Don’t Look Now, But. . .

We’ve been periodically taking note of China’s wavering economy (here in July for instance), and speculated about how things would get interesting if they started dumping their large holdings of U.S. debt. Well:

Once the Biggest Buyer, China Starts Dumping U.S. Government Debt

Central banks around the world are selling U.S. government bonds at the fastest pace on record, the most dramatic shift in the $12.8 trillion Treasury market since the financial crisis.

Sales by China, Russia, Brazil and Taiwan are the latest sign of an emerging-markets slowdown that is threatening to spill over into the U.S. economy. Previously, all four were large purchasers of U.S. debt.

And here’s the chart to make your day:

Bond Sales copy

The Fed may have to raise interest rates whether it wants to or not in order to get more suckers buyers for our bonds.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the “Don’t Look Now But” file, this:

The murder rate from 2014 to 15 is very instructive.

In Washington, D.C. it’s up 46 percent.

In Milwaukee, up 68 percent.

In St. Louis, near Ferguson, up 51 percent.

In Baltimore, up 54 percent.

In Denver, up 75 percent.

In Austin, Texas the murder rate is up a whopping 83 percent.

And finally, in the “New You Can Use” department, here’s a time lapse of the concentration of human poop on the streets of San Francisco.  Seems like a good barometer of progressive governance to me.

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