Looks like peak silver conditions....
Imagine if Fed governor choice + Trump not allowed to fire Lisa Cook is a sell the event regarding 'political take over of Fed', US clarifies no import tariffs on precious metal and China threat of export restriction gets negotiated away...
Wow it looks like TGA hit $1t (ht @ces921).
What if the government shutdown is unintentionally causing a build up of funds, which is draining reserves a lot and putting upward pressure on repo rates?
@AndreasSteno Lower risk of too high tariffs - steepener: less near term inflation shock/worse fiscal longer term with no tariff income? ; fed can cut but fiscal headache ?
When the labor demand curve slides down the vertical portion of the labor supply curve, all you get are lower wage growth and fewer job openings; in other words, an “immaculate disinflation”. That was the story for 2023/24. This year is likely to be very different. We’ve reached the kink in the Beveridge/Phillips curve.
Internet's best free source of macro and market analysis out again: FX Pilot 50 pages, full of charts , not for the macro novice.
https://t.co/HowRrhfE1Z
Two of the three main indicators of Chinese intervention in the fx market are out, and as usual they are interesting --
PBOC balance sheet reserves were down $8b in January.
But the state banks foreign assets rose by over $20b ...
1/
China reported a $180b current account surplus in q4, bringing its full year surplus up to $420 billion --
The thing is that is still far too small given China's $1 trillion customs surplus. The real surplus is closer to $800b in my opinion.
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China reported a $180b current account surplus in q4, bringing its full year surplus up to $420 billion --
The thing is that is still far too small given China's $1 trillion customs surplus. The real surplus is closer to $800b in my opinion.
1/
A little lost in the (temporary?) shelving of Canada/Mexico tariffs is the fact that the China ones are about 2X everything Trump did in his first term--which was considered quite dramatic at the time (although that was probably overstated).
Could be for better or for worse.
Great way to incentivese the smartest and most productive to leave - they can have paid vacation with high confidence in finding something in the private sector..
PEANUTS
A lot of people have cited the hiring freeze and this buyout offer as a sign that Trump is serious about reigning in spending
Trump offers federal workers buyout, promises eight months severance pay
We are talking about 150k-200k employees in a base-case scenario. It is essentially peanuts (and only symbolic) but will impact February NFP
This is similar to the EU cutting 5-10% of its workforce. Not a single member country would notice.
Trump critics don't get his style. This clip will help (hint: Trump is Will Ferrell in the scene... another hint: Davos poster on the wall 🤣).
https://t.co/u42X33nNJ3
The CPI-based Ecumenical Underlying Inflation Measure was 2.7% in December, up from 2.6% the month before. Although core CPI came in a touch reassuring other measures, notably median and trimmed mean, did not--suggesting some of the surface improvement may have been quirks.
This is beyond insane:
Donald Trump just launched a meme coin, $TRUMP, which is now over +4,200% in 2 hours.
The market cap now stands at $7.7 BILLION in a causal meme coin launch on a Friday night.
What is happening?
That's the game plan to get out of leverage overhang. Roll the whole economy into lower yielding debt to create space for amortisation. Lower for longer like US post 2008
You can put lipstick on a pig, but it doesn’t change anything. Chinese bond yields collapsed below a longstanding roughly 3-5% trading range in 2020 and have been falling ever since. That’s deflation