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Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: China to 'liquidate' U.S. Treasuries, not dollars
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The Telegraph, London
Thursday, September 16, 2011
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100011987/ch...
The debt markets have been warned.
A key rate setter-for China's central bank let slip -- or was it a slip? -- that Beijing aims to run down its portfolio of US debt as soon as safely possible.
"The incremental parts of our of our foreign reserve holdings should be invested in physical assets," said Li Daokui at the World Economic Forum in the very rainy city of Dalian, former Port Arthur from Russian colonial days.
"We would like to buy stakes in Boeing, Intel, and Apple, and maybe we should invest in these types of companies in a proactive way. Once the US Treasury market stabilizes we can liquidate more of our holdings of Treasuries," he said.
... Dispatch continues below ...
Sona Drills 85.4g Gold/Ton Over 4 Metres at Elizabeth Gold Deposit,
Extending the Mineralization of the Southwest Vein on the Property
Company Press Release, October 27, 2010
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Sona Resources Corp. reports on five drillling holes in the third round of assay results from the recently completed drill program at its 100 percent-owned Elizabeth Gold Deposit Property in the Lillooet Mining District of southern British Columbia. Highlights from the diamond drilling include:
-- Hole E10-66 intersected 17.4g gold/ton over 1.54 metres.
-- Hole E10-67 intersected 96.4g gold/ton over 2.5 metres, including one assay interval of 383g of gold/ton over 0.5 metres.
-- Hole E10-69 intersected 85.4g gold/ton over 4.03 metres, including one assay interval of 230g gold/ton over 1 metre.
Four drill holes, E10-66 to E10-69, targeted the southwestern end of the Southwest Vein, and three of the holes have expanded the mineralized zone in that direction. The Southwest Vein gold mineralization has now been intersected over a strike length of 325 metres, with the deepest hole drilled less than 200 metres from surface.
"The assay results from the Southwest Zone quartz vein continue to be extremely positive," says John P. Thompson, Sona's president and CEO. "We are expanding the Southwest Vein, and this high-grade gold mineralization remains wide open down dip and along strike to the southwest."
For the company's full press release, please visit:
http://sonaresources.com/_resources/news/SONA_NR19_2010.pdf
To my knowledge, this is the first time that a top adviser to China's central bank has uttered the word "liquidate." Until now the policy has been to diversify slowly by investing the fresh $200 billion accumulated each quarter into other currencies and assets -- chiefly AAA euro debt from Germany, France, and the hard core.
We don't know how much US debt is held by SAFE (State Administration of Foreign Exchange), the bank's FX arm. The figure is thought to be over $2.2 trillion.
The Chinese are clearly vexed with Washington, viewing the Fed's QE as a stealth default on US debt. Mr Li came close to calling America a basket case, saying the picture is far worse than when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher took over in the early 1980s.
Mr Li, one of three outside academics on China's MPC, described the debt deals on Capitol Hill as "just trying to buy time," saying it will not be enough to stop America's "debt dynamic" turning dangerous.
Fair enough, but let us be clear: The reason China has accumulated the equivalent of 6 percent of global GDP in reserves (like the US in the 1920s) is because it has held down its currency to gain market share. As Michael Pettis from Beijing University points out tirelessly, the mercantilist policy hollows out US industries and forces America to choose between debt bubbles or unemployment -- or, of course, protectionism, though we are not there yet.
Until China abandons that core policy, it has to keep buying foreign assets and lots of dollars. The euro can absorb only so much -- 800 billion euros so far -- before Europeans realize (the French already realize) that Chinese bond purchases are double edged, and the yen the Swissie can't absorb anything at all. (The governments are intervening to stop it.) Besides, China has the same misgivings about euro debt as it does about dollar debt. Perhaps more so after Euroland's long-running soap opera.
So what Li Daokui said is not bad for the dollar as such. He said there is "$10 trillion" waiting to be invested in the US, if America will open its doors.
It is bad for bonds -- or will be. The money will go into strategic land purchases all over the world, until the backlash erupts in earnest. It will go into equities, until Capitol Hill has a heart attack. It will go anywhere but debt.
Yet another reason to be careful of 10-year Treasuries and Bunds below 2 percent yields. There is a big seller out there, just itching to let go.
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Lewis E. Lehrman on How to Solve the U.S. Debt Problem
Lewis E. Lehrman, chairman of the Lehrman Institute, sponsor of The Gold Standard Now project, advises that to reduce the $1 1/2 trillion U.S. deficit, the Republican Party must initiate an investment program.
Working Americans are not saving, which enables the banks to lead the country into a cycle of debt, leverage, boom, panic, and bust.
Lehrman says: "Eliminating the budget deficit of a trillion and a half dollars cannot be done overnight. The proposal by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan was very dramatic -- one Republican called it radical -- but it was not happily received. The solution, of course, is to design an American program for prosperity, because you can solve these entitlement problems with a growing economy. We need a tremendous program of investment, and investment comes from savings. When you pay savers, middle-income professionals, and working people 0 percent at the bank, you are not going to encourage them to save. Then we are left with a bank cycle of debt, leverage, boom, panic, and bust."
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