China

To further illustrate the point presented in the previous article discussing the variance between the increase in Chinese FX Reserves and UST Holdings, we demonstrate the cumulative differential between October 2008 and September 2009 in these two series. During the time, China's FX reserves have grown by $392 billion, while its UTS holdings have increased by $115 billion: a $278 billion differential. Furthermore, estimates call for the December 31 FX number to grow to $2.4 trillion, which would be a $520 billion increase, while according to TIC we know that October Chinese bond holdings were the same as September. Whether these surged in November and December should be sufficient to determine if there is any validity to the Direct Bidder hypothesis presented earlier.

One topic that has caught the mainstream media's attention is the recent surge in Direct Bid take down participation in Treasury auctions, which as we pointed out previously (3 Year auction, 10 Year auction), has jumped from sub 10% average well into the double digit arena. Today the Financial Times dedicates an entire article to questioning just who may be going all out in their purchases of Treasuries as a direct bidder. We suggest that this "bid" is none other than China funding Direct covert purchases of Treasuries as an extension of the Fed's Quantitative Easing policy.

In an extremely intriguing development today Google threatened to close down its China operations after unearthing a highly sophisticated attack aimed at accessing gmail accounts of Chinese human-rights activists. According to Google the attacks originated in China and included accounts of U.S. and E.U. based activists. Google made the announcement today in its blog-post titled "A New Approach to China".

While some China Bears are busy publicizing prediciton of an utter Dubai or Enron-like collapse in China, Beijing is actually in the process of rebalancing its economy and an overheated real estate market. And gold is poised to benefit the most from this shift.

After posting a record crude-oil import month in December, as well as the second highest iron-ore import month in history, China's program economy is roaring back to life, even if the imports are actually sitting in full warehouses, used to build empty cities that consume negative electricity, make washing machines that never launder anything except the government's flawed economic statistics, and create cars that somehow use up ever-less gasoline. Of course, when the government has trillions in increasingly worthless excess dollar foreign reserves that have to be used up for something, it is no wonder that the Chinese government is buying anything and everything it can stockpile, and that can't be devalued by Tim Geithner, hand over fist. As for exports: courtesy of the dollar peg, which makes China's exports as cheap as the US' (assuming the latter had much of anything to export besides financial innovation), China had no shortage of counterparties to purchase its $1.2 trillion in 2009 exports. Yet despite all this, China's trade surplus plunged a record $100 billion, or 34%, to $196 billion from 2008's $296 billion.

While the domestic money printing syndicate refuses to accept the glaring reality that endless money printing causes unavoidable hyperinflation (the only question being when), China has decided it is time to start closing the spigot. Bloomberg reports that, "China’s central bank began to roll back its monetary stimulus for an economy poised to become the world’s second-biggest this year, seeking to reduce the danger of asset-price inflation after a record surge in credit. The People’s Bank of China yesterday sold three-month bills at a higher interest rate for the first time in 19 weeks." Ah the benefits of a planned economy: controlling the supply and the demand at the same time. And further, being pegged to the dollar, China receives all the secondary benefits of the Chairman's endless dollar printing. Ain't life grand in Beijing...

Even as China proves to the world it has perfected Greenspan's repertoire for blowing asset bubbles in any and every asset class, the fact that China is still a communist country and thus has to carefully respond to public pressure (ironically, more carefully than "capitalist" America) could put a damper in its plans to overtake the US in flooding the market with masses of excess liquidity. The reason: increasing social anger at the affordability of houses. Because unlike the US, where Mozillo's hellspawn and other subprime henchmen were all too willing to subsidize every deadbeat with a 150% LTV on a FICO of 101, China's credit mechanism is not that "advanced" meaning billions of people have become cut off from the home market for the simple reason of lack of affordability (yes, the concepts of equity and savings are still appreciated in certain non-US dominated parts of the world).

2010 will be a year of major transformations, punctuated by the following key escalating divergence: i) on one hand, the ongoing contraction of the US consumer will accelerate, because even as the stock market ramps ever higher (and on ever decreasing trade volume a 2,000 level on the S&P while completely incredulous, is attainable, but will benefit only a select few insiders who continue selling their stock at ridiculous valuations), household wealth will at best stagnate (as a reminder, an increase in interest rates "withdraws" much more household net worth, due to implied house price reduction, than any comparable boost to the S&P can offset), ii) on the other hand, China, which is faced with the ticking timebomb of continuing the status quo and hoping that US consumers can keep growing the global economy, or alternatively, looking inward at its own consumer class, and shifting away from its historical export-led model. The one unavoidable side effect of this prominent departure would be a renminbi appreciation, and a logical drop in the US currency, once the US-China peg if lifted (a theme opposed recently by SocGen analysts, who see the inverse as likely occurring). The main question for 2010 and beyond is whether this will be a gradual decline or a disorderly drop. And behind the scenes of all the bickering, jawboning and posturing, this is precisely what high level officials from both the US and China are currently negotiating. This will be one of the major themes that defines the next decade. Another phrase to describe this process is the gradual drift of US into a nation that is aware it is no longer the primary economic dynamo of global growth as China eagerly steps in to fill that spot.

There’s an article published in the WSJ Online noting how luxury goods manufacturers are hoping the holiday shopping sprees will regain some exclusive tastes in self-indulgence, particularly the luxury watch markets- which have traditionally looked to Wall Street’s bonus pools to mark their sales horizon “uptick” for the year; but with this year’s bonus season either hit or miss, depending on who you talk to, what’s the luxury maker to do? Look to China, of course- because they consume a quarter of the world’s luxury goods. Right?

On December 14, 2009, an inauguration took place that deserves more attention than it received because it marks an economic power shift to the benefit of three Central Asian countries and China and to the detriment of Russia. The presidents of China - Hu Jintao, Turkmenistan - Gurlanguly Berdymukhamedov, Kazakhstan - Nursultan Nazarbayev, and Uzbekistan -Islam Karimov, inaugurated the Central Asia-China gas pipeline that links Turkmenistan's natural gas fields on the Caspian Sea to the Western Chinese border in the Xinjiang province.

the dichotomy between how investors look at China and the rest of the world

Some thoughts on where the Greece story may go. Two possible outcomes. They both have significant impacts.

This paragraph, taken out SoGen’s Dylan Grice research report, sums up the dichotomy of how investors look at China and the rest of the world.

Some notable tidbits from Rosie's am piece: "We just came across a Bloomberg News article quoting an official from the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (Ji Xiaonan, the Chief) as saying “we recommend China increase its gold reserves to 6,000 metric tons within three-to-five years and possibly to 10,000 tons in eight to 10 years.” China’s reserves, after a 76% buildup since 2003, currently stand at 1,054 tons, so we are talking here about the prospect of some pretty heaving buying in coming years." You have one guess what 9,000 incremental tons of gold demand will do to price: here is a hint "If China moves towards 10,000 tonnes, well, that would end up taking the gold price to $2,623/ounce if our calculations are in the ball-park."

Today Bloomberg picks up where we left off yesterday, and in its "chart of the day" analyzes the underpinnings of Albert Edwards' assumption that not only will the Renminbi not increase in value, as so many battered manufacturers in the US hope and pray (and complain to Congress every day), but will in fact be further devalued once China realizes the only way to avoid America's fate down the financial rabbit hole is to unpeg, but in the opposite direction from where Geithner would like. The causal factor: a collapsing trade balance which drags China's forex reserves, resulting in a major shift in international capital flows.