Janet Yellen's visit to China: the world has not changed, what has changed is China. China has become stronger

 

@taytakwang161

Let Yellen yell all she wants but China just humbly listen and then says it needs to clear off a big chunk of Us OLD Treasuries debt first, only then will consider to buy new ones. However buying new Treasuries now will mean supporting their incoming huge military budget which is really a big security threat to world peace

This is how Yellen negotiated with China. She proposed to cancel the additional tariffs imposed during the Trump era, but requires China to meet the 3 following conditions:

1. Buy $850 billion US treasury bonds

2. Withdrawal of China's counter-sanctions (export restrictions of the two rare metals indispensable for the making of high-end chips etc)

3. Pledge not to support Russia.

All these conditions are unilaterally advantageous to the USA. Tariff removal will to some extent advantage China. However given 90% of the cost of the tariffs are borne by US consumers, it will mainly serve to bring down the US inflation. 

Secondly, Yellen wants China to forgive the BRI debts. Thus, the cash flow derived from the infrastructure projects China financed and built for developing countries will be repurposed to pay back debts of US banks and the IMF. So in the end, everything China had built for the Global South will serve as the collateral when these countries borrow from the US. 

Americans must be very proud of the extremely clever way their politicians has aggressively protected US interests from the position of strength. 

China answered - *NO*. 

Not surprisingly the US is nostalgic of the era of the eight allies invading China in 1900.  A photo of that shameful event is still hanging on the wall of the US military headquarters and another such photo is on the wall of the US embassy. The US 'sensitivities' obviously doesn't apply to China.  Imagine if on the US embassy walls were hung pictures of their ancestors' slave markets, or their early settlers giving smallpox infested blankets to the American natives. 

In 1900, China was as helpless as the American Indians when they were facing European invaders. The westerners had advanced weapons, forcing China into total submission within months from the start of any war with them. 

China subsequently were forced to sign the unequal treaties, such as the Boxer Protocol, one of the many unequal treaties that marked China's one hundred years of humiliation, having to hand over war compensation of 18,000 tons of silver to these invaders. Lands and ports were turned over as foreign concessions. 

The eight country alliance, (ie, the current G7 plus Russia) carved up China amongst themselves.  The world has not changed, what has changed is China. China has become stronger. This is China's patriotic lesson from these westerners. The historical shame is deeply burnt into the psyche of every Chinese, including those overseas Chinese who still regard themselves as Chinese. 

Yellen invited a group of pro-American feminist economists to dinner. While Pro-Chinese academics in USA are under CIA/FBI surveillance and are frequently thrown in prison and charged for espionage, Yellen is free in China, she can meet anyone she pleases. 

As usual, Yellen told her Chinese guests that the USA government is only against the Chinese government but not against the Chinese people. She seem to suffer from an information lag.  Twenty years ago, many Chinese liberals bought that. Today, Chinese people don't buy that anymore.

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Hedge funds invasion of US treasuries puts bond at risk, more turbulence in US debt market

Hedge funds are crowding into U.S. Treasuries, and that has bond traders bracing for more turbulence.

While the Federal Reserve doesn’t break out hedge-fund ownership, a group seen as a proxy increased its holdings to a record $1.27 trillion in the past year, according to a quarterly report released by the central bank this month. That came as foreign central banks and finance ministries, the biggest buy-and-hold owners in recent years, culled their investments for the first time on an annual basis since 2000.

The surge of hedge funds into U.S. government debt is a worrying sign to Societe Generale SA and Commerzbank AG.

They say the firms, which often use borrowed money and jump in and out of trades at a moment’s notice, will boost the chances of sudden shocks in the world’s de facto haven market. That may compound swings in Treasuries, which by some measures have reached record levels as concerns about China, the global economy and diverging central-bank policies whipsaw bond traders. The Treasury Department is already looking into whether the market isn’t running as smoothly as it should.

Volatility Risk

Foreign central banks’ “market share is being replaced by private investors who take a much more active approach,” Rob VandenAssem, the head of investment-grade fixed-income for developed markets at PineBridge Investments, which oversees $85 billion, said in an e-mail. “Hedge funds in particular pose a risk to volatility.”

The potential that hedge funds will amplify Treasury swings adds to questions about the resilience of the $13.3 trillion market, especially as the Fed considers whether to raise interest rates this year. And because yields are so low, sudden shifts in momentum could lead to big losses, especially for less nimble investors.

Ten-year Treasuries yielded 1.89 percent today, more than a half-percentage point below their June peak of 2.5 percent.

In the Fed’s quarterly reports, domestic hedge funds are categorized under “households and non-profit organizations.” Most analysts consider it an accurate gauge of Treasuries held by those high-powered firms, and to a lesser degree, ownership by households and other groups like private-equity shops and personal trusts. The latest data released March 10 showed they were the largest buyers of Treasuries last year, adding $398 billion. That’s the biggest increase on an annual basis since 2009.

Hedge funds are also signaling their presence in the U.S. bond market in other ways. Since the end of 2013, investors domiciled in the Caribbean, a popular legal home for hundreds of hedge funds seeking lower taxes, have increased their holdings of Treasuries by 43 percent to $352 billion, Treasury Department data show. As a group, they’re now the third biggest overseas creditors, behind only China and Japan.

At the same time, foreign investors, who still hold 40 percent of America’s bonds, were the only net sellers in 2015 as central banks in China and other emerging markets raised cash to support their currencies. And Treasury Department figures showed they kept selling at the start of the year.

The rise of hedge-fund ownership may already be making fluctuations in Treasuries worse. This year, daily swings in 10-year yields exceeded one standard deviation -- equal to 0.043 percentage point -- about 39 percent of time, according to TD Securities. That eclipses last year’s figure of 34 percent, which was the highest for any year going back to 1975, the data show.

“This will likely add volatility” said Bruno Braizinha, a fixed-income strategist at SocGen in New York.

Treasury Review

Concerns over abrupt swings, whether it’s because of a lack of liquidity or an increase in high-volume traders, have already caught the attention of the U.S. government. Spurred by a 12-minute plunge and rebound in yields on Oct. 15, 2014, the Treasury Department is conducting its first comprehensive review of the market’s structure since 1998.

Some say hedge funds aren’t the problem, but a potential solution.

By stepping in to take the place of traditional Wall Street banks, whose bond-trading businesses have come under pressure from regulations and shifts in technology, hedge funds may actually increase liquidity. And their use of leverage, or borrowed money, means they have the wherewithal to trade vast quantities of securities.

Leverage, Liquidity

At least that’s the view of Ronin Capital LLC, a Chicago-based proprietary trading firm. When U.S. officials asked for comments on liquidity and market structure earlier this year, the firm wrote in a March 19 letter that “leverage and liquidity in the U.S. Treasury market go hand in hand.”

“If the only entities willing to hold positions in U.S. Treasuries are ‘buy and hold,’ meaningful liquidity in the U.S. Treasury market will be nonexistent,” the firm said.

Some sophisticated investors have also started to trade on Treasury platforms previously reserved for bond dealers, according to an October report from financial-services consulting firm Greenwich Associates. Christian Hauff, the co-founder of Quantitative Brokers LLC, says many of those funds now look a lot like Wall Street’s proprietary bond-trading desks from years ago.

“You’re seeing those that used to trade on Wall Street transition to working at hedge funds,” he said.

Even if hedge funds provide more liquidity, it doesn’t necessarily ensure the ride won’t be bumpy. That’s because while traditional dealers often served as buffers for their clients during times of stress, hedge funds have no such incentive.

When volatility picks up, hedge funds can “jump on another ship,” said David Schnautz, a London-based rates strategist at Commerzbank. - Bloomberg

What is a hedge fund? - MoneyWeek Investment Tutorials

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