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Kia ora.

Welcome to Friday’s Economy Watch where we follow the economic events and trends that affect Aotearoa/New Zealand.

I'm David Chaston and this is the international edition from interest.co.nz.

Today we lead with news we may be seeing the end of markets regarding US Treasuries as safe-haven assets – although to be fair it isn’t clear what would replace it.

Long-maturity US Treasury yields rose today to reverse the drop we noted yesterday. The yield on the US 10-year bond rose back towards the earlier 20-month high this week before the Bessent action, and the yield on the 30-year bond rose back too.

A couple of points are worth making first before we review today's data updates. The first is that it has been the role of the Fed to do QE activity. Maybe Warsh isn't keen now because he is committed to shrinking the Fed's balance sheet. It grew because the Fed wanted to push down rates, and that came with the consequence of massive bond buying. In fact, they moved the needle with "whatever it takes" to the tune of US$3.5 tln in the GFC and the subsequent stabilisation. And then another US$4.5 tln for the pandemic response that started in 2020. They have only paid down US$2.5 tln since. Warsh wants to get that significatly lower.

Now Bessent wants to do his own QE, in his case to avoid the political consequence his boss will face - at least push it off "till later'. But his announcement talks of a 'doubling', and that is only an extra of +$2 bln. The Fed was effective with trillions. But Bessent wants to do the same thing with billions. Wall Street hedge funds will be looking for a Bessent put, and unless he delivers his objective the hole thing might collapse rather quickly. Bessent should know - he was a billionaire hedge fund manager on Wall Street who made his fortune gaming the system. The Bessent initiative hardly lasted one day.

And this comes as the US Treasury's latest daily cash and debt balances statement shows public debt now exceeds US$40 tln (Table IIIC).

Why is this important for us? Well, the world's economy is still being driven by US middle-class consumer demand, the only economic engine large enough to shift the global needle. And we rely on a healthy upbeat global economy. China says it is making an attempt to duplicate this internal consumer demand, but by all accounts it is not succeeding, in part because Chinese consumers are still very risk averse and prioritising savings over consumption, and more so recently.

Meanwhile, initial jobless claims in the US fell to 172,000 last week, a slightly larger dip than seasonal factors would have indicated. There are now 1.8 mln people on these benefits, also marginally lower than the week before.

The August Philly Fed factory survey came in much stronger than expected, building on an outsized July expansion. This is all about current activity. Oddly, new order levels fell. But price pressures did moderate this month.

The Conference Board said its Leading Index for the US tic