Now China’s Curve

This is a syndicated repost courtesy of Alhambra Investments. To view original, click here. Reposted with permission.
Suddenly central banks are mesmerized by yield curves. One of the jokes around this place is that economists just don’t get the bond market. If it was only a joke. Alan Greenspan’s ‘conundrum’ more than a decade ago wasn’t the end of the matter but merely the beginning. After spending almost the entire time in between then and now on monetary ‘stimulus’ of the traditional variety, only now are authorities paying close attention. Last September the Bank of Japan initiated QQE with YCC (yield curve control). The ECB in December altered its QE parameters to allow for what looks suspiciously like a yield curve steepening bias. And the Fed in its last policy statement declared its upcoming intent to think about balance sheet runoff that, as my colleague Joe Calhoun likes to point out, is almost surely going to be favored in the same way.
Central bankers spent years saying low interest rates were stimulus. They have yet to explicitly correct their interpretation, preferring the more subtle approach of instead altering their operations as noted above. As I wrote back in December.

This post was published at Wall Street Examiner by Jeffrey P. Snider ‘ June 20, 2017.