Global Auto Sales Expected To Crash More Than After The Financial Crisis

The global auto industry continues to deteriorate, namely due to broke consumers after a decade of low-interest rates and endless incentives. 

The auto slowdown has sparked manufacturing recessions across the world, including manufacturing hubs in the US, Germany, India, and China. A prolonged downturn will likely result in stagnate global growth as world trade continues to decelerate into 2020. 

The Fitch Ratings economics team published a new report earlier this week, first reported by CNBC, outlining how global auto sales are expected to crash at a rate not seen since the last financial crisis. 

Global auto sales fell to 80.6 million in 2018 from 81.8 million in 2017, which was the first annual decline in nearly a decade. 2019 sales are likely to fall by 3.1 million, or 4%, to 77.5 million, the most significant drop since 2008. The slowdown in auto sales has been one of the largest contributors to the global manufacturing recession. 

"The downturn in the global car market since the middle of 2018 has been a key force behind the slump in global manufacturing, and the car sales picture is turning out a lot worse than we expected back in May," Brian Coulton, Fitch Chief Economist, said in a statement. 

China has been labeled as the primary source of falling demand. YTD auto sales in the country are down 11% versus the first ten months of 2018. There are no signs that a recovery in the industry will be seen in 2020. The US and Western Europe are expected to see declines of 2% this year. Brazil, Russia, and India are expected to record a drop of at least 5.5% YTD. 

"Structurally, environmental concerns about diesel cars — and anticipated regulatory responses — and the growth of ride-hailing and car-sharing schemes are weighing on auto demand," Coulton told CNBC.

Fitch also warned that the global auto industry won't rebound in 2020, and it's also likely the industry has entered a low growth period. 

"While we don't see a further sharp decline in global manufacturing in 2020, the auto outlook is pointing to stabilization at best rather than any sharp rebound," Coulton said.

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We Are Being Warned That The Last Week Of August “Could Be Highly Volatile” For Global Financial Markets

Are things about to break loose in a major way?  At the end of last week, the trade war between the United States and China escalated dramatically, and investors all over the globe really started freaking out.  Unfortunately, developments over the weekend have only made things worse, and that means that this could be a very “interesting” week for global financial markets.  As I write this article, stock prices around the world are plunging, the price of gold is spiking and the Chinese yuan is crashing.  There is clearly a lot of fear out there right now, and at this point even CNBC is warning that the last week of this month “could be highly volatile”…

The final week of August — the bittersweet end of summer for many— could be highly volatile, as markets fret over the economy and the latest developments in trade wars.

Of course things can swing rapidly from moment to moment in this environment.  President Trump could say something in a few hours that temporarily gives investors some hope, and that could cause markets to swing wildly upward for a little while.  Everyone is on edge right now, and every piece of significant news is likely to cause gyrations in the marketplace.

But overall the trend is clearly down.  U.S. stocks have now fallen for four weeks in a row, and many are becoming deeply concerned about what September will bring.

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China "Faces The Worst Of Both Worlds" As PPI Deflation Arrives While Food Inflation Soars

As if China did not have its hands full with a trade war, a plunging yuan and growing civil unrest in Hong Kong, which is fast becoming the potential epicenter for the next global crisis (and which Steve "The Big Short" Eisman thinks is the next black swan), it now also has deflation to worry about at a time when its ability to boost liquidity in the system is severely limited... or maybe it's soaring inflation China should be concerned about.

On Friday, China's National Bureau of Statistics reported that the Producer Price Index (PPI), i.e. factory prices, fell 0.3% in July from a year ago, missing the modest 0.1% decline expected by analysts. This was the first annual decline in China's PPI in three years - since August 2016 - and just like back then, was largely the result of tumbling commodity prices which in turn depressed both manufacturing and raw material goods prices. And with oil sliding, and iron ore plunging, not to mention the whole trade war thing, it does not seems like a rebound is imminent at all. 

Worse, since PPI is closely linked to corporate profitability, the decline suggests that China is badly lagging in the credit impulse arena despite having started off 2019 with a bang and some of the biggest increases in Total Social Financing on record.

So what's the big deal: China has always been able to boost inflation, all it had to do was turn on the credit spigot and inject a few trillion in new bank and shadow loans into the economy.

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Will China Retreat Into Itself?

It’s never easy to gauge what exactly is happening in China, or why the CCP Politburo takes the decisions it does. Today, or overnight, is no exception to that. However, one thing that appears certain, but which I don’t see reflected in all the analyses, is that Beijing pushing the value of the renminbi (yuan) down below 7 to the USD in one fell swoop, is a major setback for Xi Jinping and his government.

Yes, China may have given up hope of reaching positive conclusions in its trade talks with the US. And yes, some may think, even in China itself, that devaluing the currency is a tool that can be useful in a potential currency war. But there’s another side to this coin. It’s not even about the value itself, or the change in it, it’s the heavy-handed way it’s executed.

China wants, and desperately needs too, for the yuan to be a force in global financial markets. In very simple terms this is true because if it then wants to buy something, it can simply print the money for it. But only about 1% of global trade today is executed in yuan. That is not nearly enough. It means China needs dollars and euros, all the time. And devaluing the yuan means the country needs even more of those.

You’d almost think: why would you want to do that? What are the long-term prospects for a move like this? You’re telling forex markets that the value of the yuan is not trustworthy, because if Xi or the PBOC decides in the next five minutes that it should go up or down by 10% or 20%, they can do it. The Fed and ECB also have tools to manipulate their currencies (re: interest rates), but none of that magnitude.

The crux of the dilemma probably lies in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which I’ve been saying for years is just China’s way to sell its overcapacity and overproduction abroad. Sure, there may be loftier goals, and surely in the glitzy brochures, but the fact remains that China has tried to be an economic miracle, doing in 10 years what took the US a century, and it never slowed down its growth, at least not voluntarily, even if that might have been a wise move.

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Do You Remember The Oil Crisis And “Stagflation” Of The 1970s? In Many Ways, 2019 Is Starting To Look A Lot Like 1973…

The price of gasoline is rapidly rising, economic activity is slowing down, the Middle East appears to be on the brink of war, and Democrats are trying to find a way to remove a Republican president from office.  In many ways, 2019 is starting to look a lot like 1973.  For many Americans, the 1970s represent a rather depressing chapter in U.S. history that they would just like to forget, but the truth is that if we do not learn from history it is much more likely that we will repeat our mistakes.  And without a doubt, right now a lot of things are starting to move in a very ominous direction.

“Stagflation” was a term that was made popular in the 1970s, and it occurs when there is a high rate of inflation but economic growth is declining or stagnant.

The U.S. hasn’t had a serious bout with stagflation in quite a while, but it appears that we may be moving in that direction.

Let’s talk about the slowdown in the economy first.  On Monday, we learned that sales of existing homes in the U.S. were way down in March…

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Nearly Everyone Is A Socialist Now - Just The Way The Elites Want It

The expansionary phase of the global economy is almost certainly ending. A combination of excessive debt and trade protectionism is likely to become economically and politically destabilising. If, as seems increasingly likely, the world is destined for another credit and economic crisis, the colour of the political establishment will shape outcomes. This article examines the political scene and concludes that socialist puppet-masters will use the opportunity in an attempt to crush capitalism.

In 1975, I watched from the Strangers’ Gallery the debate in the House of Commons when the Referendum Act for membership of the Common Market was in its second reading. It was to be the first referendum ever held in the UK, and as one would imagine was contentious for that reason. The Labour government of the day had laid an act before Parliament for a referendum to ratify the European Communities Act of 1972, in other words, the UK’s membership of the Common Market.

The debate was not about membership, but the precedent of holding a referendum and its potential to undermine parliament’s sole right to take decisions on behalf of the people. In those days, MPs made proper speeches, not the time-limited five or so minutes permitted by Mr Speaker. A debate of this sort was worth listening to.

I was struck by the similarities of argument put forward by the two greatest parliamentary orators of the day. Michael Foot was the doyen of the extreme left in the Labour Party, and Enoch Powell was said to be on the extreme right (he wasn’t – he was a staunch free marketeer: more on this to follow). From their different perspectives their arguments were almost identical, and both spoke eloquently without notes.

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China's Economic Slump Accelerated In October, Early Indicators Show

As corporate defaults surge, forcing a desperate PBOC to reverse its deleveraging efforts and threaten more interventions to stave off a more serious retrenchment in growth in the world's second largest economy, it seems like not a day goes by without another warning sign that China's economic precarious situation is even worse than we thought.

The impact this has had on the mainland investors' psyche has been obvious to all. Repeated interventions by China's 'National Team' have done little to arrest the inexorable decline in mainland stocks in October, leaving the Shanghai Composite, the country's main benchmark index, on track for one of its worst months since the financial crisis, and its worst year since 2011. Meanwhile, a flood of FX outflows has pushed the Chinese yuan dangerously close to the 7 yuan-to-the dollar threshold which, if breached, could unleash another wave of chaos across global markets.

And as Chinese policy makers are probably already scrambling to pad the official stats, Bloomberg has released its own proprietary preliminary gauge of Chinese GDP in October which showed that the slowdown unleashed by the US-China trade war worsened in October.

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Forced Buy-Ins Spark "Liquidity Crisis" In China's 'Nasdaq'

Marking the worst year since 2008, China's tech-heavy (Nasdaq-equivalent) Shenzhen Composite index is down a shocking 35% year-to-date, and it's starting to become a self-feeding vicious circle...

As Bloomberg reports, the most recent slump in the teach-heavy index comes despite regulators' efforts to rein in risks of share-backed loans following reports over the weekend that insurers are being 'encouraged' to invest in listed companies to reduce liquidity risks connected to such loans.

Share pledges, where company founders and other major investors put up stock as collateral, have emerged as a pressure point in China’s debt-laden economy, especially as the stock market tumbles.

“There’s a liquidity crisis in the stock market, and pledged shares are again starting to sound the alarm,” said Yang Hai, analyst at Kaiyuan Securities Co.

"Stocks in Shenzhen typically bear the brunt of loss of confidence in the stock market because of their higher valuations.”

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Inverted Global Yield Curve Creates “The Perfect Cocktail For A Liquidity Crunch” As The IMF Warns Of “A Second Great Depression”

Why would the IMF use the phrase “a second Great Depression” in a report that they know the entire world will read?  To be more precise, the IMF stated that “large challenges loom for the global economy to prevent a second Great Depression”.  Are they saying that if we do not change our ways that we are going to be heading into a horrific economic depression?  Because if that is what they are trying to communicate, they would be exactly correct.  At this moment, global debt levels are higher than they have ever been before in all of human history, and in their report the IMF specifically identified “global debt levels” as one of the key problems that could lead to “another financial meltdown”…

The world economy is at risk of another financial meltdown, following the failure of governments and regulators to push through all the reforms needed to protect the system from reckless behaviour, the International Monetary Fund has warned.

With global debt levels well above those at the time of the last crash in 2008, the risk remains that unregulated parts of the financial system could trigger a global panic, the Washington-based lender of last resort said.

And the IMF report also seemed to indicate that global central banks were responsible for the situation in which we now find ourselves.

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The 11th Hour: 8 Examples Of Mainstream Media Sources Warning Us Of Imminent Economic Disaste

Are we on the verge of another great financial crisis, a devastating recession and a horrific implosion of the global debt bubble?  On my website I have been relentlessly warning my readers about the inevitable consequences of our very foolish actions, but now the mainstream media is beginning to sound just like The Economic Collapse Blog.  The coming crisis is so close now that a lot of them are starting to see it, and of course economic disaster is already a reality for much of the rest of the planet.  For years, the mainstream media told us that things would get better, and in a lot of ways we did see some improvement.  But now the tone of the mainstream media has become quite ominous, and that is definitely not a positive sign.  The following are 8 examples of mainstream media sources warning us of imminent economic disaster…

#1 Forbes: “Disaster Is Inevitable When America’s Stock Market Bubble Bursts”…

#2 CNBC: “Tech stock sell-off could be just beginning if trade war with China worsens”…

#3 Bloomberg: “Emerging-market rout is longest since 2008 as confidence cracks”…

#4 CNN: “Emerging Markets Look Sick. Will They Infect Wall Street?”…

#5 The Motley Fool: “6 signs the next recession might be closer than we realize”…

#6 Forbes: “U.S. Household Wealth Is Experiencing An Unsustainable Bubble”…

#7 Savannah Now: “Global debt soars, along with fears of crisis ahead”…

#8 CNBC: “The emerging market crisis is back. And this time it’s serious”…


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Economic Doom Returns: Emerging Market Currencies Collapse To Record Lows As Global Financial Chaos Accelerates

After a little bit of a lull, the international currency crisis is back with a vengeance.  Currencies are collapsing in Argentina, Brazil, India, Turkey and other emerging markets, and central banks are springing into action.  It is being hoped that the financial chaos can be confined to emerging markets so that it will not spread to the United States and Europe.  But of course the global financial system is more interconnected today than ever before, and a massive wave of debt defaults in emerging markets would inevitably have extremely serious consequences all over the planet.  It would be difficult to overstate the potential danger that this new crisis poses for all of us.  Emerging market economies went on an unprecedented debt binge over the past decade, and a high percentage of those debts were denominated in U.S. dollars.  As emerging market currencies collapse, it is going to become nearly impossible to service any debts denominated in U.S. dollars, and that could ultimately mean absolutely enormous losses for international lenders.  Our system tends to do fairly well as long as everybody is paying their debts, but once the dominoes begin to tumble things can get messy really quickly.

Let’s start our roundup today with India.  While India is currently not in as bad shape as some of the other emerging markets, the truth is that they could get there pretty rapidly if they keep going down this path.

On Thursday, concerns about rising oil prices drove the Indian rupee to a brand new all-time record low…

The Indian rupee fell to a record low on Thursday morning, following a declining trend all year — which economists attributed to rising oil prices, broader emerging market concerns, and strong month-end dollar demand.

It slid to 70.8100 against the dollar, after a previous new low just a day before at 70.475. That marked a 10.97 percent decline since the start of the year.

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BIS Warns Of "Perfect Storm" For Global Economy

To those hoping for a quick resolution to the US-China trade war, Axios had some bad news earlier today, reporting that the trade feud is "likely to last much longer than originally thought — extending well into the second half of next year and perhaps beyond, experts say." According to Axios, the main reason for the protracted conflict is that neither side is prepared to appear politically weak at home, and both are ready to absorb economic pain.

With few probable winners, the biggest losers would be farmers, users of steel, and consumers in the US, manufacturers of all types will see business leave to neighbors like Vietnam and Malaysia in China, while dampening economic growth in both nations and around the globe.

However, as the general manager of the Bank of International Settlements, Agustin Carstens warned, the greater risk is not how many points of GDP the rising tariffs will subtract from the US and China, but the growing danger to globalization itself, and on Saturday, Karstens delivered a scathing critique of rising protectionism, a not-so-subtle rebuke to Trump’s use of tariffs and trade talks to wring concessions from China, Mexico and many other countries.

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5 Signs That Global Financial Markets Are Entering A Bear Market, And 11 Ways That You Can Get Prepared For The Chaos That Is Coming…

We haven’t seen carnage like this in the global financial marketplace in quite some time.  On Wednesday, U.S. stocks were down some, but things were much, much worse around the rest of the world.  Global banking stocks are plunging, emerging market stocks are cratering, and emerging market currencies continue their stunning decline.  This represents a dramatic change from the relative stability that we have seen throughout most of 2018.  It is almost as if someone flipped a switch once the month of August began, and the shakiness of global financial markets has many investors wondering what trouble fall will bring.  What we are witnessing right now is not a full-blown panic yet, but it definitely has the potential to turn into one.

The term “bear market” is being thrown around a lot lately, but a lot of people don’t understand what a “bear market” actually is.

A bear market is generally considered to be when we see a decline of 20 percent or more from the 52-week high, and after the carnage of this past week a lot of those thresholds are now being crossed.

It would probably be too early to call this a “global stock market crash”, but we are well on the way to getting there.  The following are 5 signs that global financial markets are entering a bear market…

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That Escalated Quickly: The Emerging Market Currency Crisis Of 2018 Threatens To Destabilize The Entire Global Financial System

We haven’t seen emerging market currencies crash like this in over a decade, and analysts are warning that if this continues we could witness a devastating global debt crisis.  Over the past decade, there has been an insatiable appetite for cheap loans in emerging market economies, and a very substantial percentage of those loans were denominated in U.S. dollars.  When emerging market currencies crash relative to the U.S. dollar, lending dries up and servicing the existing loans becomes extremely oppressive, and that is precisely what we are witnessing right now.  This week, most of the top headlines in the financial media have been about the crisis in Turkey.  The Turkish lira fell another 8 percent against the U.S. dollar on Monday, and it is now down about 35 percent over the past week.  Overall, the lira has fallen 82 percent against the U.S. dollar in 2018, and this is putting an enormous amount of stress on the Turkish financial system…

“It is about credit, since Turkey has been a huge borrower in global capital markets over the past number of years when the world’s central banks were encouraging investors to stretch for yield,” David Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff, said in his daily market note. “Over half of the borrowing is denominated in foreign currencies, so when the lira sinks, debt-servicing costs and default risks rise inexorably.”

Turkey’s economy, just like all of the other major economies around the world, is utterly dependent on the flow of credit, and now lending is becoming greatly restricted.

Meanwhile, any existing loans that were made during the lending spree of the past decade that are denominated in foreign currencies are going to be causing major problems.  The following comes from CNBC…

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BOJ Offers To Buy Unlimited Bonds After Bizarre Delay As Yield Surge

While traders' attentions were as usual focused on the latest developments in China last night, around 9pm ET we pointed out that the real action was taking place in Japan, where the 10Y yield had blown out beyond the BOJ's designated range of 0.00%-0.10%...

... and had even crossed into the range above 0.11% where the BOJ traditionally launches its Fixed Rate Operation, also known as Unlimited Buying of JGBs beyond a given rate, something it did most recently on Monday morning (after a 7 month hiatus) when JGB yields also blew out sharply.

Which is why we were wondering when the BOJ would announce the latest "unlimited buying" operation to defend Japanese bonds from a further rout.

And it wasn't just us: so were all bond traders and central bank watchers, and yet the hours passed and still nothing from Kuroda.

Then, finally, just around 1am ET or 4 hours after the rout had started, the BOJ couldn't take it any more and announced the long overdue fixed-rate operation for the second time in 5 days after the 10-year yield rose to its highest level in more than a year.

While the BOJ's latest intervention resulted in a lot of relieved traders as the lack of any intervention almost convinced markets that Kuroda was willing to let the long end JGBs "slide", there was a difference: this BOJ offered to buy 10-year debt at 0.10% vs 0.11% at its previous operations. And also unlike Monday's operation, today the central bank actually did end up buying some 94BN yen worth of 10-year bonds.

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Brandon Smith: "Trade War Provides Perfect Cover For The Elitist Engineered Global Reset"

The political left doesn't seem to have an intelligent grasp of economic issues in the slightest.  I'm not seeing any critical discussion from leftist media outlets or pundits on fiscal uncertainties, and the only reaction that is common from them is that they hope that the trade war results in the financial downfall of the US so that Trump can be voted out in 2020.  They may very well get their wish, but they seem to imagine themselves celebrating at the end of the disaster, and I predict they'll be so concerned with their own financial survival that they won't have time to celebrate...

The initial reaction in conservative circles to the trade war was unfortunately overconfident denial, with many refusing to call the situation a “trade war” at all and some predicting an end to the conflict before it began. Obviously those assumptions are proving incorrect.

Now that acceptance of the trade war as a reality is setting in, the Trump bandwagon is doubling down and embracing blind enthusiasm for what they assume will be a victorious outcome, no matter how long it takes. Though the team-geopolitics mentality is enticing in some ways, I don’t find much in the facts and evidence department to support the notion of America winning a global trade war. As I outlined in my article America’s Debt Dependence Makes It An Easy Economic Target, as long as the U.S. retains historic levels of debt on a government, corporate and consumer level, and as long as we remain addicted to foreign investment in that debt, trade war opponents have all the ammunition they need.

The argument I now see regurgitated over and over is that this trade war has actually been "going on for decades", and only now do we “have a president with the guts to do something about it.” I’m not sure where this nonsense meme was started, but it’s everywhere.

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"No One's Ready For The ECB" - The Eurozone's Coming Debt Crisis

The European Central bank has signaled the end of its asset purchase program and a possible rate hike before 2019. After more than 2 trillion euro of purchases and zero interest rate policy, it is overdue.

The massive quantitative easing program has generated very significant imbalances and the risks outweigh the questionable benefits.

The balance sheet of the ECB is now more than 40% of the Eurozone GDP.

The governments of the Eurozone, however, have not prepared themselves at all for the end of stimuli.

Rather the contrary.

The Eurozone states often claim that deficits have been reduced and risks contained. However, closer scrutiny shows that the bulk of deficit reductions came from lower cost of debt. Eurozone government spending has barely fallen, despite lower unemployment and rising tax revenues. Structural deficits remain stubborn, and in some cases, unchanged from 2013 levels.

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Morgan Stanley Is Wrong: Goldman Warns China's Credit Impulse Collapse Will "Drag On Growth" This Year

Just over a month ago - in what seemed to be an effort to keep the dream of a global synchronous recovery narrative alive - Morgan Stanley attempted to show that the link between China's (declining) credit impulse and the global economy (which we are constantly told is ebullient) has now been severed and all is well in the world.

Their Chief Asia Economist Chetan Ahya began by confirming that "if you had been able to reliably pick the key global macro variable over 2012-16, China’s credit impulse would have been your choice" and explains why (this should be obvious to regular readers): 

The incredibly tight link between the credit impulse and China’s growth cycle, emerging markets (EMs) exports, global growth and commodity prices meant that it would have accurately predicted the direction of almost all other global macro variables that mattered, with about six months’ lead time.

He further explains the "simple" - in retrospect of course - reason behind this observation:

China’s credit impulse – or its leverage cycle – was the only game in town back then. With global aggregate demand weak as developed markets (DMs) were deleveraging and EMs were adjusting, the change in China’s credit impulse was the most significant driver of the global economy

However, in a striking claim which breaks with precedent and which, if correct suggests a historic change in the relationship between China's credit creation and its impact on global markets and economies, the Morgan Stanley economist then writes that the link between China's credit impulse and the global economy "has now been broken" and justifies his answer as follows: 

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Argentina Bailed Out With Biggest Ever Loan In IMF History

Just a few weeks after Argentina became ground zero for the coming Emerging Market crisis, when its currency suddenly collapsed at the end of April amid soaring inflation, exploding capital outflows and a central bank that was far behind the curve (as in "13% of rate hikes in a week" behind)...

... the IMF has officially bailed out the country - again - this time with a $50 billion, 36-month stand-by loan, and coming in about $10 billion more than rumored earlier in the week, it was the largest ever bailout loan in IMF history, meant to help restore investor confidence in a nation that, between its soaring external debt and current account deficit, prompted JPMorgan to suggest that along with Turkey, Argentina is in effect, doomed.

As the JPM chart below shows, the country’s total budget deficit, which includes interest payments on debt, was 6.5% of GDP last year, much of reflecting a debt binge of about $100 billion over the last two and a half years. The primary fiscal deficit in 2017 was 3.9%.

The loan will have a minimum interest rate of 1.96% rising as high as 4.96%.

“We are convinced that we’re on the right path, that we’ve avoided a crisis,” Finance Minister Nicolás Dujovne said at a press conference in Buenos Aires. “This is aimed at building a normal economy.”

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European Implosion Sends Panic Through Global Markets As George Soros Warns ‘We May Be Heading For Another Major Financial Crisis’

I told you to keep your eyes on Europe.  On Tuesday, widespread panic shot through European financial markets and this deeply affected U.S. markets as well.  The Dow Jones industrial average fell 391 points, and at this point the Dow and the S&P 500 have been down for three trading sessions in a row.  But the big news is what is happening over in Europe.  Tuesday’s crash represented the largest one day move for 2 year Italian bonds ever, and Italian bank stocks are now down a whopping 24 percent from their April highs.  Overall, European banks have fallen a total of 11 percent over the last four days, and it isn’t just banks in troubled countries such as Italy and Spain that are hurting.  The biggest bank in Europe, Deutsche Bank, just keeps on tumbling and is now just barely above all-time lows.  A few days ago when I wrote that the next global economic crisis “could be just around the corner”, there were some people that criticized me for making such a statement.  Well, as you will see below, now this fact has become so obvious that even George Soros is saying it.

Those that are ignoring what is going on in Italy are making a tragic mistake.  Italy is the third largest economy in the eurozone, and even the Wall Street Journal is admitting that its bond market is “in meltdown”…

Risk aversion is back. Italy is the focal point, with its bond market in meltdown, its politics in crisis after President Sergio Mattarella blocked the formation of an anti establishment government, and its credit rating under threat.

That is all now making bigger waves: Europe’s deepening troubles and disappointing global growth signals are sparking a sudden rally in haven bonds like U.S. Treasurys.

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