Abound

It’s not just the FANGs investors should be worried about. A Tweet and an article explain.


“With the FANG stocks faltering lately investors are starting to become concerned about their impact on the broader market. And there is certainly something to this.”https://app.hedgeye.com/insights/69386-it-s-more-than-just-fang-stocks-investors-should-be-worried-about?type=guest-contributors 

It’s More Than Just FANG Stocks Investors Should Be Worried About

What investors really should be worried about then is the possibility that the reappraisal of the FANG stocks is representative of a much wider reappraisal that began back in February.

app.hedgeye.com


Echo Bubbles Abound

Pater Tenebrarum at Acting Man discusses Stock Market Manias of the Past vs the Echo Bubble.

The Big Picture

The diverging performance of major US stock market indexes which has been in place since the late January peak in DJIA and SPX has become even more extreme in recent months. In terms of duration and extent, it is one of the most pronounced such divergences in history. It also happens to be accompanied by weakening market internals, some of the most extreme sentiment and positioning readings ever seen and an ever more hostile monetary backdrop.

The above combination is consistent with a market close to a major peak – although one must always keep in mind that divergences can become even more pronounced – as was for instance demonstrated on occasion of the technology sector blow-off in late 1999 – 2000.

Along similar lines, extremes in valuations can persist for a very long time as well and reach previously unimaginable levels. The Nikkei of the late 1980s is a pertinent example for this. Incidentally, the current stock buyback craze is highly reminiscent of the 1980s Japanese financial engineering method known as keiretsu or zaibatsu, as it invites the very same rationalizations.

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

US Trade Policy: Not Only are We Stupid, We are Hypocrites

The news agencies reported Trump would extend tariffs on Wednesday. Instead, we have an outline of possible actions.

The Wall Street Journal reports U.S. Turns Up the Heat on China.

The U.S. turned up the heat Wednesday on China, with the Trump administration threatening to more than double proposed tariffs on imports while Congress passed a defense bill designed to restrict Beijing’s economic and military activity.

The moves come as Beijing and Washington have failed to ease an escalating trade dispute, prompting the administration to seek additional leverage. The administration, which has already affixed tariffs on billions of dollars in Chinese imports, said it would consider more than doubling proposed tariffs on a further $200 billion worth of Chinese goods to 25%, up from an original 10%.

Meantime, the Senate approved a defense-policy bill that both tightens U.S. national-security reviews of Chinese corporate deals and revamps export controls over which U.S. technologies can be sent abroad. The bill, which also restricts Beijing in areas ranging from cultural activity to military exercises, passed the House a week earlier and President Trump is expected to sign it into law.

Administration officials are confident they have the upper hand in the trade fight because the U.S. economy is strengthening while the Chinese economy shows signs of growing slack. Moreover, China is more dependent on trade than the U.S.

But that confidence so far hasn’t translated into action.

President Trump has threatened to apply tariffs to all $505 billion in Chinese goods entering the U.S. if the two are unable to reach a settlement. Washington has already applied tariffs to $34 billion worth of Chinese imports, with another set of duties on $16 billion in goods scheduled in the days ahead.

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

Spotlight Danville, Illinois, My Home Town: Bankrupt

Danville Illinois is bankrupt. That’s not an official announcement yet, but it will be. Pensions are at the heart of it.

I have talked about my relationship with Danvile before, but here is a brief recap.

I grew up in Danville, Illinois, the home of Chuckles (the candy), Hyster (lift forks), Lauhoff (the world’s largest grain elevator), Petersen Puritan (one of the world’s largest aerosol bottling plants, think deodorant sprays), a GM foundry in adjacent Tilton, and many other industries.

All of those industries but Hyster are gone or sold to other companies. Hyster remains but production of forklifts doesn’t. Lauhoff is now the Bunge corporation. Inquiring minds may be interested in the History of Chuckles, no longer made in Danville.

Dick Van Dyke, Jerry Van Dyke, Bobby Short, Gene Hackman, Irving Azoff, Hellen Morgan, are some of the celebrities that were born or raised in Danville.

The population of Danville was 44,000+ when I was in high school. It’s now 31,597 despite huge growth in area.

I graduated from Danville Schlarman, a Catholic high school, in 1971 and graduated from the University of Illinois in 1976. My goal was to escape the area, and I did.

Curiously, just today, I was labeled a “traitor” for this. I will return to that in a moments, but let’s get to the real story why towns like Danville are bankrupt.

Spotlight Pensions

Ask Danville, Illinois, Mayor Scott Eisenhauer if he has any control over his police and fire pension mess and you’ll quickly see frustration set in. “Springfield makes all the rules but localities have to pay for them.”

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

Trump and Juncker Supposedly Agree to Trade Deal: Lies All Around

The US and EU agree to resolve trade differences. Color me skeptical as to how long this lasts and what happens next.

The Wall Street Journal reports U.S., EU Agree to Resolve Trade Differences.

President Trump on Wednesday declared a “new phase” in the relationship between the U.S. and the European Union, agreeing to hold off on proposed car tariffs and work with the EU to resolve their dispute over metals duties, while also promoting bilateral trade.

Speaking in the Rose Garden of the White House alongside European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, Mr. Trump said the U.S. and the EU had agreed to “work together toward zero tariffs, zero non-tariff barriers and zero subsidies on non auto-industrial goods.”

“This was a very big day for free and fair trade,” Mr. Trump said. He said the U.S. and EU would “resolve” the steel and aluminum tariffs he imposed earlier this year and the retaliatory tariffs the EU imposed in response.

He said the EU had agreed “almost immediately” begin buying more U.S. soybeans and that the European bloc had agreed to increase LNG exports [imports?] from the U.S. The EU will be a “massive buyer” of LNG, Mr. Trump said.

“I had the intention to make a deal today,” said Mr. Juncker. “And we made a deal today. “

Lie When It’s Serious

Ahead of the meeting, Juncker said it was not his intent to work out a deal. Now he says it was his intention all along.

In case you forgot, please consider the most honest thing Juncker ever said: “When it becomes serious you have to lie.”

So, is Juncker lying today or was he lying two days ago?

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

Surge in Global Credit Driven by China: Deflationary Bust Coming

Since 2008 the growth in global credit has been on the back of China. Real estate led the way. Now what?

Inquiring minds should take a look at FT Alphaville article Chinese Real Estate, Charted. Here is the key chart.

In March, Jim Chanos stated “China has gotten worse”.

According to Chanos, global credit expanded by $1.5 trillion in the first quarter of 2018, and China provided $1 trillion of it.

Chinese Real Estate Single Most Important Asset Class

In February, Jim Chanos told Business Insider that Chinese real estate to be the most important single asset class in the world.

There’s an excellent video interview in the BI article where Chanos discusses the surge in credit fueled by unwarranted residential real estate speculation.

Inflation Deflation

Note the decline in US credit expansion in 2010. Mark-to-market, the recovery began in 2009 when Bernanke suspended mark-to-market recording of business loans.

My definition says inflation is an increase in money supply and credit, marked-to-market. With rules suspended in the midst of stress test lies, what’s going on can only be estimated.

It’s clear, for now, that we are in a period of global inflation. The markets act as if this credit can be paid back. It won’t, and that is the fallacy of expecting an inflation boom in the future. The boom has been underway for a long time, fueled by FED, ECB, and BoJ QE accompanied by a surge in Chinese credit.

A bust will come, and it will not be inflationary.

Trump Threatens to Place Tariffs on All $500B China Imports, Blasts Fed Again

Trump blasted the Fed, the EU, China today with threats to put tariffs on everything. China and the EU are manipulators.


….The United States should not be penalized because we are doing so well. Tightening now hurts all that we have done. The U.S. should be allowed to recapture what was lost due to illegal currency manipulation and BAD Trade Deals. Debt coming due & we are raising rates – Really?


President Donald Trump escalated his criticism of the Federal Reserve Friday, saying in a tweet that its efforts to raise short-term interest rates hurt the U.S. economic expansion, and he accused China and the European Union of manipulating their currencies to hurt the U.S. on trade.

The tweets came shortly after CNBC broadcast an interview with Mr. Trump in which the president said he was prepared to raise U.S. tariffs on $500 billion worth of imports from China as part of his push to narrow U.S. trade deficits with China. In the same interview he said he wasn’t happy about Fed rate increases.

The central bank’s campaign to slowly raise interest rates“hurts all that we have done,” he wrote Friday. “The U.S. should be allowed to recapture what was lost due to illegal currency manipulation and BAD Trade Deals. Debt coming due & we are raising rates – Really?”

The president has threatened tariffs on $500 billion in Chinese imports before. On July 6 on Air Force One, the president told reporters that tariffs could eventually hit all U.S. imports from China, affecting nearly $505 billion in imports.

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

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