Markets Weekly May 18, 2024

Hello my friends, today is May 18th and this is Markets Weekly. So this past week was a good weekend markets. We had all the major stock market indexes make new all-time highs. Now when I'm looking at this, I'm always trying to figure out whether or not the trend is higher or lower. Now when you're making new all-time highs, it's a good sign that the trend is higher. So let's see how that unfolds over the coming weeks.

大家好，今天是5月18日，这里是本周市场。上周市场表现不错，所有主要股市指数都创下历史新高。当我看到这些时，我总是试图弄清楚趋势是向上还是向下。当股市创下历史新高时，这是趋势向上的一个好迹象。让我们来看看未来几周会如何发展。

Today I want to talk about three things. First, I've been reading a lot about the new measures the Chinese government is putting forward to try to support their property markets. So let's talk about what's happening in China. Secondly, I've also been seeing a lot of articles about how living standards in the US have been steadily pulling further away from living standards in peer countries, say European countries and Canada over the past few decades. So that seems to be a big structural story that's been playing out and looks to continue to play out over the foreseeable future. So let's talk about what might be driving that divergence.

今天我想谈谈三件事。首先，我一直在阅读关于中国政府正在采取的支持房地产市场的新措施。所以让我们谈谈中国发生了什么。其次，我也看到很多关于美国生活水平与欧洲国家和加拿大等同行国家在过去几十年中逐渐拉开差距的文章。这似乎是一个长期发展的重要结构性问题，并且在可预见的未来看起来会继续存在。所以让我们谈谈是什么导致了这种差距。

And lastly, when I look at the markets the past week, what really stands out to me is silver. Now silver absolutely surged and broke $30 and is at multi-year highs. Let's talk a little bit about what's happening over there and see how that could be part of a broader commodity bull market. Okay, starting with China. So let's level set a little bit first. So over the past couple of years, the property market in China basically imploded. If you look at property prices, they've been trading lower. If you look at sales volumes compared to the peak a few years ago, sales volumes are more than 50% lower now. Now what happened there is a tail as old as time. So people bought a lot of property property. Property buyers went up. They felt richer. They bought even more property developers saw that the property buyers were going higher. They bought, they built more, sold more, built more, sold more and everything was going really well. Everyone was making a lot of money until one day the music stopped.

最后，当我看着上周的市场时，真正引人注目的是白银。现在白银绝对飙升，突破了30美元，并处于多年高位。让我们谈谈那边发生了什么，并看看这可能成为更广泛商品牛市的一部分。好的，我们先从中国开始。所以首先让我们稍微理清一下。在过去的几年中，中国的房地产市场基本上崩溃了。如果你看看房价，它们一直在下跌。如果你看销售量与几年前的高峰相比，销售量现在已经降低了50%以上。现在那里发生的事情是老生常谈。人们买了很多房地产。房地产买家涨了。他们感觉更富有。他们买了更多的房产开发商看到房地产买家的数量在增加。他们购买、建造、销售更多，然后再建造、再销售，一切都进行得非常顺利。每个人都赚了很多钱，直到有一天音乐停止了。

Now we had that happen in the US in our property, boom and bust from 2006 to 2008. We saw the same thing happen in Japan. Many people think it's still happening in Australia and Canada. So when you have a property bubble bust, it has a lot of economic implications. Well, first off, of course, the people who made loans, they suffered potential losses. The people who were building houses, they have losses. And of course, the people who own houses, they have losses as well. Now in the US, the banks had a whole lot of mortgages on their balance sheet and these mortgages were backed by property that was worth less than the mortgage. So the banks were basically underwater and insolvent. And that was a big problem because if you have a banking sector that's not healthy, then the banks can't make loans. A credit dries up. The whole economy stops. So back then, the federal government basically took the bad loans off the balance sheet of the commercial banks and injected a whole lot of new equity. The Fed at the time cut interest rates bought a whole lot of agency mortgage backed securities, hoping that lower interest rates would provide some support to the housing sector.

现在我们在美国的房地产市场上经历了2006年至2008年的繁荣和崩溃。我们看到日本也发生了同样的情况。许多人认为澳大利亚和加拿大仍在经历这种情况。所以当房地产泡沫破裂时，会带来许多经济影响。首先，当然，放贷人可能会遭受损失。建造房屋的人也会遭受损失。当然，拥有房屋的人也会受到影响。在美国，银行的资产负债表上有大量按揭贷款，而这些抵押贷款的资产价值低于贷款金额。因此，银行基本上处于不健康和不足以偿还债务的状态。这是一个大问题，因为如果银行业不健康，银行就无法放贷，信贷就会枯竭。整个经济就会停滞。当时，联邦政府基本上把商业银行的坏贷款转移到了资产负债表之外，并注入了大量新的资金。当时联邦储备局降低利率，购买了大量机构抵押贷款支持证券，希望较低的利率可以为房地产市场提供一些支持。

Now in China, things are a little bit different because the government basically owns the banks so the banks can't go bust. There's no concern there. And the government can also basically make the banks to lend to whoever they want. And so this really know the liquidity event. The government can always say, hey, bank lend to this property developer and continue to roll over their loans forever. So there's never any liquidity risk.

现在在中国，情况有点不同，因为政府基本上拥有银行，所以银行不会破产。没有担忧。政府也基本上可以让银行借钱给他们想借钱的人。这真的消除了流动性事件的可能性。政府总是可以说，嘿，银行借钱给这个房地产开发商，并永远延长他们的贷款。所以永远不会有流动性风险。

But a property bubble does have a lot of negative economic implications. Now real estate, property development, big part of China's GDP. When you have less construction, less growth, fewer jobs. And if you are a household that owns a home that's now worth less than when you initially purchased it at, then you are underwater, you feel poor, maybe you spend less money.

但是房地产泡沫确实会带来许多负面经济影响。如今，房地产、房地产开发是中国GDP的重要组成部分。一旦建筑活动减少，增长减缓，就会减少工作岗位。如果你是一个家庭拥有一套房产，现在的价值比最初购买时还要低，那么你就处于负债状态，感觉自己变得更加贫困，可能会减少花费。

So the Chinese government is doing something that I haven't seen other governments do. That's really interesting. And that is actually buying homes directly. So what they're doing is that they're providing financing to government related entities to go and just basically buy the unsold homes that are sitting on the balance sheets of the property developers.

所以中国政府正在做一些其他政府没有做过的事情。这真的很有趣。实际上他们是直接购房。他们提供融资给与政府相关的实体，然后去购买那些滞销的房屋，这些房屋一直闲置在地产开发商的资产负债表上。

Now this will be helpful because property developers then will have some, okay, unload their homes, have some cash to repay the money they owe. And of course, if you have a bid for housing, house prices will be supported and maybe the households don't feel like they're losing as much money. Maybe it'll improve consumer sentiment. Now in addition to this, the Chinese government has also made it known that they will reduce the down payment required to buy a home.

现在这将会有所帮助，因为房地产开发商们将会有些现金来清偿他们欠下的债务，有利于卸货房屋。当然，如果有人投标购房，房价将会得到支持，也许家庭就不会感觉自己正在损失这么多钱。也许这将改善消费者情绪。除此之外，中国政府还宣布他们将会减少购买房屋所需的首付款。

So mortgages from 20% to 15% and will also make measures to try to further lower mortgage rates. Now I don't know if this is going to be enough, but if you look at an index of publicly traded Chinese real estate property for property development companies, they absolutely surged the past week. So it seems like the people, investors are getting a sense that the government is trying to do more and that's really supportive. Now ultimately, if it's not enough, I imagine they'll just go and do even more.

因此，按揭利率从20%下降至15%，同时还将采取措施进一步降低按揭利率。现在我不确定这是否足够，但如果你看看上周公开交易的中国房地产开发公司的指数，它们确实出现了大幅上涨。看起来投资者们感觉到政府正在努力做更多，这实际上起到了支持作用。最终，如果这还不够，我想他们会采取更多的行动。

Now I would also note that in the US, the government is also doing new things to try to stimulate the economy. So Freddie Mac has a new proposal to try to basically securitize second liens on home mortgages. So which is what I'm going to write about in my blog this week. It could potentially be a big deal. Okay.

现在我也想指出，在美国政府也在做一些新的事情来刺激经济。所以房利美有一个新提议，试图基本上将住房抵押贷款的第二抵押品证券化。这就是我本周要在博客中写的内容。这可能会成为一件大事。好的。

The second thing I want to talk about is basically how US living standards have really steadily pulled ahead of living standards compared to pure countries over the past few decades. So if you look at this graph, you notice that GDP per capita adjusting for inflation and prices of the US and say European countries in Canada was very comparable in the 1990s, but over the past few decades, the US has really pulled out ahead and I go to Europe a lot and I see this very clearly and that wages in Europe are notably below that of the US. So if you look at prices, prices honestly aren't that much lower.

我想谈论的第二件事基本上是美国的生活水平在过去几十年与其他国家相比确实稳步提高了。如果你看这张图，你会注意到美国和欧洲国家以及加拿大的实际GDP（人均国内生产总值）在1990年代非常类似，但在过去几十年里，美国确实走在了前面。我经常去欧洲，很明显地看到欧洲的工资明显低于美国。所以如果你看价格，实际上价格并没有比美国低很多。

In some cases, when it comes to things like electronics, it's actually higher than it is in the US. So the material living standard in Europe is notably below that of the US people live in smaller and older houses, drive smaller and older cars and so forth. And that wasn't always the case. So it seems like, so in order to have higher living standards, you have to have higher output per person and you can do that from one of two ways. One of course, you can work more hours, which we do in the US, but you can also produce more per hour of work. That is to say, become more productive. And I think that's been a big theme in driving this difference in living standards over the past few decades. Productivity in the US has just been a lot higher.

在某些情况下，例如在电子产品方面，欧洲的价格实际上比美国更高。因此，欧洲的物质生活水平明显低于美国，人们居住在更小更旧的房屋中，驾驶更小更旧的汽车等等。而这并不总是如此。因此，看起来为了提高生活水平，你必须提高人均产出，并可以通过两种方式之一实现这一点。当然，一种方法是多工作几个小时，这在美国是常见的做法，但你也可以生产更多、每小时的工作效率更高，也就是提高生产力。我认为这是过去几十年来推动不同生活水平差异的重要主题。美国的生产力一直较高。

Now, Carolyn Rogers, a central banker at the Bank of Canada recently gave a speech that pointedly addressed this, noting that a few decades ago, productivity in the US and Canada were comparable today, not so much. Many European policymakers have made the same observation. Now, Carolyn Rogers' diagnosis is that there's not enough competition in Canada to spur that kind of productivity growth. And that makes a lot of sense, right? So let's say that you are someone who's an athlete. If you have competition, it motivates you to try to improve. Same thing if you are, let's say a student, let's say you have to take a test, try to be the best student, get good grades to go to a good college. Again, you have competition that forces you to work hard, to improve, and that's important in developing country's productivity.

加拿大央行的央行家卡罗琳·罗杰斯最近发表了一篇演讲，明确指出，几十年前，美国和加拿大的生产率是可比的，但今天就不一样了。许多欧洲政策制定者也做出了同样的观察。现在，卡罗琳·罗杰斯的诊断是，加拿大缺乏足够的竞争来推动这种生产率增长。这是很有道理的，对吧？比如说，如果你是一个运动员。有竞争会激励你去努力提高自己。同样，如果你是一个学生，比如说你要参加考试，争取成为最优秀的学生，取得好成绩进入好大学。再比如说，你有竞争对手，这会迫使你努力工作，提高自己，而这对发展国家的生产率非常重要。

Now, when I look at the US compared to Europe and Canada, I think one of the big differences is that there's just not, first, there's both positive and negative incentives that are lacking. A positive incentive would be that if you, or card if you're more productive, you gain a lot more. But that positive incentive is really different when you compare the US to other countries. For example, looking at tax policy in the US on the federal level, the highest marginal tax rate is 37%. And you hit that 37% bracket when you're making $580,000.

现在，当我看美国与欧洲和加拿大相比时，我认为一个重要的区别是，首先，缺乏积极和消极的激励因素。积极的激励是，如果你更有生产力，你会获得更多。但是与其他国家相比，这种积极的激励在美国真的很不同。例如，看看美国联邦一级的税收政策，最高边际税率为37%。当您的收入达到58万美元时，您就会达到这个37%的税收档位。

In Europe, if you look at marginal tax brackets, the highest is in the 40s, sometimes in the 50s. But that highest tax bracket tends to hit somewhere between 150 to 200,000 US dollars. So taxes are much higher in Europe and they hit much earlier than they do in the US. And it's the same story in Canada. So you can see that there's a lot less attraction in those countries to work hard because if you just make a little bit more money, you have to give most of it away to the government. And that's something that I think is really noticeable when you look at who's rich in each respective region. In the US, the rich people tend to be people who build their own companies. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, these are guys super rich and they build their own companies. Again, they are motivated to do so. They get to keep most of what they earn.

在欧洲，如果你看边际税率，最高的税率在40％，有时甚至达到50％。但最高税率通常在15万到20万美元之间。所以在欧洲，税收要高得多，而且税收起征点比美国要早得多。在加拿大也是一样的情况。所以你可以看到，这些国家对于努力工作的吸引力要少得多，因为如果你多挣一点钱，必须将大部分交给政府。当你看各个地区的富人时，这是一件很明显的事情。在美国，富裕人群往往是那些建立自己公司的人。比尔·盖茨、马克·扎克伯格、埃隆·马斯克、杰夫·贝索斯，这些人都是极其富有且建立了自己的公司。他们再次受到驱动，因为他们能够保留大部分所赚的钱。

But in Europe, who are the rich people? Well, they're the people who are always rich, like people whose father, great grandfather, great-great grandfather with some kind of Earl or Duke or something like that. It's really difficult for someone who is not rich to become rich in Europe simply because the tax policy is so aggressive in that sense. So I can understand there's less motivation to try to do anything. In fact, you can think of it as a culture that kind of promotes quite quitting. After all, you don't have that much upside. Paradoxically, you also don't have much downside, which is the second part of this incentive structure. In the US, if you don't work hard, well, maybe you get fired, maybe your company goes under. There's some more insecurity in the US that adds a negative incentive there to force people to work harder.

但在欧洲，谁是富人呢？嗯，他们通常是一直都很富有的人，比如那些祖父、曾祖父、曾曾祖父是伯爵或公爵之类的人。在欧洲，非富裕家庭的人想要变得富有是非常困难的，因为税收政策在这方面非常激烈。所以我能理解，人们缺乏动力去尝试做任何事情。实际上，你可以把它看作是一种促使人们相当容易放弃的文化。毕竟，你所能获得的好处并不那么多。矛盾的是，你也并没有那么大的风险，这是激励结构的第二部分。在美国，如果你不努力工作，也许你会被解雇，也许你的公司会破产。在美国存在更多不确定性，这会给人们增加一种消极的激励，迫使他们更加努力工作。

In Europe, there's a lot more protections when it comes to labor. It's hard to fire people. Now you can see this play out very clearly in how the European policymakers handled the pandemic. So in the pandemic, again, the economy shut down. A lot of people in the US lost their jobs. The government did was they stepped in and gave unemployment insurance and sent them a lot of free money, sent them in checks. Ultimately, what happened is that all these unemployed workers found new jobs, oftentimes different jobs at higher wages, jobs that were more suited to them. So the labor market was more dynamic. People got to find places where they fit in more, and that was helpful for wages and productivity.

在欧洲，劳动力方面有很多更多的保护措施。解雇员工很困难。现在，您可以看到欧洲决策者在处理疫情时是如何清晰表现出这一点的。在疫情期间，经济再次关闭。美国很多人失去了工作。政府采取的措施是介入并提供失业保险，给他们寄去许多免费的钱，通过支票的方式。最终，所有这些失业工人找到了新工作，往往是不同的高薪工作，更适合他们的工作。因此，劳动力市场更具活力。人们可以找到更适合他们的地方，这有助于工资和生产力。

In Europe, they did something that was completely different. They basically froze their entire labor market. So basically companies, if you don't fire anyone, the government will subsidize their wages. And so when the pandemic ended, everything was unfrozen and life continued as usual. There was not much disruption in the labor market. So if you think of, if you're a worker, you think, oh, my job is secure. I don't have to worry about finding a new job. And that sounds good and maybe appealing to some. But on the flip side, if you don't lose your job, your boss doesn't end, your boss doesn't lose his job, his boss doesn't lose his job, then there's no personal advancement. There's no room for you to continue to climb, and you're basically doing the same thing until someone retires. So having job security, maybe it's appealing, but then it also leads to stagnation.

在欧洲，他们做了一些完全不同的事情。基本上他们冻结了整个劳动力市场。如果公司不裁员，政府就会资助他们的工资。因此，当疫情结束时，一切恢复正常，生活就像往常一样。劳动力市场没有太大的混乱。如果你是一名劳动者，你会觉得，哦，我的工作很安全，不用担心找新工作。这听起来很好，可能对一些人很有吸引力。但是另一方面，如果你不失去工作，你的老板也不会失业，他的老板也不会失业，那么就没有个人的发展。没有机会继续向上爬，基本上就是一直做同样的事情，直到有人退休。拥有工作保障也许很吸引人，但同时也会导致停滞。

Now ultimately, you can think of these as maybe different models, different social models. But I tend to think that this European style, socialism style model is not sustainable, because at the end of the day, people who are more ambitious and more talented will just leave those countries and move to other countries, be it the Middle East, be it the US, where they can exercise your full potential. And the people who are remaining will just have less and less stuff to share among themselves. In addition, if you look across the world, you also have very hungry and ambitious countries like China and India, who are steadily out-competing a lot of these European businesses. For example, BYD is the largest electric car manufacturer in the world. Now they're exporting massively to Europe and these traditional European car manufacturers, be it the Mercedes, be it the Puget, and so forth, just can't compete. And so it seems like this social model that they employ in Europe, and it is just one that leads to stagnation, which is what we've seen over the past few decades and looks like it's going to continue going forward.

最终，你可以将这些看作是不同的模式，不同的社会模式。但我倾向认为这种欧洲式、社会主义式的模式是不可持续的，因为说到底，那些更雄心勃勃、更有才华的人只会离开这些国家，前往其他国家，无论是中东还是美国，在那里他们可以充分发挥自己的潜力。而剩下的人将会越来越少的事物可以分享。此外，如果你看看世界各地，你还会看到像中国和印度这样的非常饥渴和雄心勃勃的国家，他们正在稳步地超越许多这些欧洲企业。例如，比亚迪是全球最大的电动汽车制造商。现在他们大规模出口到欧洲，而这些传统的欧洲汽车制造商，无论是梅赛德斯、普锐特等等，都无法竞争。因此，看起来他们在欧洲采用的这种社会模式只会导致停滞不前，这就是我们在过去几十年看到的情况，看起来这种情况将继续下去。

So honestly, it doesn't look that good for the social model going forward. But let's see what happens. It's kind of this huge social experiment. And honestly, in the US, I get the sense that many people would like to copy that model. Okay, the last thing that I want to talk about is what happened in the markets the past week. What stood out to me is how silver basically went parabolic and absolutely surged past $30 to multi-year highs. Now silver, if you look at a history of silver prices, you notice that it's a very volatile series. You can see it surging in the 1970s and again, surging about a decade earlier. Again, it goes up a lot and it goes down a lot. Now it's hard to know what's actually driving this recent surge. Now in the 1970s, it was clear there were a couple of billionaire brothers called the Hunt's brothers who tried to corner the silver market. They were telling everyone that there's going to be inflation, dollars debasing, and so forth. So we got to buy silver. They tried to buy as much silver as they could and they bought a lot of money to do that. And if you have billionaires and a billionaire back then, it was a lot more money than it is today, buying a whole bunch of silver. Silver prices went to the moon. But eventually though, and in part due to the government intervention, they were having trouble rolling over their loans and so they had to sell some silver to make margin calls and that kick started a whole process where silver went back down.

老实说，社会模式未来看起来并不乐观。但让我们看看会发生什么。这实际上是一个巨大的社会实验。老实说，在美国，我觉得很多人想模仿那种模式。好吧，我要谈论的最后一件事是上周市场上发生了什么。让我印象深刻的是白银基本上呈指数增长，绝对飙升至超过30美元，达到多年高位。现在，如果你看看白银价格的历史，你会注意到它是一个非常波动的系列。你会看到它在1970年代大幅上涨，再次在大约十年前大幅上涨。它一直涨得很多，然后又跌得很多。现在很难知道是什么推动了最近的这波飙升。在1970年代，有几个名叫亨特兄弟的亿万富翁清晰地试图操纵白银市场。他们告诉所有人将会出现通货膨胀，美元贬值等等。所以我们必须购买白银。他们尽量多购买白银，并且花了很多钱来做这件事。如果有亿万富翁，当时一个亿万富翁的钱比今天要值得多，购买大量白银。白银价格就窜升了。但最终，部分原因是由于政府的干预，他们开始在借款续约方面遇到困难，因此不得不卖掉一些白银来进行追加保证金，这引发了一系列事件，导致白银价格回落。

A decade ago, I think a lot of the excitement in silver was also due to the perception that Kiwi and whatnot was debasing the currency and so forth. But in any case, silver very emotional metal and it seems like for whatever reason it's going up again. Now I think of silver as a much more retail based metal. So it's not precious in the sense that you would have foreign government actors go and buy silver for their foreign reserves. And it's also in part industrial, but it seems like a lot of retail investors think of it as an investment alternative to the dollar and gold and so forth. But surprisingly, when you look at SLV, which is a silver ETF that I think is a way that a lot of retail investors access silver, it's actually had outflows over the past few weeks. So it doesn't seem like this surge is retail driven. It's super interesting and as you know, it's very volatile, but when it tends to go up, it tends to go up a lot. Now this is the broader context of I think a broader bull market in commodities. If you look at the Bloomberg commodity index, it looks like it's trending higher. If you look at gold, as I wrote about this past week, there's a lot of big positive drivers in gold that seems to suggest that gold prices are going higher and we did see gold turn up. If you look at copper, for example, copper absolutely surging. Some people think it's due to electrification and so forth. But in any case, it looks like there's a big churn in the commodity markets, at least in some commodities. You don't see the same upturn in things like oil and so forth. But it seems like there's something happening in the commodity markets that really bears watching.

十年前，我认为银价上涨的许多兴奋也是因为人们认为新西兰等国在贬值货币等原因。总之，银是一种非常情感化的金属，似乎出于各种原因又开始上涨了。现在我认为银更多地是以零售为基础的金属。因此，它并非像外国政府机构会购买银作为外汇储备这样珍贵。它在一定程度上也是工业用途的，但似乎许多零售投资者将其看作是美元和黄金等的投资替代品。但令人惊讶的是，当你看SLV时，这是一个代表大量零售投资者进入银市的银ETF，实际上在过去几周内流出了资金。因此，这似乎并非零售投资者推动的涨势。这非常有趣，并且你知道，它非常波动，但当它开始上涨时，通常会大幅上涨。现在，我认为这是大宗商品更广泛牛市的背景。如果你看彭博商品指数，似乎正在上涨。如果你看金价，正如我上周所写的，金市有许多积极因素，似乎预示着金价将上涨，我们确实看到金价有所上扬。例如，如果你看铜价，铜价绝对上涨。一些人认为这是由电气化等原因导致的。但不管怎样，看起来大宗商品市场正在发生巨变，至少在某些商品上是如此。你不会看到原油等商品的同样上涨。但似乎大宗商品市场正在发生一些值得密切关注的变化。

Now, part of it could be due to perceptions of what's happening in the government. Part of it could be an upswing in the manufacturing cycle. Part of it could be due to depreciation in the dollar. It's hard to know, but I think a lot of people trade commodities based on momentum. And when they see things like that, they tend to follow it. So at the moment, I'm positive on silver, on gold, as I wrote about before. And let's see what happens. I think we really are in point in time where there's a lot of cross-currents that make commodities really interesting. All right, so that's all I prepared for today. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you're interested in my thoughts, check out my blog at FedGuy.com. And if you're interested in learning more about Mario, check out my online courses at CentralBanking101.com. Talk to you all next week.

现在，这可能部分归因于人们对政府正在发生的事情的看法。这可能部分是制造业周期的上升。这可能部分是由于美元贬值。很难说清楚，但我认为很多人根据市场的动向来交易大宗商品。当他们看到这样的情况时，他们往往会跟随。所以目前，我对白银和黄金持乐观态度，正如我之前所写的那样。让我们拭目以待。我认为我们确实正处在一个让大宗商品变得非常有趣的时刻。好的，这就是我今天准备的全部内容。非常感谢你们的关注。如果你对我的想法感兴趣，请访问我的博客FedGuy.com。如果你想了解更多关于马里奥的信息，请访问我的在线课程网站CentralBanking101.com。下周再见。