The global bond markets, which handle hundreds of billions of trades every day,
Hundreds of billions in nominal value, yes, but not hundreds of billions of trades. Not even HFT is causing that….HFT not being as large a part of bond markets as it is in equities anyway.
But then The Guardian really falls off the edge:
At the outset of the Covid-19 outbreak, bond markets froze as investors panic bought highly rated government bonds and the number of sellers shrank.
The US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the European Central bank, which oversee the largest debt markets, stepped in to expand the number of bonds on offer and promised to meet demand while the crisis continued.
Demand has been supported by the Bank of England’s pledge to “create” £200bn of electronic funds to purchase more bonds as part of its quantitative easing programme, adding to the £435bn of assets on its balance sheet.
Increasing the supply of bonds by offering more for sale is entirely sensible here. But it’s hardly “supporting” demand, is it? It’s meeting it.
Is there a single financial journalist on the major papers who has a clue?
There is something odd afoot
https://notayesmanseconomics.wordpress.com/2020/04/06/mr-bean-and-two-barons-are-pressing-for-monetary-financing-in-the-uk/
And yesterday we had this announcement “The Bank of England will buy some £4.5 billion of UK Gilts today and HM Treasury has issued some £3.25 billion. So in NET terms UK INC will buy some £1.25 billion rather than sell.”
All governments to investors: Pull your money out of the private sector and buy lots of our bonds so we can rescue the private sector.
Off topic –
In the news – A group of doctors are calling for gambling adverts to be pulled as they fear that gamblers with too much time on their hands could be vulnerable.
Not in the news – A group of gamblers are calling on doctors to STFU as they fear that doctors with too much time on their hands are scrambling around to find some other way of staying in the news and interfering in peoples’ lives
@Diogenes
Is there a single financial journalist on the major papers who has a clue?
No. Not even in what we used to refer to as the financial press: the FT and The Economist. Sad decline.
There’s another article in The Times today, bemoaning Google UK having £X revenues, but only paying £Y tax, despite (sic) paying staff £Z (behind paywall of course):
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/google-pays-only-44m-in-tax-but-its-staff-get-234-000-each-5zvtn06xt
Off topic – Have you read about the row between Stelios Haji-Ioannou and easyJet over the latter’s Airbus order? This quote seems particularly Worstallian:
@Andrew C
More using a crisis to extend control forever
Stasi are back in Germany
German Public Law Professor, High Court Judge: Climate Crisis “Requires Freedom-Limiting Measures”
https://notrickszone.com/2020/04/04/german-public-law-professor-judge-climate-crisis-requires-freedom-limiting-measures/
He is calling for an “enabling act” . History should give every German (and non -German) reason to question, indeed fear, the proposal:
(from Wiki)
“The Enabling Act (German: Ermächtigungsgesetz) of 1933, formally titled Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich (“Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich”),[1] was an amendment to the Weimar Constitution[citation needed] that gave the German Cabinet—in effect, the Chancellor—the power to enact laws without the involvement of the Reichstag
@Diogenes
If BoE buying more than it’s selling, isn’t that injecting cash into economy?
@Andrew M
+1 read about that last week, Stelios pushing Easyjet to cancel/delay iirc 130 Airbus purchases – he’s correct. Don’t airlines usually buy an option to purchase? Lot’s ordered Concordes then pulled out
Good again that BAE sold their Airbus stake and shareholders blocked insane merger with EADS
Blimey
“The EU’s most senior scientist has resigned with a passionate denunciation of the bloc’s reaction to the coronavirus pandemic, claiming he has been blocked from funding treatments and vaccines.
Mauro Ferrari, the president of the European research council, said he had been “deeply disappointed and disturbed” by the EU’s efforts in reaction to what he described as “a tragedy of possibly unprecedented proportions”.
Ferrari resigned by sending an email. He writes: “I have been extremely disappointed by the European response to Covid-19, for what pertains to the complete absence of coordination of health care policies among member states, the recurrent opposition to cohesive financial support initiatives, the pervasive one-sided border closures, and the marginal scale of synergistic scientific initiatives.
“I have lost faith in the system itself. And now the times require decisive, focused, and committed actions – a call to responsibility for all those that have an aspiration to make a difference against this devastating tragedy.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WHKRTdaigs
As did UK almost 5 years ago, yet we’re still not free
– BREXIT – We HAVE left the EU! Sunak lectures British journo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSlZleiBWwc
– LBC’s correspondent in France tells Nigel Farage about their shocking lockdown punishments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr5psOlOVOU
Check out their minority communities in Paris: no lockdowns there as plod too scared to enforce – plod should use whips as in Pak etc
– Donald Trump turns angry after CNN questions “wonder drug”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSgkVEFXJUg
Trump spot on: try it, don’t do year long testing/trials