Extending its losses from yesterday, following the untimely sacking of a fiscally responsible finance minister, South Africa is in freefall – Rang crashed above 16 (record lows), stocks have crashed, and bond yields exploded:

 

China’s Yuan hit a fresh 4 year low…

 

EM Stocks are plunging…

 

And of course US High Yield Bonds…

 

And as Bloomberg’s Richard Breslow notes, there’s nothing chauvinistic in saying that, after a slew of monetary policy meetings by major economies, the opening acts are over.

It’s time to focus on the only one that matters. Since the financial crisis exploded in the face of the global economy, we have been living in an age of central bank coordination. Keep rates low and headed lower. And make sure speculative assets know they have friends in high places. Next week, for the first time in a long time, central banks will experiment with going their own ways

It is entirely ambiguous, based on the numbers and global economy, whether this is the right move at the right time. Opinions differ strongly among very strong thinkers

The Fed has made the decision that the imperatives of trying to creep toward some sort of monetary policy sanity outweigh the risk. Taking it back will be next to impossible

Multiple hundreds of billions of dollar-denominated debt issued by emerging market countries will come due in each of the next few years. Just how difficult will that be to repay? What will it be replaced with, at what interest rate?

The Chinese yuan hit another multi-year low today, the MSCI Emerging Market Index looks awful

So many unknowns, good and bad. Maybe this revives animal spirits and global capex spending takes off. The hysterical for hysteresis school of thought. Either way, absolutely ignore the “it’s priced in” claims

The Fed will drive home the lower and slower mantra. That is all spin, signifying nothing. Dot plots have proven to be bad guesses. They are strictly event dependent, in either direction. Volatility will be king as each economic miss will be over interpreted.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email