Now It's Official

China did not manipulate its currency. Who says? The US Treasury, and they can't be wrong, can they?

"The Treasury, in a semi-annual report required by Congress, said that while China’s rigid exchange rate continued to create distortions and risks in the global economy, Beijing had taken important steps towards introducing flexibility."

“The initial steps by China to increase exchange rate flexibility played an important part in this decision,” said John Snow, Treasury secretary, noting in particular China’s formal abandonment on July 21 of its peg to the US dollar. But he added: “It is imperative that China move towards greater flexibility as quickly as possible."

Slowing US Housing Market

Is the boom in the US housing market finally slowing? With the measured pace from the Fed going on and on it is logical that it will bite at some stage:

Sales of existing U.S. homes slowed in October and the inventory of unsold houses rose to the highest level in nearly 20 years, a trade group said on Monday in a report confirming the end of the nation's housing boom. Sales of previously owned homes fell 2.7 percent from September's upwardly revised 7.29 million unit annual pace, and the drop would have been even larger if not for a surge in home-buying linked to Hurricane Katrina, the National Association of Realtors said. "The housing sector has likely passed its peak ... and the boom is winding down to an expansion," NAR chief economist David Lereah said. "Many of our hot housing markets are transitioning from a sellers' market to a buyers' market."

My gues is that the chief economist with the National Association of Realtors would know something about that of which he speaks, which only makes even more fascinating this, already in its own right fascinating debate among Morgan Stanley economists on the meaning of the looming inversion of the interest rate yield curve. Either a recession is coming in 2007, or the Bernanke lead fed is going to start easing again in mid 2006, or both, or something like that.

Foreign Investors Buy Into the Japanese Recovery....

Foreign investors buy into the Japanese recovery, but the Japanese themselves apparently don't, or at least if they do its's on nothing like the same scale. More to add to the puzzle I was getting at in my last post about how people seem to find all this so hard to understand or accept. Denial, what denial!

Foreign buying of Japanese stocks has reached a record level as global investors buy into the country’s economic recovery. Overseas investors bought Y9,441bn ($78.9bn) more in Japanese shares than they sold in the year to November 18, according to the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The figure includes trading on the Osaka and Nagoya exchanges and beats the previous record of Y9,127bn in 1999.

Feverish overseas interest has been the biggest reason behind Japanese stocks’ sharp rise. The Tokyo Stock Price index climbed 33 per cent to 1,529.67 by last Friday – though the rise is still dwarfed by the near 60 per cent increase in 1999.....

But the strong interest shown by foreigners contrasts with the scepticism of Japanese institutional investors, who are still net sellers. For this reason, Japan bears regard this year’s share price rally as very fragile.

Here We Go Again!

Well yet another consumption driven recovery seems to be grinding to a halt in Japan. The only thing which puzzles me is why people continue to be surprised, and why people fail to see the similarieties between Japan and Germany in this regard. It's an up-hill (rather than a flat) world obviously:

Japan’s “Warm Biz” campaign, which should have boosted the sale of warm winter clothes, has failed to catch the imagination of consumers. Retail sales in October were down 0.3 per cent on the year – the first annual fall in eight months. The news prompted the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which published the figures on Monday, to downgrade its view on retail spending. An official was quoted by Reuters as saying on Monday that retail sales were flattening, toning down the Ministry’s view in the second quarter that sales were recovering moderately.

There is some discussion of the German comparison in this post and comments.

Meantime, with the fiscal deficit issues looming in both countries, central bank independence (or reducing it I should say)is one more creeping onto the agenda. I noted this last week vis-a-vis Japan:

Heizo Takenaka, the powerful internal affairs minister, told the central bank it should set monetary policy in conjunction with the government. In a repeat of stern remarks made by another senior politician this month, he warned the BoJ that its independence could be stripped away if it tightened policy prematurely.


Meantime, vis-a-vis Germany, Wolfgang Munchau reminds us that:

"It is still not too late to propose ECB reform as part of the next treaty revision. For as long as EU leaders maintain the status quo, they have the central bank they deserve."

"The pre-announced interest rate rise that the European Central Bank is due to agree this Thursday must rank as one of the most bizarre monetary policy decisions of recent times. The economic recovery in the eurozone remains fragile, as last week’s German confidence indicators have shown. Even the ECB’s own forecast for headline inflation is relatively optimistic, while core inflation remained unchanged at 1.5 per cent in October."

I couldn't agree more with Munchau about one thing though: the recent decision announced by Trichet to raise eurozone rates "must rank as one of the most bizarre monetary policy decisions of recent times"!