Bill Gross (PIMCO) Shorts U.S. Debt, China Trashes U.S. on Human Rights, and Chart on Fed Monetization Correlating to Commodity Price Jumps

Bill Gross has not only dumped all of his holdings on U.S. Treasuries, he is now shorting them.  A Zerohedge exclusive:

In March, Pimco's flagship Total Return Fund (TRF) has now taken an active short position in US government debt: -3% on a Market Value basis (or $7.1 billion), and a whopping -18% on a Duration Weighted Exposure basis. And confirming just what PIMCO thinks of US-related paper is the fact that the world's largest "bond" fund now has cash, at a stunning $73 billion, or 31% of all assets, as its largest asset class on both a relative and absolute basis.

 Dumping government rates for cash?  Is Gross trying to tell us something?

In the more ironic news section, we have the Chinese government criticizing the U.S. for its lacking record on human rights.  Yeah sure, the U.S. suffers from the horrible double standard of promoting human rights through continual warfare, but China (Xinhau) has some balls for calling us out as it continues to deprive its citizens of political and press/media freedoms.  Probably the best and truest part of the statement:

The United States has a notorious record of international human rights violations, said the report.
The U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have caused huge civilian casualties.
Figures from the WikiLeaks website revealed up to 285,000 war casualties in Iraq from March 2003 through the end of 2009, with 63 percent of the 109,000 people killed in the Iraq war being civilians.
"The U.S. military actions in Afghanistan and other regions have also brought tremendous casualties to local people," said the report.
The report cited the notorious case of a "kill team" formed by five soldiers from the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The team had committed at least three murders, where they randomly targeted and killed Afghan civilians, and dismembered the corpses and hoarded the human bones.
In addition, the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops had caused 535 Afghan civilian deaths and injuries in 2009. Among them 113 civilians were shot and killed, an increase of 43 percent over 2008, the report quoted McClatchy Newspapers as saying.

The report also rightly calls out the C.I.A. for prisoner abuses.  I should also mention that running 5%-10% inflation in one year doesn't exactly constitute as promoting human rights as China continues to destroy the purchasing power of the citizens.  Thomas Friedman was probably disagree.  Since I am on the topic of China, remember how they are a huge exporting country that is undermining American blue collar jobs through cheap labor and Yuan devaluation?
 
China Reports First Quarterly Trade Deficit in Seven Years

Asia’s largest economy had a deficit of $1.02 billion in the first three months of the year compared with a surplus of $13.9 billion a year earlier, the customs bureau said on its website today. Imports jumped 32.6 percent to a quarterly record of $400.7 billion, helped by stronger domestic demand and higher global commodity prices, the bureau said.

Yup, providing us cheap goods that American workers can't produce because of unions and government regulation that drives up the cost of labor is horrible for those who are having a hard time making ends meat right now.

Russ Winter of Minyanville has a great chart showing the correlation of Fed monetization and commodity price increases:

I guess money printing doesn't cause deflation as Reuven Glick and Sylvain Leduc of the San Francisco Fed assert.  Who would have thought?

I will end with a good quote from Mish on why it is Greece, Ireland, and now Portugal who are bailing out the elites rather than being bailed out themselves:

The article goes on to say something that I have been saying for over a year: Taxpayers of Greece, Ireland and Portugal are bailing out German, French and British taxpayers and depositors — not the other way around.
The indebted countries are not really getting bailouts, Tilford said, “but loans at high interest rates.”
Bingo.
The question is how long will taxpayers in Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and Spain put up with this? Notice that I included Spain.
Spain may not need a bailout now, but it will. And Trichet's One Size Fits Germany Policy cannot possibly help.

Spain's bailout can not come soon enough.

Update- Despite the non-government shutdown, silver just keeps pushing forward: