China’s currency reserves grew by more than the gross domestic product of Norway in 2009. Its $2.4 trillion of reserves is a bubble all its own, one growing before our eyes with nary a peep out of those searching for the next big one. – Bloomberg4

… but perhaps not since mid-December. The level of foreign central bank holdings of Treasury Debt has barely budged for seven weeks, of Agency Debt for twenty. Sometimes silence speaks in a very loud voice, even if the noise and crosstalk often makes it difficult to interpret the message.

Nice shirt, Cresswell ;)

Twist's new treasuries-focus charts clearly show that an incipient top is continuing to form.



the Fed's own MBS holdings drifted back up $0.599 billion, canceling out a little more than half of last week's give-back, while the combined holdings by the cenbanks of US obligations moved just over a billion dollars, although the contrary moves of the two elements were modestly large. This week's Reuters report1 was, as usual, based on the weekly update from the NY Fed's H.4.1 table site.2 Here is Doom's updated CSV version3 of the agencies and treasuries foreign central bank holdings data set.


This week's treasuries buy was $4.150 billion, almost matching last week's selloff. The figure has edged down just $2.357 billion since December 16, 2009.


Agency Debt lost a significant $5.297 billion, but in the bigger picture we've had a mere $7.857 settling since September 16, 2009.


The combined holdings figure dropped a slight $1.147 billion.  For going on two months the cenbanks have been contributing very little support to America's bailout habit.

Twist's ratios graphs rebounded down on the week, but in general the era still looks flat.



The Setser 52-week chart held pretty steady, as the anniversary week was quite similar to this one.


________________________

[1]: "Foreign central bank US Treasury holdings up – Fed", by Burton Frierson, Reuters, February 4, 2010.

[2]: "H.4.1 Factors Affecting Reserve Balances", Federal Reserve Statistical Release (weekly), Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

[3]: The updated data set as a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file is here.

[4]: "Biggest Bubble in History Is Growing Every Day", by William Pesek, Bloomberg, February 4, 2010.