Today's disappointing TIC report confirmed what Zero Hedge reported back in January [4], namely the record dumping of Treasurys by foreign entities as tracked by the Fed's custodial account. And while we will spare you the details of the report (found here [5]), two things bear pointing out: the very demonstrative selling of US paper by Russia continues, and is now in its 14th consecutive month (as has been reported here consistently [6]), as total USTs in Putin's possession declined to a fresh multi-year low of $88.4 billion, half of the $176 billion in October 2010. Also confirming that the Asian anti-USD axis is now one which consists of at least Russia and China (and certainly Iran), was the stepwise dump of US paper by Beijing which sold $32 billion in US bonds in December, bringing its total to a new post 2010 low of $1100.7 billion. And lastly, this was not isolated to just these two: in December the grand total of US Treasury holding by foreigners declined from $4.75 trillion to $4.732 trillion. The question then is: just what are China and Russia buying (ahem stockpiling) with all the dollars that are not recycled back into Treasurys?
Russia:
[7]
China:
[8]
Total foreign holdings:
[9]
As this chart summarizes, total foreign sales were the largest since January 2010.
[10]