China

About a week ago, Goldman Sachs closed its tactical short USDCNY Non-Deliverable Forward trade, which was opened on June 10, 2010 and which expired a year later for a 4.2% gain. Goldman added: "Our view has not changed. The necessary adjustments to global imbalances demand a weaker US Dollar, and especially so vs the CNY. The cyclical and political backdrop remains supportive along those lines. Moreover, we expect $/CNY depreciation to continue/extend in the months to come. We remain positioned for the theme via our $/CNY NDF recommended Top Trade with longer initial maturity, expiring on 4 December 2012." Nonetheless, something appears to have shifted in the derivative CNY market, where as Bloomberg points out, it now costs more to bet on RMB weakness than strength. It adds: "China appears headed for a hard landing as the country’s housing market shows more signs of weakness. Currency traders have reduced their expectations for more appreciation of the yuan versus the dollar in the derivatives market, meaning they expect Chinese policy makers to fundamentally shift their approach to the currency due to economic softening. Other markets may soon follow currency’s lead." As the attached chart shows the USDCNY 3 Month 25 Delta Risk Reversal for the first time since September 2009, there appears to be some outright bearishness on the renminbi appreciation scenario. Does this mean that yesterday's decline in the official fixing rate to 6.4736 on Thursday, lower than the record high of 6.4683 on Wednesday is more than a one time adjustment and is the start of a new trend? We will find out soon enough.

Merely minutes after reporting the third daily surge in the SHIBOR we see a Dow Jones update which confirms that this liquidity escalation is far more serious than a merely transitory jump in short-term lending rates. Per DJ: "China's central bank said Wednesday it will suspend its regular open market operation Thursday, in an apparent response to the tight liquidity conditions in the banking system." As a result of the just reported 7 Day SHIBOR hitting 8.81%, the highest since October 2007, the PBoC will not conduct regularly scheduled open market operations tomorrow when it offers three-month paper, to mop up excess liquidity in the country. "The PBOC sold CNY1 billion ($154.6 million) worth of one-year bills at 3.4019% in its operation Tuesday, after leaving the rate unchanged at 3.3058% for the past 11 weeks. On Thursday last week, the PBOC lifted the rate on its three-month bills by eight basis points to 2.9985%, the first increase on the three-month central bank bill yield since early April. "It is difficult for the central bank to find enough demand for its short-term bill offering amid the severe liquidity squeeze in the money market. If it persisted with the three-month bill offering tomorrow, the yield would jump again, adding pressure to the central bank's operating costs," said a Shanghai-based trader with a local bank."

Yesterday, when we pointed out the surge in the overnight SHIBOR, many were quick to dismiss this dramatic contraction in liquidity, because it happened to be a replica of a comparable such move before the Lunar New Year which did not end result in an end of the world type event. And while many ignored this very disturbing interbank lending lock up sign, there was someone who did not: the PBoC. According to Market News, "The People's Bank of China has conducted reserve bond repurchase agreements with at least one bank in a bid to ease liquidity conditions, local media reports said Tuesday. The National Business Daily cited an interbank market trader as saying the central bank injected at least CNY50 billion into the China Construction Bank on Monday via a 14-day reverse repo at 7.5%." Which incidentally is how it should be done: want to get emergency funding from your central bank? Sure. But it will cost you a whopping 7.5%. Now the question of whether CNY50 billion is enough (and in related news, the USDCNY parity just dropped to a fresh all time record low of 6.4690) is a different matter altogether: we expect to get today's updated SHIBOR fixing any second, and have a feeling more reverse repos will have to be injected before this is over.

The country which has so far been doubling down on its losses in European bond exposure, much to the amusement of cynical onlookers, has finally disclosed that Europe is the locus of Chinese vital self interests, and that should Europe go down, one very major domino would be the implosion of China itself. Per Reuters: "China's "vital" interests are at stake if Europe cannot resolve its debt crisis, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Friday as it voiced concern about the economic problems of its biggest trading partner. At a media briefing ahead of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to Europe next week, Vice Foreign Minister Fu Ying made plain that China had tried to help Europe overcome its troubles by buying more European debt and encouraging bilateral trade..."Whether the European economy can recover and whether some European economies can overcome their hardships and escape crisis, is vitally important for us," Fu said. "China has consistently been quite concerned with the state of the European economy," she said." And just like every time before when China has tripled and quadrupled, and now quintupled, on Greek, Portuguese and other debt, so this time will be no different as merely loading up an insolvent entity with even more leverage does nothing but shorten the half life of each additional "bailout." When Greece blows up, forget the other European countries: keep a close eye on China.

Despite their many differences, the economies of China and the U.S. share a number of key traits: both are corrupt, rigged, crony-Capitalist, rely on phony statistics and propaganda and operate with two sets of rules: one for the Elites, and another for the masses. Given these similarities, it's no wonder that the wheels are falling off both economies. There are some key differences, of course, which will make the crashing of China's boom all the harder. China's leadership likes to do things in a big way, and so its campaign of "extend and pretend" over the past three years has been unprecedented. This isn't just the consequence of a Command Economy overseen by a Central State; the "extend and pretend" boom was fueled by stupendous borrowing by local governments and private enterprise as well. This flood of money has severely distorted China's economy, yet the imbalances are now normalized. When a system become this precarious and imbalanced, it can best be modeled by stick/slip destabilization: blaming the last grain of sand that destabilizes the entire pile for the collapse is to ignore the real cause: the entire system is unstable. Here are a few factors which are widely misunderstood or discounted by the mainstream financial media.

When we reported last night's Chinese economic data dump we said: "Expect to see renewed calls on the PBoC to hike rates imminently." As it occasionally happens, we were rather spot on: per Bloomberg: "China ordered lenders to set aside more cash as reserves after inflation accelerated to the fastest pace in almost three years in May and industrial production rose more than estimates. A half percentage point increase announced by the central bank today and effective June 20 will take the ratio to a record 21.5 percent for the nation’s biggest lenders. The move was hours after data showing the annual inflation rate climbed to 5.5 percent." As we noted last night after reporting the latest Chinese data, while the economy is once again heating up, risks of outright stagflation have been reduced now that various other metrics aside from inflation also beat expectations, putting the onus squarely on the PBoC. And the central bank did not disappoint. That said, since the RRR-hike route has taken China nowhere fast, and with inflation at a 3 year high, the PBoC's next decision of an outright rate hike will be far more complex: "Signs the world’s second-biggest economy is maintaining momentum after increases in borrowing costs and curbs on real estate may have encouraged policy makers to add to tightening measures. At the same time, weakness in the global economy and data yesterday showing slower bank lending and money-supply growth may make a decision on further raising interest rates a tougher call." In this case, we expect to see doctored CPI data to begin dropping in June and onward, unless there is another climatic disaster which really sends the angry mobs loose.

In an indication of the prevailing popular mood among the key marginal economic force in China - its migrant worker population - hundreds of protesters rioted in the southern China city of Gunaghzou after a young pregnant street hawker was harassed by security guards, media reports said Monday. From Reuters: "Hong Kong television showed seething crowds of migrant workers from the southwestern province of Sichuan running through the streets of Zengcheng, smashing windows, setting fire to government buildings and overturning police vehicles. Riot police were shown firing tear gas Sunday night, deploying armoured vehicles to disperse the crowds and handcuffing protesters. Witnesses said there were more than 1,000 protesters and at least one government office had been besieged. "People were running around like crazy," a shopowner in the area told the South China Morning Post newspaper. "I had to shut the shop by 7 p.m. and dared not come out." While China reported slowing monetary conditions, with a miss in both the M2 and loan issuance in May, it is unclear what the Chinese equivalents of Bernanke's 15 minutes to Inflation: OFF is: as a reminder the upcoming CPI print is expected to come at a record 5.5%, which is the only piece of data that truly matters in China. If inflation continues its runaway rise, whether due to climatic conditions, or importing Bernanke's monetary policies, expect to see many more stories of violent popular unrest.

These are serious challenges Beijing’s now facing and seems to lack adequate policy tools to tackle...Hedge funds and Fed’s QE2 are not all to blame for all these. The Chinese economy already stands close to the edge. What speculators do is to push it over and profiteer handsomely from the chaos. While the US enjoys the luxury provided by the dollar’s world currency status and diplomatic alliance with many major trade partners to export its liquidity and inflation, China enjoys none of that. They should look at the dollars in their hands with fear and doubt. So called Beijing consensus makes little sense, because the world is fast changing, pegging a country’s growth to a certain set of policy tools or a certain reserve currency(the US dollar) is equally dangerous. The battle between Keynes and Friedman has long proven the only consensus is to adapt and change. Right now China needs to adapt and change fast. Or this will be the best time in history to short China.

“…through thousands of years of Chinese history, I know no example where outside pressures about the domestic structure of China produced domestic changes in, in [cq] China. ...”

So much for transitory inflation as corn prices are again pennies of a fresh all time high. Earlier today an update by the USDA showed that corn stocks will come in much lower than expected at the end of the 2011/12 marketing year at just 695 million bushels: this is far lower than the analysts consensus of 771 million bushels. The spring weather was blamed for the drop: "cold, rainy spring and flooding cut U.S. corn plantings by 1.6 percent, will reduce the harvest by 2 percent and will keep U.S. corn supplies at their tightest level in 15 years through the fall of 2012, the government said on Thursday." Another factor for the record price: surging China demand: "USDA also forecast a hefty increase in corn use by China -- up 8 million tonnes, or 5 percent, this year and up 13 million tonnes, or 8 percent, in 2011/12. China will draw down its stocks rather than import corn, USDA said." Just like in China where record droughts have been replaced with deadly floods, the weather continues to be unusually volatile, not just in the US: "Besides plaguing the eastern Corn Belt, rains and
floods have slashed the rice crop by 5.5 percent since May, USDA said.
Drought in the Southwest would reduce the cotton crop by 1 million
bales, or nearly 6 percent, to 17 million bales, and the rice crop, at
199.5 million hundredweight, would be the smallest in four years." This is probably the latest data the market needed to completely ignore today's worse than expected initial claims data, and go into full "Inflation: ON" mode. In other news, expect Obama to announce the launch of an Adverse Weather Task Force investigating speculative movements in air masses momentarily.

Since "the China Story" is the foundation of global growth, demand for commodities and ultimately, stock market profits, when China's stock market breaks down it behooves us to pay attention. Technical analysis offers a number of tools to help us chart the past and present and calibrate probabilities of what might happen in the future. Much of the time there are no clear signals, and chartists can lose their way trying to discern patterns and trends which may or may not pan out in the future. One classic pattern is a flag or pennant (a.k.a. a wedge). The psychology behind the pennant is rather transparent. Lower highs reflect a decline in Bullish enthusiasm and buying pressure, as every "buy the dip" fails to match the previous dip-buying. he direction of China's market has been decisively signalled: breakdown. In technical analysis, it doesn't get any better than this.

For the n^th time, China let loose that "excessive" holdings of US dollars are risky because "Washington could pursue a policy to weaken the dollar, a senior currency regulator said in comments published on a website that briefly pushed the dollar lower." Oddly this time, the statement which came from Guan Tao of China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) which is the entity responsible for managing the country's $3+ trillion in USD FX holdings, was promptly retracted, following an announcement by Tao to Reuters "that the comments had been made in private academic discussions and represented his personal view only." In other words this is an identical episode to the one when the BOC's Mark Carney told "a private circle" that the US is going to hell in a handbasket. While the announcement briefly pushed the dollar lower, is the take home message that everyone is secretly hating America, while in public keeping a rosy appearance? The answer, of course, is a resounding yes.

In its just released must read Statistical Review of World Energy, BP has many critical observations, the key of which, while not a surprise to most, is that as of 2010, the US is no longer the world's biggest consumer of energy. The new leader, with a 20.3% share of global energy consumption: China. Keep in mind that the Chinese economy is still (in whatever centrally planned terms it discloses) not even half the size of the US, thus one can only imagine how far this number will rise should China ultimately succeed in its goal of converting from an export-led to a consumer-led society. And here we have a market worried about a few million bpd in quota courtesy of the now defunct OPEC. From the report: "World primary energy consumption – which this year includes for the first time a time series for commercial renewable energy – grew by 5.6% in 2010, the largest increase (in percentage terms) since 1973. Consumption in OECD countries grew by 3.5%, the strongest growth rate since 1984, although the level of OECD consumption remains roughly in line with that seen 10 years ago. Non-OECD consumption grew by 7.5% and was 63% above the 2000 level. Consumption growth accelerated in 2010 for all regions, and growth was above average in all regions. Chinese energy consumption grew by 11.2%, and China surpassed the US as the world’s largest energy consumer. Oil remains the world’s leading fuel, at 33.6% of  global energy consumption, but oil continued to lose market share for the 11th consecutive year." And in terms of production reserves: "World proved oil reserves in 2010 were sufficient to meet 46.2 years of global production, down slightly from the 2009 R/P ratio because of a large increase in world production; global proved reserves rose slightly last year. An increase in Venezuelan official reserve estimates drove Latin America’s R/P ratio to 93.9 years – the world’s largest, surpassing the Middle East."

Too bad there is no central bank to sell weather future puts and induce a "great moderation" in climatic conditions, which lately have seen volatility surge through the roof. The most recent example of why the CBOE needs a weather VIX is China, where following weeks of inflation spiking near-record drought conditions, the weather has flipped, and heavy rainfalls since June 3 have created floods that have killed at least 52 people led to 32 more missing, and much more is coming. According to Xinhua, "Heavy rains have inundated parts of 12 provinces in
central and southern China and affected 4.81 million people so far since
the flood season arrived, Shu Qingpeng, deputy head of the Office of
State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters, told a conference. Floods have destroyed 7,462 houses and submerged 255,000 hectares of farmland, incurring direct economic losses of 4.92 billion yuan (760 million U.S. dollars), he said. Heavy rainfalls since June 3 have drenched the previously parched lower and middle parts of the Yangtze River basin, increasing water of rivers to alert levels in the provinces of Jiangxi, Hunan and Guizhou." The PBoC's, which is preparing with spinning a record 5.5% CPI print imminently, just can't catch a fair weather break.

Yesterday Reuters reported that a troubling, yet potentially inevitable development may be imminent: the default of the US, granted, a short-lived one (though we are not sure just how the world's "reserve" currency will be backed by a national that is technically insolvent). Luckily for the US, everyone else (except China) is just as bankrupt. Yet if there is one thing pushing Lehman into competitive bankruptcy just so that Goldman would have a monopoly in the US fixed income sales and trading market, it is that any such action will have massive downstream consequences, and in the pyramid of "unpredictable downstream effects", the insolvency of the US is at the very top. And just to make it clear, now that a default is becoming a palpable option, China announced that the United States is "playing with fire" if it opts to briefly default on its debt, which could undermine the dollar, Li Daokui, an adviser to China's central bank said on Wednesday. Yet the statement could very well backfire after Li, speaking on the sidelines of a forum, said China needs to dissuade the United States from defaulting on its debt, but he believed China may hang on to its investment in U.S. Treasuries in any case. This is precisely the case made by Stanley Druckenmiller: in fact, should there be a technical default, US bonds will become a true safe haven investment as America will for the first time take a step to indicate that it believes the relentless abuse of its fiscal situation is coming to an end.