The good times too of high price almost always engender much
fraud. All people are most credulous when they are most happy; and when much
money has just been made, when some people are really making it, when most
people think they are making it, there is a happy opportunity for ingenious
mendacity. Almost everything will be believed for a little while, and long
before discovery the worst and most adroit deceivers are geographically or
legally beyond the reach of punishment.
This
weekend, more on the spreading danger of contagion from China’s biblical, epic,
malinvestment bubble. Bad news will be with us for years. Under the Great
Nixonian Error of fiat money, communist money, we long ago left capitalism, and
entered financial banksterism. Getting back to sound money and capitalism won’t
be easy, and probably takes an anarchic crash of the present system of
financialised corporate systemic gambling. Stay long fully paid up gold and
silver as a hedge against the day that the Fedster’s “Put” collapses under the
weight of all the trillions of derivatives bets it’s supposed to support. We’ve
been serial bubble blowing ever since the Great Nixonian Error blew up in 1987.
But
the Chinese trumped western serial bubble blowing, 2009-2014. In 2015, the
Great Chinese malinvestment bubble started to burst. We haven’t seen anything
yet. Glencore is just the lead western malinvestment casualty, in a vast army
of western corporate wounded and dying. For the next few years, tomorrow will
not be like today which was like yesterday. Tomorrow will be a horror show,
more like the end of the Roman Empire. Our Goldmanite crony central banksters
haven’t a clue as to the damage their fiat money wealth delusion set off. All
eras come to an end. The era of insane central banksterism is now coming to its
end.
If You Thought China's Equity Bubble Was Scary, Check Out Bonds
October
8, 2015 — 10:00 PM BST Updated on October 9, 2015 — 10:37 AM BST
As a rout
in Chinese stocks this year erased $5 trillion of value, investors fled for
safety in the nation’s red-hot corporate bond market. They may have just moved
from one bubble to another.
So says
Commerzbank AG, which puts the chance of a crash by year-end at 20 percent, up
from almost zero in June. Industrial Securities Co. and Huachuang Securities
Co. are warning of an unsustainable rally after bond prices climbed to six-year
highs and issuance jumped to a record. The boom contrasts with caution
elsewhere. A selloff in global corporate notes has pushed yields to a 21-month
high, and credit-derivatives traders are demanding near the most in two years
to insure against losses on Chinese government securities.
While an
imminent collapse isn’t yet the base-case scenario for most forecasters,
China’s 42.2 trillion yuan ($6.7 trillion) bond market is flashing the same
danger signs that triggered a tumble in stocks four months ago: stretched
valuations, a surge in investor leverage and shrinking corporate profits. A
reversal would add to challenges facing China’s ruling Communist Party, which
has struggled to contain volatility in financial markets amid the deepest
economic slowdown since 1990.
----A reversal in the bond market would do more damage to China’s economy than the drop in shares and exacerbate capital flight from the biggest emerging market, according to a worst-case scenario projected by Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA. The Spanish lender more than doubled its first-quarter profit by selling holdings in a Chinese bank.
“The equity rout merely reflects worries about China’s economy, while a bond market crash would mean the worries have become a reality as corporate debts go unpaid," said Xia Le, the chief economist for Asia at Banco Bilbao. "A Chinese credit collapse would also likely spark a more significant selloff in emerging-market assets.”
For all the concerns about a bond rout, default levels in China have so far been remarkably low, thanks in part to government-orchestrated bailouts for troubled firms. Just four companies have defaulted on onshore bonds, including Shanghai Chaori Solar Energy Science & Technology Co., which became the first to renege on its debt in 2014.
Government Firepower
China has the wherewithal to stave off a crisis in its credit markets, according to Ken Hu, chief investment officer for Asia-Pacific fixed income at Invesco Ltd. "Unlike most other emerging-market countries, China has high domestic saving rates, little government debt, healthy fiscal balances, strong trade and current account surpluses, and most of its corporate debts are domestic," he said.Policy makers went to unprecedented lengths to combat the tumble in share prices, including compelling state-owned firms to buy equities and preventing major stockholders from selling. The Shanghai Composite rose 1.27 percent on Friday, its second straight day of advance after a week-long national holiday.
A recovery in the equity market could be the trigger for a selloff in bonds as money managers liquidate their holdings to catch the rally in stocks, according to Thomas Kwan, the Hong Kong-based chief investment officer at Harvest Global Investments Ltd., whose Chinese unit offers funds through the Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor program.
More
The Last Blast Furnace in England's Capital of Steel
A great ironworks was opened in 1839 on
the south bank of the River Tees in northern England. Known as Teesside, the
area became the world's ironmaking capital, with almost 120 blast furnaces
operating on the riverbanks by mid-century. The site switched to steel at
the end of the 19th century and played a crucial role in armament
production through both world wars. The sole blast furnace remaining at
Teesside was built in 1979 in Redcar, at the river's mouth. The operator,
a unit of Thailand's Sahaviriya Steel Industries (SSI), has announced
plans to shut the plant, eliminating 1,700 jobs and ending a long era of steel
production at Teesside.
Standard Chartered Said to Cut About 1,000 Senior Employees
October
9, 2015 — 10:38 AM BST Updated on October 9, 2015 — 3:02 PM BST
Standard
Chartered Plc Chief Executive Officer Bill Winters is planning to cut
about a quarter of senior staff, resulting in about 1,000 job cuts worldwide,
to help reverse a two-year profit slide at the emerging markets-focused lender,
a person with knowledge of the decision said. The shares rose.
The bank
plans to eliminate some of the 4,000 employees who are graded in bands one to
four, ranging from board members to managing directors, Winters said in a memo
on Wednesday, according to the person, who asked not to be identified because
the decision is private. The bank will also sell assets and cut clients as part
of the strategic review, the person said.
----Standard Chartered, which generates almost all of its revenue in Asia, has plummeted 20 percent this year after commodity prices slumped and concern spread that China’s economy is slowing more than expected. Since taking over from Peter Sands in June, Winters, 54, increased his control by appointing a new 13-member management team reporting to him. He also cut the bank’s dividend in half to save about $1 billion and pledged to reduce risk-weighted assets by as much as $30 billion.
Analysts
have forecast a capital gap of between $4 billion and $10 billion will be
revealed when the Bank of England releases its second round of stress tests on
Dec. 1.
More
Meanwhile, one day
after the USA say its navy will sail through Chinese claimed 12 mile
territorial waters, China specifically warns against trying. One or the other
needs to back down. A great loss of face for whichever nation backs down, but from
the weasel words of the Reuters article, Uncle Scam seems to be the one getting
cold feet.
China warns U.S. it will not allow violations of its waters
China
said on Friday it would not stand for violations of its territorial waters in
the name of freedom of navigation, as the United States considers sailing
warships close to China's artificial islands in the South China Sea.
A U.S.
defense official told Reuters on Thursday the United States was considering
sending ships to waters inside the 12-nautical-mile zones that China claims as
territory around islands it has built in the Spratly chain.
Western
media reports quoted U.S. officials as saying the action could take place
within a matter of days, but awaited a decision by U.S. President Barack Obama.
The
commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, Admiral Harry Harris, declined to say
on Friday whether the United States would carry out the plan. But he made clear
it was an option he had presented to Obama and said the United States must
carry out freedom of navigation patrols throughout the Asia-Pacific.
"I
simply won't discuss future operations," Harris told a Washington seminar.
"With regards to whether we are going to sail within 12 miles, or fly
within 12 miles, of any of the reclaimed islands that China has built in the
South China Sea, I will reserve that for later."
Earlier
on Friday, China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying warned against any
such patrols.
More
Again, it may be said that we need not be alarmed at the
magnitude of our credit system or at its refinement, for that we have learned
by experience the way of controlling it, and always manage it with discretion.
But we do not always manage it with discretion. There is the astounding
instance of Overend, Gurney, and Co. to the contrary. Ten years ago that house
stood next to the Bank of England in the City of London; it was better known
abroad than any similar firm—known, perhaps, better than any purely English
firm. The partners had great estates, which had mostly been made in the
business. They still derived an immense income from it. Yet in six years they
lost all their own wealth, sold the business to the company, and then lost a
large part of the company's capital. And these losses were made in a manner so
reckless and so foolish, that one would think a child who had lent money in the
City of London would have lent it better.
After this example, we must not confide too surely in long-established
credit, or in firmly-rooted traditions of business. We must examine the system
on which these great masses of money are manipulated, and assure ourselves that
it is safe and right.
Walter Bagehot. Lombard Street. 1873
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