China’s increasingly frantic, increasingly dangerous game of financial markets Whac-A-Mole

China faces a depreciating currency, a bond market that has switched from rally to sell off, huge outflows of cash, and what looks like a resurgence of inflation. Fixing one of these problems alone would be a huge challenge to the People’s Bank. The combination leaves the central bank with a situation where fixing one problem may just make the others worse. Increasingly the People’s Bank looks like it is rushing from problem to problem, giving the crisis-of-day a whack and then rushing to figure out what’s likely to pop up next that will deserve a bash with the mallet.

Pre-holiday move to safety starts a little early

With trading volumes already starting to slip–trading in Standard & Poor’s 500 stocks was running about 25% below its average for this time of day at noon today–traders and investors are locking in some gains and seeking safety for the week before Christmas. As of 1 p.m. New York time gold was up for the day and the dollar was down.

Currency traders long U.S. dollars figure there’s another 2% to 3% free money in this trade before the end of the year

Currency traders long U.S. dollars figure there’s another 2% to 3% free money in this trade before the end of the year

Yesterday the dollar rose another 1.2% against the euro to $1.0415, the highest since January 2003. And the US. currency climbed by another 1.4% against the yen. The Dollar Index added to its gain to hit a 15-year high.
Today the dollar has backed off a bit. Not surprising after the huge two-day run after Wednesday’s Federal Reserve meeting. But this does all raise the question of how much more there is left in the run.

Happy now? European Central Bank decides on less monthly bond buying but for longer–maybe way longer

The European Central Bank today extended its bond-buying program to the end of 2017 but cut the monthly purchases to 60 billion euros from 80 billion euros. That would take the total for this quantitative-easing effort to 2.2 billion euros ($2.4 billion.) That will bring the total for this round of quantitative easing to about double the estimated size of the program at its inception in January 2015.

In Italy Renzi’s referendum doesn’t just lose; it gets destroyed

The preliminary count at 3:14 a.m. shows Italian voters rejecting Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s referendum on constitutional change by an almost 60/40 margin. With the vote this lopsided, Renzi will head to the Quirinal palace on Monday to submit his resignation to president Sergio Mattarella. Which will leave Italy without a government. The next elections aren’t for 14 months.