James Rickards: Trump Continues to Tighten the Screws on China

At the height of the Chinese capital outflows in 2016, China was losing $80 billion per month of hard currency to defend the yuan.

At that tempo, China would have burned through $1 trillion in one year and become insolvent. China did the only feasible thing, which was to close the capital account; (interest rate hikes and further devaluation would have caused other more serious problems).

This distress might have been temporary if China had managed to maintain good trading relations with the U.S. But that proved another chimera. The trade war, which has broken out between the U.S. and China has damaged Chinese exports and raised costs on Chinese imports at exactly the time China was counting on a larger trade surplus to help it finance its mountain of debt.

Now trade is drying up and China is stuck with debt it can’t repay or rollover easily. This marks the end of China’s Cinderella growth story, and the beginning of a period of economic slowdown and potential social unrest.

The coming Chinese crack-up is not just theoretical. The hard data supports the thesis. Here’s a real-time data summary from the Director of Floor Operations at the New York Stock Exchange, Steven “Sarge” Guilfoyle:

"The greater threat to financial markets will come, in my opinion from the slowing of global growth, at least partially due to the current state of international trade. 

This thought process is lent some credence by last night’s rather disastrous across-the-board macroeconomic numbers released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics. … For the Month of July, in China – Fixed Asset Investment.Growth slowed to the slowest pace since this data was first recorded back in 1992, printing in decline for a fifth consecutive month. Industrial Production. 

Missed expectations for a third consecutive month, while printing at a growth rate equaling the nation’s slowest since February of 2016. Retail Sales. Finally showing a dent in the armor, missed expectation while slowing from the prior month. Unemployment. This item has only been recorded since January. Headline unemployment “popped” up to 5.1% from June’s 4.8%. Oil Production. 

The NBS reported that Chinese oil production fell 2.6% in July, and now stands from a daily perspective at the lowest level since June of 2011. China will not report Q3 GDP until October 15. The National Bureau of Statistics reported annualized growth of 6.7% for the second quarter. Depending on the veracity of the data, one must start to wonder if China can indeed hang on to growth of 6.5% going forward."

This unpleasant picture Sarge paints is based on official Chinese data. Yet, China has a long history of overstating its data and painting the tape. The reality in China is always worse than the official data reveals.

This slowdown comes just months after Chinese dictator Xi Jinping was offered a dictator-for-life role by the removal of term limits and was placed on the same pedestal as Mao Zedong by the creation of “Xi Jinping Thought” as a formal branch of Chinese Communist ideology.

The Book of Proverbs says, “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” Xi Jinping now finds himself in precisely this position. His political ascension inflated his pride just as he now faces the reality of a falling economy and possible destruction of any consensus around his power and the lack of accountability.

Trump continues to tighten the screws with more tariffs, more penalties, and a near complete shutdown of China’s ability to invest in U.S. markets.

Turkey, Argentina, and Venezuela are large developing economies that are in different stages of collapse and threaten the global economy with panic through contagion.

Yet, those three economies combined are not as large or important as China. Only Trump and Xi can salvage the situation with negotiation and reasonable compromise on trade and intellectual property. But, Trump won’t blink first; that’s up to Xi.

So far, a spirit of compromise is not in the air. A spirit of Chinese collapse and contagion is.

- Source, James Rickards via the Daily Reckoning

The Dollars Dominance May Soon be Coming to an End

Cutting a nation off from SWIFT is like taking away its oxygen.

The U.S. had previously banned Iran from the dollar payments system (FedWire), which it controls, but Iran turned to SWIFT to transfer euros and yen in order to maintain its receipt of hard currency for oil exports.

In 2013, the U.S. successfully kicked Iran out of SWIFT. This was a crushing blow to Iran because it could not receive payment in hard currencies for its oil.

This pushed Iran to the bargaining table, which resulted in the Iran nuclear deal with the U.S. and its allies in 2015. Now Trump has negated that U.S.-Iran deal and is putting pressure on its allies to once again refuse to do business with Iran.

And Congress is again pushing to exclude Iran from SWIFT as part of a sanctions program.

The difficulty this time is that our European allies are not on board and are seeking ways to keep the nuclear deal alive and work around U.S. sanctions.

Europe’s solution is to therefore create new nondollar payment channels.

In the short run, the U.S. is likely to enforce its sanctions rigorously. European businesses will probably go along with the U.S. because they don’t want to lose business in the U.S. itself or be banned from the U.S. dollar payments system.

But in the longer run, this is just one more development pushing the world at large away from dollars and toward alternatives of all kinds, including new payment systems and cryptocurrencies.

It’s also one more sign that dollar dominance in global finance may end sooner than most expect. We are getting dangerously close to that point right now.

- Source, James Rickards via the Daily Reckoning

The World Is Ganging up Against the Dollar

The U.S. has been highly successful at pursuing financial warfare, including sanctions. But for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

As the U.S. wields the dollar weapon more frequently, the rest of the world works harder to shun the dollar completely.

I’ve been warning for years about efforts of nations like Russia and China to escape what they call “dollar hegemony” and create a new financial system that does not depend on the dollar and helps them get out from under dollar-based economic sanctions.

These efforts are only increasing.

In the past four months, Russia has reduced its ownership of U.S. Treasury securities by 84% and has acquired enough gold to surpass China on the list of major holders of gold as official reserves.

Russia has almost 2,000 tonnes of gold, having more than tripled its gold reserves in the past 10 years. This combination of fewer Treasuries and more gold puts Russia on a path to full insulation from U.S. financial sanctions.

Russia can settle its balance of payments obligations with gold shipments or gold sales and avoid U.S. asset freezes by not holding assets the U.S. can reach.

Of course, Russia is not the only country engaged in financial warfare with the United States. China and Iran are leading examples, but we can also add Turkey to the list after its latest currency crisis.

Russia is providing these and other nations a model to achieve similar distance from U.S. efforts to use the dollar to enforce its foreign policy priorities.

Take China and Iran. China is the second-largest economy in the world and the fastest-growing major emerging market. China has a voracious appetite for energy but has little oil of its own. Iran is a major oil producer, and China is Iran’s biggest customer.

But oil is priced in dollars and dollars flow through the U.S. banking system. Trump’s Iran sanctions make it impossible for China to pay Iran in dollars. If U.S. sanctions prohibit dollar payments for Iranian oil, then Iran and China may have no choice but to transact in yuan (see below for the implications).

Meanwhile, Europe has remained a faithful partner to the U.S. and has gone along with sanctions against Iran, for example.

That’s because European companies and countries that violate U.S. sanctions can be punished with denied access to U.S. dollar payment channels.

But now, Europe is also showing signs it wants to escape dollar hegemony. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas recently called for a new EU-based payments system independent of the U.S. and SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) that would not involve dollar payments.

- Source, James Rickards

New Reality of China’s Failing Economy Is Coming Soon

I’ve written for years that Chinese economic development is partly real and partly smoke and mirrors, and that it’s critical for investors to separate one from the other to make any sense out of China and its impact on the world.

My longest piece on this topic was Chapter Four of my second book, The Death of Money(2014), but I’ve written much else besides, including many articles for my newsletters.

There’s no denying China’s remarkable economic progress over the past thirty years. Hundreds of millions have escaped poverty and found useful employment in manufacturing or services in the major cities.

Infrastructure gains have been historic, including some of the best trains in the world, state-of-the-art transportation hubs, cutting edge telecommunications systems, and a rapidly improving military.

Yet, that’s only half the story.

The other half is pure waste, fraud and theft. About 45% of Chinese GDP is in the category of “investment.” A developed economy GDP such as the U.S. is about 70% consumption and 20% investment.

There’s nothing wrong with 45% investment in a fast-growing developing economy assuming the investment is highly productive and intelligently allocated.

That’s not the case in China. At least half of the investment there is pure waste. It takes the form of “ghost cities” that are fully-built with skyscrapers, apartments, hotels, clubs, and transportation networks – and are completely empty.

This is not just western propaganda; I’ve seen the ghost cities first hand and walked around the empty offices and hotels.

Chinese officials try to defend the ghost cities by claiming they are built for the future. That’s nonsense. Modern construction is impressive, but it’s also high maintenance. Those shiny new buildings require occupants, rents and continual maintenance to remain shiny and functional. The ghost cities will be obsolete long before they are ever occupied.

Other examples of investment waste include over-the-top white elephant public structures such as train stations with marble facades, 128 escalators (mostly empty), 100-foot ceilings, digital advertising and few passengers. The list can be extended to include airports, canals, highways, and ports, some of which are needed and many of which are pure waste.

Communist party leaders endorse these wasteful projects because they have positive effects in terms of job creation, steel fabrication, glass installation, and construction. However, those effects are purely temporary until the project is completed. The costs are paid with borrowed money that can never be repaid.

China might report 6.8% growth in GDP, but when the waste is stripped out the actual growth is closer to 4.5%. Meanwhile, China’s debts grow faster than the economy and its debt-to-GDP ratio is even worse than the U.S.

All of this would be sustainable if China had an unlimited ability to rollover and expand its debt and ample reserves to deal with a banking or liquidity crisis. It doesn’t. China’s financial fragility was revealed during the 2014-2016 partial collapse of its capital account.

China had about $4 trillion in its capital account in early 2014. That amount had fallen to about $3 trillion by late 2016. Much of that collapse was due to capital flight for fear of Chinese devaluation, (which did occur in August 2015 and again in December 2015).

China’s $3 trillion of remaining reserves is not as impressive as it sounds. $1 trillion of that amount is invested in illiquid assets (hedge funds, private equity funds, direct investments, etc.) This is real wealth, but it’s not available on short notice to defend the currency or prop up banks.

Another $1 trillion of Chinese reserves are needed as a precautionary fund to bail-out the Chinese banking system. Many observers are relaxed about the insolvency of Chinese banks because they are confident about China’s ability to rescue them. They may be right about that, but it’s not free. China needs to keep $1 trillion of dry powder to save the banks, so that money’s off the table.

- Source, James Rickards

Jim Rickards: Gold Price on the Verge of a Breakout?

In this four-part video series Jim Rickards, bestselling author and investment banker, discusses the core topics of this year´s "In Gold we Trust" report with the two authors Ronald-Peter Stöferle and Mark Valek.

- Source, In Gold We Trust

James Rickards: Russia Rising, The New Axis of Gold

Russia’s financial war against the U.S. is heating up – dumping U.S. Treasuries and buying gold to break U.S. Dollar hegemony. What’s their next move?

Jim Rickards: Predicting the Next Financial Crisis

Investors Can't See the Pending Disaster Staring Them in the Face

Investors have a tendency to dismiss these threats, either because they have persisted for a long time in many instances without catastrophic results, or because of a belief that somehow the crises will resolve themselves or be brought in for a soft landing by policymakers and politicians.

These beliefs are good examples of well-known cognitive biases such as anchoring, confirmation bias and selective perception. Analysis tells us that there is little basis for complacency. Yet the VIX is back near all-time lows as shown in Chart 1 below.

Even if the probability of any one event blowing up is low, when you have a long list of volatile events, the probability of at least one blowing up approaches 100%.

With this litany of crises in mind, each ready to erupt into market turmoil, what are my predictive analytic models saying about the prospects for an increase in measures of market volatility in the months ahead?

They’re saying that investor complacency is overdone and market volatility is set to return with a vengeance. Even with the Facebook blowup and trouble in the tech space, VIX is just above 13.

Changes in VIX and other measures of market volatility do not occur in a smooth, linear way. The dynamic is much more likely to involve extreme spikes rather than gradual increases. This tendency toward extreme spikes is the result of dynamic short-covering that feeds on itself in a recursive manner — or what is commonly known as a feedback loop.

Shorting volatility indexes has been a very popular income-producing strategy for years. Traders sell put options on volatility indexes, collect the option premium as income, wait out the option expiration and profit at the option buyer’s expense. It’s been like selling flood protection in the desert; seems like easy money.

The problem is that every now and then a flash flood does hit the desert.

When we consider recent financial catastrophes affecting U.S. investors only, without regard to other types of disaster, we have had major stock market crashes or global liquidity crises in 1987, 1994, 1998, 2000 and 2008.

That’s five major drawdowns in 31 years, or an average of about once every six years. The last such event was 10 years ago. So the world is overdue for another crisis based on market history.

Investors expect that the future will resemble the past, that markets move in continuous ways and that extreme events occur rarely, if at all.

These assumptions are all false.

The future often diverges sharply from the recent past. Markets gap up or down, giving investors no opportunity to trade at intermediate prices. Extreme events occur with much greater frequency than standard models expect.

When they do strike seemingly from nowhere, like fire in a crowded theater, everybody panics and a wave of selling feeds upon itself.

The trouble is, most investors will never make it out of the theater in time.

- Source, James Rickards

James Rickards: Investors Have Fallen Into a False Sense of Security

In January 2018, two significant market events occurred nearly simultaneously. Major U.S. stock market indexes peaked and volatility indexes extended one of their longest streaks of low volatility in history. Investors were happy, complacency ruled the day and all was right with the world.

Then markets were turned upside down in a matter of days. Major stock market indexes fell over 11%, a technical correction, from Feb. 2–8, 2018, just five trading days. The CBOE Volatility Index, commonly known as the “VIX,” surged from 14.51 to 49.21 in an even shorter period from Feb. 2–6.

The last time the VIX has been at those levels was late August 2015 in the aftermath of the Chinese shock devaluation of the yuan when U.S. stocks also fell 11% in two weeks.

Investors were suddenly frightened and there was nowhere to hide from the storm.

Analysts blamed a monthly employment report released by the Labor Department on Feb. 2 for the debacle. The report showed that wage gains were accelerating. This led investors to increase the odds that the Federal Reserve would raise rates in March and June (they did) to fend off inflation that might arise from the wage gains.

The rising interest rates were said to be bad for stocks because of rising corporate interest expense and because fixed-income instruments compete with stocks for investor dollars.

Wall Street loves a good story, and the “rising wages” story seemed to fit the facts and explain that downturn. Yet the story was mostly nonsense.

Wages did rise somewhat, but the move was not extreme and should not have been unexpected. The Fed was already on track to raise interest rates several times in 2018 with or without that particular wage increase. Subsequent wage increases have been moderate.

The employment report story was popular at the time, but it had very little explanatory power as to why stocks suddenly tanked and volatility surged.

The fact is that stocks and volatility had both reached extreme levels and were already primed for sudden reversals. The specific catalyst almost doesn’t matter. What matters is the array of traders, all leaning over one side of the boat, suddenly running to the other side of the boat before the vessel capsizes.

The technical name for this kind of spontaneous crowd behavior is hypersynchronicity, but it’s just as helpful to think of it as a herd of wildebeest that suddenly stampede as one at the first scent of an approaching lion. The last one to run is mostly likely to be eaten alive.

Markets are once again primed for this kind of spontaneous crowd reaction. Except now there are far more catalysts than a random wage report, despite last week’s optimistic GDP report.

We all know what’s happened to Facebook since last Friday. But look at the potential trouble from geopolitical sources alone…

The U.S. has ended its nuclear deal with Iran and has implemented extreme sanctions designed to sink the Iranian economy and force regime change through a popular uprising. Iran has threatened to resume its nuclear weapons development program in response. Both Israel and the U.S. have warned that any resumption of Iran’s nuclear weapons program could lead to a military attack.

Venezuela, lsed by the corrupt dictator Nicolás Maduro, has already collapsed economically and is now approaching the level of a failed state. Inflation exceeds 40,000% and the people have no food. Its inflation rate has now exceeded the hyperinflation of Weimar Germany.

Social unrest, civil war or a revolution are all possible outcomes. If infrastructure and political dysfunction reach the point that oil exports cannot continue, the U.S. may have to intervene militarily on both humanitarian and economic grounds.

North Korea and the U.S. have pursued on-again, off-again negotiations aimed at denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. While there have been encouraging signs, the most likely outcome continues to be that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is playing for time and dealing in bad faith. The U.S. may yet have to resort to military force there to negate an existential threat.

This litany of flash points goes on to include Iranian-backed attacks on Saudi Arabia and Israel, a civil war in Syria, confrontation in the South China Sea and Russian intervention in eastern Ukraine. These traditional geopolitical fault lines are in addition to cyber threats, critical infrastructure collapses and natural disasters from Kilauea to the Congo.

- Source, The Daily Reckoning

War With China is Just a Shot Away

China dredged sand surrounding useless rocks and atolls in the South China Sea and converted them into artificial islands and then built out the islands to include naval ports, air force landing strips, anti-aircraft weapons and other defensive and offensive weapons systems.

Not only are the Chinese militarizing rocks, but they are trampling on competing claims by the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and other countries surrounding the sea.

China is claiming control based on ancient imperial arrangements and argues that the West and its South Asian allies “stole” the territory from them. The answer is that both the ancient claims and the theft narrative are open to dispute.

More to the point, the world has developed rules-based platforms for resolving these issues without military force. The U.S. is guaranteeing freedom of passage, freedom of the seas and the territorial rights of allies such as the Philippines.

Incidentally, I was at Norfolk naval base last week delivering a lecture on financial warfare with China. There was a “hurry up” feel to it, a definite sense of urgency. I got the impression that something must be up.

So far, the U.S.-Chinese confrontation has been about naval vessels passing in close quarters and surveillance aircraft being harassed by fighter jets. The risk of such tactics is an accidental collision, a rogue shot fired or a command misunderstood.

Any such incident could lead to retaliation, and there’s no telling where it might stop. Trump is not someone to back down, and Chinese leadership does not want to appear weak before the U.S.

That’s especially true at a time of great economic uncertainty. Communist Party leadership is desperate to maintain the support of the people, or else it risks losing the “mandate of heaven.”

China does not want war at this time. But diverting the people’s attention away from domestic problems toward a foreign foe is an old trick leaders use to unite the people in times of uncertainty. Rallying the people around the flag is a tried and true method to garner support.

If China’s leadership decides that the risk of losing legitimacy at home outweighs the risk of conflict with the United States, the likelihood of war rises dramatically.

I’m not predicting it, but wars have started over less.

As Mick Jagger sang, a U.S.-China war is “just a shot away.”

- Source, Jim Rickards

Jim Rickards: Shooting War With China More Likely Than You Think

The mainstream media narrative about the U.S.-China trade war implies that Trump is on a highly damaging ego trip and China holds all the cards.

The exact opposite is true.

Trump has ample financial warfare weapons including tariffs, penalties, bans on direct investment, improved cybersecurity, forced divestiture and freezing of assets.

Meanwhile, China has almost run out of room to impose tariffs. Further, they will invite retribution if they try to devalue their currency further.

China’s vulnerabilities run deeper than that.

The U.S.-China trade war comes in the aftermath of a Chinese Communist Party conference that made Xi Jinping dictator for life and enshrined his doctrines on the same level as Mao Zedong.

Once Xi got these powers, he proceeded on a disastrous policy course that has resulted in a slowdown of the Chinese economy, higher debt defaults, lost investment opportunities in the U.S. and declining hard currency reserves.

The knives are now out in Beijing.

Reports are circulating that Xi’s opponents are questioning his judgment and the wisdom of expanding his powers at such a critical time. Many are starting to blame Xi for the trade war almost as much as they blame Trump.

Xi still has torture, firing squads and concentration camps at his disposal, but the notion of a unified, coherent leadership structure in Beijing is now seen to be a myth.

Trump will keep up the pressure; he never backs off and always doubles down. It will be up to Xi to blink and acquiesce in many U.S. demands.

The U.S. will win this trade war because Xi does not want to lose his throne. Yet there will still be material damage to the global economy and lasting animosity between Xi and Trump.

But there’s more to the U.S.-China dispute than trade.

Yes, headlines and TV interviews are dominated by talk of the trade war. That escalating confrontation is a big deal, but it’s not the only flash point in U.S.-China relations, and not even the most important.

China is as much concerned about a military confrontation in the South China Sea as it is about the economic confrontation in the trade wars...

- Source, Jim Rickards via the Daily Reckoning

Rickards: We Are in a New Currency War

The problem from an investor’s perspective is they are “slow burn” crises and can linger for a long time before producing anything dramatic such as a shooting war or market collapse. They are not date-driven or date-specific in the short run.

One story that’s under the radar and could blow up soon is Chinese currency devaluation.

If Trump puts a 25% tariff on Chinese imports but China then devalues its currency 25%, then the net effect is zero. The impact of the devaluation offsets the impact of the tariff and then you’re back where you started.

This new currency war seems to be happening.

Once Trump focuses on this, he’s likely to be infuriated and retaliate against China in the currency war and take steps to penalize China for currency manipulation over and above the existing tariffs and penalties for theft of intellectual property. This has a hard date of Oct. 15, 2018.

That’s the date of the U.S. Treasury’s semiannual report on Macroeconomic and Foreign Exchange Policies of Major Trading Partners of the United States.

That report is the formal mechanism for labeling a trading partner such as China a “currency manipulator” with severe consequences. Oct. 15, 2018, is just three weeks before the midterm elections, so it could be a highly popular political move in addition to being economically important.

All of this and more is on Trump’s policy plate right now. Just don’t expect him to handle it the way politicos usually do. Investors should expect dramatic policy shifts and extreme threats. But don’t overreact like the Washington pundits.

Remember, it’s all the art of the deal.

- Source, James Rickards via the Daily Reckoning

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