Renminbi

As we wait anxiously for the not-too-hot and not-too-cold but just right GDP data from China this evening, we thought it instructive to get some sense of the reality in China. From both the property bubble perspective (as Stratfor's analysis of the record high prices paid just this week for Beijing property - by an SOE no less - and its massive 'microcosm' insight into the bubbliciousness of the PBOC's attempts to stave off the inevitable 'landing'); to the rather shocking insight that Diapason Commodities' Sean Corrigan offers that 'Hot Money Flows' have left China at a rates exceeding that during the worst of the Lehman crisis; take a range of key indicators – from electricity usage, to Shanghai container throughput, to nationwide rail freight ton-miles, to steel output – and you will notice that none of these shows a rate of growth during the second quarter of more than 4% from 2011, and some are as low as 1%. Whatever fictive GDP number we are presented with this week, the message is clear: “Brace! Brace! Brace!”

On occasion of the publication of his new gold report (read here), Ronald Stoeferle talked with financial journalist Lars Schall about fundamental gold topics such as: "financial repression"; market interventions; the oil-gold ratio;  the renaissance of gold in finance;  "Exeter’s Pyramid"; and what the true "value" of gold could actually look like. Via Matterhorn Asset Management.

There are those who say gold may go to $10,000 or to $0, or somewhere in between; in a different universe, they would be the people furiously staring at the trees. For a quick look at the forest, we suggest readers have a glance at the chart below. It shows that just in the first five months of 2012 alone, China has imported more gold, a total of 315 tons, than all the official gold holdings of the UK, at 310.3 according to the WGC/IMF (a country which infamously sold 400 tons of gold by Gordon Brown at ~$275/ounce).

This week may very well go down as 'connect the dots' week. Things have been moving so quickly, so let's step back briefly and review the big picture from the week's events. When you connect the dots, the next steps lead to what may soon be regarded as an obvious conclusion: the system, as it exists right now, is crumbling. No amount of self-delusion can make this go away. Rational thinking and measured action, on the other hand, can make the consequences go away... turning people from victims into spectators of the greatest bubble burst in modern times.

The dollar exclusion list is becoming bigger and bigger with every passing day as China gets ready.

"I could go on and on with other examples, but let’s just get to the point: one cannot operate a capitalist system if the state can borrow at a negative cost. Years of irresponsibly loose monetary policy in the US has led to cheap funding for the US (and other) governments, but difficult credit conditions for the  private sector all around the world. As I underlined in How The World Works, negative real rates leads to misallocation of capital which ends in asset deflation, while simultaneously limiting the capacity for recovery by driving out the private sector.... The Fed has been managed by a bunch of Keynesians who care nothing about the role of the dollar as a reserve currency and who probably believed they were managing the central bank of Belorussia or Zimbabwe!"

When the US Dollar is ultimately dethroned as the world's reserve currency (and finally gets rid of all those ridiculous three letter post-Keynesian economic "theories") nobody will have seen it coming. Well, nobody except for the following headlines: ""World's Second (China) And Third Largest (Japan) Economies To Bypass Dollar, Engage In Direct Currency Trade", "China, Russia Drop Dollar In Bilateral Trade", "China And Iran To Bypass Dollar, Plan Oil Barter System", "India and Japan sign new $15bn currency swap agreement", "Iran, Russia Replace Dollar With Rial, Ruble in Trade, Fars Says", "India Joins Asian Dollar Exclusion Zone, Will Transact With Iran In Rupees." And while the expansion of the "dollar exclusion zone" was actually quite glaring to anyone who dared to look, one thing was obvious: it was confined to Asia. No more courtesy of the following FT headline: "Brazil and China agree currency swap." More: "Brazil has provided a vote of confidence in China’s efforts to promote the renminbi as a reserve currency by becoming the biggest economy yet to agree a swap deal with Beijing. Brazil and China announced the R$60bn (US$29bn) local currency swap after a bilateral meeting between Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, and Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s president, on the sidelines of the Rio+20 environmental summit in Rio de Janeiro."

Don't read this if you have high blood pressure or if you are a client of MF Global's, whose money is still held by JP Morgan.

• How original: Syria prints new money as deficit grows (Reuters)- America is not Syria
• Former SNB head Hildebrand to become BlackRock vice chairman (FT)
• Osborne says Greece may have to quit euro (Reuters)
• Osborne Risks the Wrath of Merkel (FT)
• China second-quarter GDP growth may dip below 7 percent - government adviser (Reuters)
• Italian Borrowing Costs Surge at Auction of 1-Year Bills (Bloomberg)
• Greeks withdraw cash ahead of cliffhanger vote (Reuters)
• Merkel’s Choice Pits European Fate Against German Voter Interest (Bloomberg)
• Italy Tax Increases Backfire as Monti Tightens Belts (Bloomberg)
• Dimon says JPMorgan failed to rein in traders (Reuters)

When you hear two politicians in the US going toe to toe arguing about public finances (i.e. money that isn’t theirs), they’ll often cite numbers published by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). In political circles, the CBO is considered an honest broker - an objective referee that simply presents the facts without taking a position on the numbers. Today they’ve released an infographic showing America’s debt to GDP ratio over the last 100-years, through World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, the Nixon Gold shock, and the Global Financial Crisis. For what it’s worth, both of the CBO’s scenarios for future debt growth seem absurd  underpinned by an even larger assumption– that the status quo is maintained, i.e. the United States remains the world’s most powerful economic force, can print currency at will without consequence, and can inspire foreigners to buy Treasuries. Rather than relying on some bureaucrat, though, history is really the best indicator for what will happen in the future. It may not repeat, but it’ll certainly rhyme. And history shows that the long-term likelihood is financial repression, severe inflation, and/or default.

The reality that the global Status Quo has fixed absolutely nothing in four years is finally coming to roost in the global economy. Though there is an endless array of complexity to snare the unwary, the source of instability is both visible and easily understood: too much debt that will never be paid back. Making matters much worse, much of the money that was borrowed--by sovereign governments, local governments, households and private enterprises--was squandered on consumption or malinvestments, and so there are precious few assets or collateral underlying the debt. Even when there is an asset--for example, a vacant house in a vacant development in Spain, or a Greek bond--the market value is considerably lower than the purchase price. The reality is that trillions of dollars, euros, yen and renminbi in phantom wealth will disappear when the losses that have already taken place are finally recognized. Everyone in the world with exposure to the global economy will become poorer in terms of abundant money floating around buying goods and services as credit dries up and deleveraging wipes out trillions of dollars, euros, yen and renminbi of phantom wealth.

• Germany shifts, gives Spain more time on deficit (Reuters)
• Europe must prepare an emergency plan (FT)
• EU Spain reveals €100bn capital flight (FT)
• Spain’s Guindos says future of Euro at stake in Spain (Bloomberg)
• ECB, EU officials warn euro’s survival at risk (Reuters)
• China can ‘cope’ if Greece exits Euro, NDRC Researcher says (Bloomberg)
• Japan Warns Against Rising Yen (WSJ)
• Global stocks investors head for exits (FT)
• Hot Copper Shorts Burning Commodity Firms (Caixin)

All you need to read.

If China Backs Its Currency with Gold, It Could Have Profound Effects for Investors … and Consumers

First the CIC stirs havoc in Europe, saying it would rather invest in Africa than in Brussels finmin summit caterers, which at this stage in the business cycle are the most profitable corporation imaginable... and now this:

CIC'S JIN SAYS RENMINBI WILL BECOME GLOBAL RESERVE CURRENCY

Naturally, to parahprase titles of cheesy 80s movies, there can be only one. So what would happen to the current one? Maybe the same as what happened to all the prior global "reserve" currencies...