Analysis Topic: Interest Rates and the Bond Market
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Friday, July 13, 2012
The Real LIBOR Scandal / Interest-Rates / Market Manipulation
By: Fred_Sheehan
Whatever can be said for and against Barclays and Bob Diamond, the story is in danger of exhausting itself at the wrong link in the chain. It has sidelined BubbleTV's around-the-clock coverage of Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg's dog walker has been waiting in a studio sound booth for a week now.
The populace has been so successfully coached and beaten to a pulp that the source of interest-rate price fixing is not mentioned. That source is the Federal Reserve.
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Friday, July 13, 2012
Can Bernanke Force Banks to Lend by Halting Interest on Excess Reserves? / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2012
By: Mike_Shedlock
Several readers have ask me to comment on a King World interview of Michael Pento.
Before I offer my comments on Pento's thoughts, let me say upfront that Eric King is a world-class interviewer. King lets his interviewees have their say, no matter what it is.
It is up to listeners to decide whether the message makes any sense or not. King merely wants the position to be well stated.
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Friday, July 13, 2012
Libor Interest Rate Rigging: The Tip of the Market Manipulation Iceberg / Interest-Rates / Market Manipulation
By: Rob_Kirby
GATA was born in the late 1990’s - primarily on the back of fundamental research by Frank Veneroso regarding Central Bank Gold Leasing. Veneroso’s intellectual curiosity was aroused after being fed detailed data re: gold leasing by the Bank of England’s Terry Smeeton.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Swiss Banking: Asymmetric Threats Mount? / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2012
By: DK_Matai
Total client assets managed by Swiss banks stood at 5.3 trillion Swiss francs or 5,300 billion Swiss francs at the end of last year according to the latest data compiled by the Swiss Bankers Association (SBA), the apex body of banks in Switzerland. This includes 2,700 billion Swiss francs (51 per cent) of foreign client assets and the remainder 2,600 billion Swiss francs (49 per cent) of domestic client assets. The drop to 51 per cent of total foreign assets-under-management is the lowest recorded in four years. Titled “Banking in transition - Future prospects for banks in Switzerland”, the latest SBA study notes that the share of foreign client assets in the Swiss wealth management industry has fallen for four successive years: from 56% at the end of 2008 to 55% in 2009 to 52% in 2010 and 51% in 2011. The quantum of overseas assets under management at the end of 2008 stood at 3 trillion Swiss francs and this includes the value of securities held in client portfolios, fiduciary deposits, amounts due to clients in savings and investment accounts, and as also from time deposits.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
The Fed's Next Move / Interest-Rates / Central Banks
By: Michael_Pento
Spanish and Italian bond yields have now risen back up to the level they were before the EU Summit. We also learned recently that U.S. job growth remains anemic, producing just 80k net new jobs in June. The global manufacturing index dropped to 48.9, for the first time since 2009. And emerging market economies have seen their growth rates tumble, as the European economy sinks further into recession.
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Thursday, July 12, 2012
The Big Banks are Amateurs When It Comes to Manipulating Interest Rates / Interest-Rates / Market Manipulation
By: Washingtons_Blog
Who Are The Biggest Manipulators of All?
People are justifiably furious over the big banks’ manipulation of hundreds of trillions of dollars of assets. This violates the banks’ most central function: loaning money based upon the going rate.
Indeed, the Libor manipulation is so serious that even mainstream economists are starting to call for heads to roll.
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Thursday, July 12, 2012
RBS Chaos and Barclays Libor Cesspit Prompts Slow Motion Run on British Banks / Interest-Rates / Inflation
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The Bank of England is worried, very worried, because for the past 4 years Britain's central bank has been busy battling to prevent financial armageddon from taking place by means of stuffing every orifice of the too big to fail banks with free money courtesy of the electronic money printing presses to the tune of £375 billion to date, the consequences of which is that everyone in Britain pays the price in terms of high inflation that money printing brings to ever escalating degree as countless historic examples such as Weimar Germany and Zimbabwe illustrate where this trend ultimately leads.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
U.S. Treasury Bond Yields Reach New Low / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
By: Donald_W_Dony
US bond yields have been in a secular decline for over 20 years. The recent movement out of risk and growth assets and into the safety of fixed income has pushed the yield on 30-year US Treasuries down to a new low- 2.53%.
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Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Libor Was a Criminal Conspiracy From the Start / Interest-Rates / Market Manipulation
By: Raul_I_Meijer
So far, everybody who's said anything about the Libor rigging affair appears to have been lying. And if Nouriel Roubini can call for "somebody hanging in the streets", I can at least call for all the Libor liars to go to jail for it. AND lose all their money, benefits, pensions, everything.
And while we’re at it, why not also throw in jail anyone who suggests that Barclays "might not" have been the only bank rigging the rates. Might not? As if Barclays could have manipulated Libor significantly all on its own?! Against scores of other major banks reporting their daily rates?!
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Monday, July 09, 2012
Learning from LI(E)BOR / Interest-Rates / Market Manipulation
By: William_Bancroft
The LIBOR scandal rolls on in the UK, eagerly observed by the rest of the world. This scandal has reached mammoth proportions and has become deeply political with politicians past and present rushing to tell the media: ‘nothing to do with me’.
What people in the UK seem most upset about is ‘the greed of bankers’, but I think what this feeling is really articulating is ire at the rewards for greed in an industry that enjoys an implicit state back-stop. Us Brits have little issue with the likes of Richard Branson, James Dyson or Alan Sugar earning large amounts of money; these individuals’ futures are properly governed by the success of the decisions they make.
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Friday, July 06, 2012
Central Bank Fireworks / Interest-Rates / Central Banks
By: Michael_Pento
Plunging ISM manufacturing data in the U.S. forebodes a GDP growth rate of just about 1%. And crumbling global PMI manufacturing data indicates worldwide growth is retreating to just 2%. There is a deepening recession in the EU (17) countries, while emerging market economic growth has collapsed. It isn't much of a surprise to learn that central banks in China, Britain, Europe and America have indicated that more money printing is just around the corner.
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Friday, July 06, 2012
What I Wish Ben Bernanke Knew About Japan's Economic and Debt Crisis / Interest-Rates / Global Debt Crisis 2012
By: Money_Morning
I've called Japan my "other" home since 1989 and in that time I've seen it change in ways that ought to scare the pants off you.
I say that not to ruin your day, but because I fear we are headed down the same exact road as long as Ben Bernanke and his central banking buddies think it's easier to print money than actually stimulate real growth.
Friday, July 06, 2012
The Butterfly Effect, and The $650 Trillion LIBOR Manipulation? / Interest-Rates / Market Manipulation
By: DK_Matai
Does the flap of an electronic butterfly's wings in London or Tokyo set off a financial tornado in New York or Zürich? We strive for predictability, which eludes us more than ever before, yet we don't often stop to ask ourselves: Why? According to the butterfly effect, the slightest disturbance in one part of a system can trigger a chain of events that creates a hurricane in another part of the world. Sometimes people can joke, laugh and be dismissive of the butterfly effect. However, such effects are critical in shaping our thinking and our interlinked complex systems both man-made and natural. They predicate and have the capacity to modify our behavioural patterns and lifestyle almost immediately. What is becoming clearer, and what we shouldn't ignore, is that the "inappropriate behaviour" in regard to the London Interbank Offered Rate or LIBOR manipulation by a "small number of traders" in reality has consequences far beyond the immediate concerns of those traders themselves. Traders who we have to assume were probably motivated more by their own immediate financial gain than by some grand conspiracy to disrupt the markets. Yet, this is what they may have inadvertently done!
Friday, July 06, 2012
World Central Banks Take Steps to Stimulate Economic Growth / Interest-Rates / Central Banks
By: Asha_Bangalore
Following the Fed’s extension of Operation Twist on June 20, 2012, the European Central Bank (ECB), People’s Bank of China (PBoC), and the Bank of England (BoE) put in place new monetary policy support today as gloomy economic data have trickled in during recent weeks.
The ECB cut its policy rate to 75bps from 1.00%, a historical low and also slashed the deposit rate (interest the ECB pays to banks for overnight deposits held at the central bank) to zero in order to promote bank lending. The policy rate of 75 bps is the lowest in the short existence of the euro since 1999 (see Chart 1). The main thrust of the ECB is to stimulate economic growth which has suffered a severe setback and raised the unemployment rate in the eurozone to 11.1% in May, a historical high for the eurozone (see Chart 2).
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Thursday, July 05, 2012
Global Uncoordinated Bond Market Panic ... / Interest-Rates / Global Debt Crisis 2012
By: Mike_Shedlock
... ECB Cuts Rates to Record Low, Deposit Rate to Zero; Bond Market Response Was 'Not Enough'; Words 'Heightened Uncertainty' Explained
Global Uncoordinated Panic
In a 45-Minute Salvo today, the ECB cuts rates to a record low 0.75 percent and reduced the deposit rate to zero. Meanwhile, the People's Bank of China cut their benchmark borrowing costs (the second time in a month), and the Bank of England raised the size of its asset-purchase program.
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Thursday, July 05, 2012
The Libor Interest Rate Manipulation Scandal Has Been Brewing for Years / Interest-Rates / Market Manipulation
By: Money_Morning
The Barclays Libor manipulation scandal is the latest development out of a huge investigation in the global banking industry - one that would have started years earlier, if Money Morning's Shah Gilani was in charge of it.
You see, Libor rates are incredibly important. They're the benchmark, or "reference," rates for hundreds of trillions of dollars in loans.
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Thursday, July 05, 2012
Libor Exposure Of Banker Corruption, Bank Of England And U.S. Fed Both Implicated / Interest-Rates / Market Manipulation
By: Jim_Willie_CB
Few observers make the connection, but the current LIBOR scandal is a middle inning of two important events. The first is the demise of the Western banker leadership crew. The executives from the most powerful banks will be last to be deposed, all sharing an ethnic strain. The second is the open fracture of the Western financial system. Over the past few years, to be sure a great many people have grown tired of Jackass descriptions of corruption within the banking sector and financial system in general. Well, hear this: TOLD YA SO! The London Interbank Offered Rate scandal will erupt into an uncontrollable firestorm, hitting one chamber and then the next, with rapid contagion.
Wednesday, July 04, 2012
Labour's Dirty Finger Prints All Over Bank of England LIBOR Manipulation Crime Scene / Interest-Rates / Market Manipulation
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The mainstream press has been busy during the past 2 days working itself up into a frenzy of reporting, despite the fact that they are in effect reporting a 4 YEAR old story, something that I have touched on many, many times over the years that LIBOR rates are MANIPULATED by ALL parties concerned as a consequence of a series of credit crisis earth quakes that took place following the collapse of Northern Rock (a year before Lehman's), as fear driven Labour government politicians put pressure on a Panicking and Incompetent Bank of England to loosen the reins on the bankrupting, insolvent banks who took the increasingly nervous nods, winks and nudges as a licence to defraud counter parties to interest rate derivatives contracts (usually other banks). Now four years later the mainstream press is using a magnifying glass on just one aspect of market manipulation that took place during the financial crisis that ultimately will lead all the way to Alistair Darling's and Gordon Brown's Downing Street doors.
Tuesday, July 03, 2012
Low Interest Rates Having No Effect on Economy / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: InvestmentContrarian
Danny Esposito writes: The Federal Reserve is frustrated that its low interest rate policy and thus low mortgage rates are having no effect on the U.S. economy. The Federal Reserve was hoping to stimulate borrowing to get the U.S. economy growing again.
The problem is the record number of people whom are long-term unemployed: 5.4 million were unemployed for longer than 27 weeks as of May.
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Tuesday, July 03, 2012
U.S. Treasury Bonds Bear Market Underway? / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
By: Tony_Caldaro
We believe the multi-decade Bond bull market is coming to an end. We have been tracking the typical choppy action in long, and short, term rates for a number of years now. While many turned bearish on Bonds in 2010 and 2011, we remained bullish for two specific reasons. First, the 30 year Bond rate had not made a new bear market low. Second, the declining phase of the 68 year Bond cycle had not displayed any signs of bottoming. Recently this has changed.