The Chinese Yuan Declines by 0.23% Over the Past 4 Days: Panic Ensues

The Japanese currency fluctuates 1-2% in any given day versus the dollar and Bloomberg’s army of 2,400 journalists don’t bother to even broach the subject. However, the Chinese yuan dropping for a fourth consecutive day, to the tumultuous tune of 0.23%, is headline news of the extreme varietal.

Why?

The yuan fell 0.08 percent to 6.5319 a dollar as of 10:24 a.m. in Shanghai, according to China Foreign Exchange Trade System prices. It dropped to 6.5326 earlier, the weakest level since Feb. 15, and has lost 0.23 percent in a four-day streak. The central bank cut the reference rate by 0.04 percent to 6.5302 following a 0.17 percent reduction on Tuesday.

“Sentiment hasn’t fully recovered, and there’s still depreciation pressure in the long run considering China’s fundamentals and capital outflows,” said Tommy Xie, a Singapore-based economist at Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. “The PBOC will likely keep the yuan stable against a basket, leading to greater two-way volatility of the currency against the dollar, before the G-20.”

In fairness to the media establishment, the purposeful devaluation of the Chinese currency has been something of a trend for the better part of 2016, as the Chinese economy struggles to grow at the required rate to keep their people from storming the palace with their pitched forks.

World markets are falling again, with the NIKKEI off by 0.8% and the Hang Seng down by 1.7%. Crude oil is down 2.3%; hence, U.S. futures are down by 42.