In today’s briefing:
- China: The Worst Is over … Maybe, but Downside Pressures Remain
- CX Daily: Will the Bear Market End the Blockchain Funding Frenzy?
- EA Activity Catches Global Cold
- CX Daily: China’s Relaxation of Penalties for Wildlife Breeding Raises Concerns
- Time To Buy Bonds?
China: The Worst Is over … Maybe, but Downside Pressures Remain
- The economy is past the worst of the Omicron wave. In May: real industrial production returned to growth, contractions in retail sales, services output narrowed, and infra investment edged up.
- But underlying demand in the economy remains parlous. Consumer demand is fragile and aggregate fixed asset investment continues to decline, reflecting damaged consumer and business confidence.
- The steady drumbeat of expansionary fiscal and monetary policies is unlikely to significantly boost growth when it fails to resolve key constraints on the behaviour of economic agents.
CX Daily: Will the Bear Market End the Blockchain Funding Frenzy?
In Depth: Will the bear market end the blockchain funding frenzy?
Analysis: New Oriental’s livestreaming a hit, but hurdles remain to long-term success
Local officials punished for abusing China’s health code system
EA Activity Catches Global Cold
- The Euro area’s relative resilience lasted only a month as its services PMI crashed in June, while the US extended its trend decline.
- Consumer confidence remains far gloomier than businesses amid squeezed real incomes. Unemployment may be turning higher, but the vacancy backlog should prevent a spike.
- Monetary policymakers are fixated on the risk of high coincident inflation and will keep hiking into weaker activity. They overdid stimulus and now risk overdoing tightening.
CX Daily: China’s Relaxation of Penalties for Wildlife Breeding Raises Concerns
In Depth: China’s relaxation of penalties for wildlife breeding raises concerns
State firms urged to recruit more college graduates amid bleak job market
Xi Jinping slams sanctions as ‘double-edged sword’ hurting world economy
Time To Buy Bonds?
- In yesterday’s Senate Banking Committee hearing, Powell brought his hawkish stance to new highs: a strong economy underpinned by healthy levels of consumers’ savings, 100 bps hikes not off the table, and to top it off a good likelihood the Fed will actively sell (!) mortgage-backed securities from their balance sheet.
- Well, there is a big news: for the first time in 8 months, the bond market isn’t compounding Powell’s hawkish rhetoric.
- Instead, fixed income investors have become loud enough we can almost hear them ask one big question: a recession is becoming increasingly likely, so what are you going to do about it J-Pow?
Before it’s here, it’s on Smartkarma
