Free Republic

This year the US has to roll over 7 trillion USD in bonds and finance an annual deficit of around 2 trillion on top of it. BRICS and Japan are nor going to buy US treasuries anymore. Up to now, US bond auctions did not fail because financial institutions had enough excess reserves deposited at the federal reserve to adsorb newly issues treasuries. However, this liquidity seems to dry up rapidly.

There was a repo desk disaster that occurred in 2019 right before the covid bullsh*t happened. Covid was actually a 2008 style bailout that was disguised as a fake and gay pandemic. The usual suspects are now openly talking about it in the (((wall street journal))) in response to the ICBC “hack” that rattled the Treasury market a few weeks ago. archive.is/HpFBC >This spike was different. When one firm can’t deliver promised cash or securities, the party on the other side of that transaction then doesn’t have them to pass on to its own trading partners. That can cascade quickly....

Aug 22 (Reuters) - S&P Global cut its credit ratings and outlook on multiple U.S. regional banks on Monday, saying higher funding costs and troubles in the commercial real estate (CRE) sector would likely test their credit strength. A sharp rise in interest rates by the U.S. Federal Reserve is fueling liquidity concerns as costs tied to funding deposits surge, the S&P said in a summarized note. The agency cut its ratings on Associated Banc-Corp (ASB.N) and Valley National Bancorp (VLY.O) on funding risks and higher reliance on brokered deposits, while UMB Financial Corp (UMBF.O), Comerica Bank (CMA.N) and KeyCorp...

Fears of a broad financial contagion spread on Friday after tech lender Silicon Valley Bank set off alarm bells over liquidity concerns — sparking share losses across the banking sector worth some $52 billion on Thursday. Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm Founders Firm advised clients to withdraw their deposits from Silicon Valley Bank — despite the fact the lender has been a mainstay for tech startups for decades, according to Bloomberg News. Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge fund manager, called on the US government to step in and bail out Silicon Valley Bank. Michael Burry, the eccentric investor featured in...

MARKET EXTRA The Federal Reserve on Friday confirmed what many investors were saying for some time: the $24 trillion Treasury market has been experiencing low levels of market liquidity in recent months. The central bank has been rapidly increasing interest rates since March as part of a fight to bring inflation down from a 40-year high. The hope has been that such steps can cool consumer demand enough to tame prices, without throwing the economy into a painful recession, or spark a financial crisis. But since May, cracks in liquidity in Treasurys, the biggest, deepest part of the U.S. bond...

"Why does Switzerland suddenly have a financial institution needing $3 billion in cheap (3.33%) overnight funding from the US Fed. This was the first time the Fed sent dollars to the Swiss National Bank this year, and the first time the Fed used the swap line in size (besides a token amount to the ECB every now and then)!" Credit Suisse is bankrupt. They tried to save it until they ran out of USD, now the Fed is trying to save them...luckily the Fed cannot run out of USD... and so it goes.

The International Monetary Fund warned on Tuesday that global financial stability risks have increased, raising the risk of a disorderly repricing in markets, as it pointed to emerging markets and housing markets as particularly vulnerable. The IMF said that "storm clouds" are looming over the global economy, including persistent inflation, a slowdown in China, and ongoing stresses from Russia's attack on Ukraine which have driven up the risk of a severe downturn to levels not seen since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. In its latest Global Financial Stability Report, the IMF warned that global financial stability risks had increased...

Rivals Carnival Corp and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings are also trying to preserve cash in face of unexpected headwinds Royal Caribbean Group has taken out another $1bn in debt as the entire cruise sector looks to preserve liquidity, in a bid to refinance a bond series coming due. The New York-listed owner of 64 ships made a private offering of $900m senior convertible notes due 2025 on Monday. It also plans to offer another $135m in notes to principal buyers of the debt. Cruise shares ‘diverge’ from sector’s recovering booking performance Read more “The purpose of the offering is to...

Stock investors might need to look out below. An esoteric financial markets indicator just registered a warning signal that historically augured in double-digit falls in the S&P 500, the index tracked by the SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) exchange-traded fund. The metric in question is the Marshallian K., which measures the liquidity in the economy. Recently, the liquidity started contracting... “[T]he Marshallian K. now shows liquidity not only deteriorating but actually contracting,” states a recent report from financial company Leuthold Group. That conclusion might surprise many people who look at the Federal Reserve’s money-printing program, which started during the financial crisis...

According to Reuters calculations based on official central bank data, 1.05 trillion yuan worth of reverse repos are set to mature on Monday, meaning that 150 billion yuan in net cash will be injected. Investors are bracing for a volatile session in Chinese markets when onshore trades resume on Monday after a break for the Lunar New Year which was extended by the government. China’s stock, currency and bond markets have all been closed since Jan. 23 and had been due to re-open last Friday. There will be no further delays to the reopening, the securities market regulator said in...

he Federal Reserve on Tuesday injected longer-term cash into the U.S. banking system in an effort to meet the funding needs of banks and Wall Street following a bout of turbulence in money markets last week. The New York Federal Reserve added $30.0 billion cash into the banking system through 14-day loans to primary dealers. These 14-day term repurchase agreements (repo) were on top of the $75 billion in temporary cash through an overnight repo operation. Primary dealers, or the top 24 Wall Street firms that do business directly with Fed, borrow from the central bank by using their Treasuries...

Much has been written about the mounting pile of debt for U.S. oil companies (not to mention the well-known Brazilian oil giant). Not that long ago, many oil and gas companies secured at least a part of their revenue by hedging contracts. Bloomberg already reported in June that many of these companies saw their artificial safety nets vanishing as oil prices failed to recover. One month later, we heard such morale boosting terms as ‘frack now, pay later,’ which were merely a bold move by struggling oil services companies to encourage cash strapped oil and gas companies to continue operations....

China froze share offers and set up a market-stabilization fund on Saturday, the Wall Street Journal said, as Beijing intensified efforts to pull stock markets out of a nose-dive that is threatening the world's second-largest economy. Beijing's reported suspension of initial public offers (IPOs) came a few hours after extraordinary announcements by major brokers and fund managers, which collectively pledged to invest at least $19 billion of their own money into stocks. China's government, regulators and financial institutions are now waging a concerted campaign to prop up the nation's two main share markets, amid fears that a meltdown would rock...

I don't know too much about Jim Rickards, just found this to be an interesting video about the overall economy and some tidbits about what our government agencies are up to. The video is a 45 minutes long interview of sorts and discussion. Just posting in the event other are interested.

The FDIC and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency are set to release new liquidity rules today. The rules will redefine the types of liquid assets giant Wall Street banks must hold to meet the new Basel III Liquidity Coverage Rule. The Federal regulators are expected to emphasize banks holding short-term U.S. Treasury securities in order to meet a bank run or credit crunch lasting 30 days. The state treasurers’ panic over the rule is justified. According to press reports, the Federal regulators may exclude municipal bonds issued by states, counties, cities and school districts from the category...

Ever wonder what a digital bank run looks like? Nearly one million Mt. Gox users are finding out first hand.The Tokyo-based exchange, popular amongst currency traders, has risen in prominence by offering its customers storage services in a variety of currencies. This effectively makes it act as an online bank. One such “currency” that it allows accounts to be denominated in is bitcoin.Yesterday the exchange halted withdrawals of the digital currency, citing a technical malfunction. It promises to reopen for business on February 10th. What many news sources are missing is that this is not a particularly new development –...

The banks would hold a buffer of liquid assets - such as government bonds - to draw on to ensure they can meet withdrawals by depositors, to post collateral due to credit rating downgrades and to meet other needs. U.S. government debt and excess reserves held at the Fed are deemed the most liquid under the Fed's proposal, while claims on government-sponsored enterprises, such as mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are less liquid and may make up only 40 percent of the buffer.

Making The Most Of Borrowed Time (Central Banks Have Had Enough?)Jaime Caruana, General Manager of the BIS on the occasion of the Bank’s Annual General Meeting in Basel on 23 June 2013Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Since the beginning of the financial crisis almost six years ago, central banks and fiscal authorities have supported the global economy with unprecedented measures. Policy rates have been kept near zero in the largest advanced economies. Central bank balance sheets have doubled from $10 trillion to more than $20 trillion. And fiscal authorities almost everywhere have been piling up debt, which has risen by...

What is globalization? /snip In the article I extended one of the arguments I made in my book, The Volatility Machine, that the globalization process is driven primarily by monetary expansion and the consequent increase in risk appetite. What was new in this piece, because I hadn’t realized it when I wrote my book, is that every period of globalization coincided with a stage of the industrial revolution in which accompanying the expansion in international trade and capital flows is a major technological boom, driven also by monetary expansion. After re-reading the article I thought it might be useful to...

A heavy Treasury auction schedule with a big settlement on Thursday was enough to contribute to keeping stock prices (SPX) in check this week, but not to knock down Treasuries. Demand for US Government paper is so great it simply engulfs even heavier than expected levels of new supply. The massive capital flight out of Europe is now confined to the only game in town, the US Treasury market, the last great Ponzi game still operating. This won’t end well, but it won’t end until it ends, and the technical signals suggest that it won’t happen in the short run....