Zerohedge reports this morning that Russia has reduced their holdings of T-bonds by 50% in the past year, and China has reduced their holdings to a one-year low. This brings us to a point we have been stressing here at SD- the fact that QE never ended. Who do you think is buying $1.5 Trillion worth of just new bond issuance to fund the budget deficit when Russia and China are liquidating? Europe!?! lol. The Fed is the ONLY remaining buyer of US paper.
Today's TIC data confirmed what Zero Hedge readers have now known for quite some time: namely that foreigners are selling US paper. And while we have used contemporaneous Custody Account data from the Fed to present that in the past 7 weeks foreigners have sold a record amount of bonds, we now get confirmation via TIC that in November the selling continued, especially at the biggest non-Fed holder of US paper, China, which saw its holdings down to $1,132.6 billion, the lowest in the past year. Yet where the selling is just relentless is in Russia, which has quite demonstratively slashed its US Treasury holdings in half in the past year from $176 billion to under $80 billion. Putin is not happy, and is not afraid to show it.
Read more at Zerohedge
