Analysis Topic: Interest Rates and the Bond Market
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Monday, August 30, 2010
What is Going on in Washington? / Interest-Rates / US Debt
What if you earned half of what you spent in a month and put the other half on your credit card? What if you did that month after month, year after year until your debt was six times your annual income? Would you consider yourself to be in deep financial trouble?
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Monday, August 30, 2010
Bernanke Hallucinating That Printing Money and Buying Bonds Can Save the Economy / Interest-Rates / US Debt
If Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke honestly believes what he said at Jackson Hole on Friday — that he can save the economy by printing more money and buying more bonds — he’s hallucinating.
Through the first quarter of this year, he printed $1.5 trillion of paper money and promptly bought $1.5 trillion in mortgage bonds, government agency bonds, and Treasury bonds.
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Monday, August 30, 2010
It is the FedOnomics, Stupid! / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Seth Barani writes: It was 1913, year when US Federal Reserve Bank was established. Coincidently, the 16th amendment on income taxation was also passed in the same year. America was getting ready to wage wars. Fed was getting ready to print (aka "create") money and supply it in plenty. All done at your cost.
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Sunday, August 29, 2010
U.S. Treasury Bond Market Rally Hits Bernanke Brick Wall / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
The bond market continued to power ahead – until Thursday. On Friday morning the All-mighty Ben Bernanke opened his mouth and the words of wisdom that were emitted have caused great joy and happiness for the risk trade and got the long bond futures to tank 2½ points on the day. For a day it appears that Ben can walk on water, but I have to wonder how long before the deeply and increasingly disturbing reality will make this mirage disappear.
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Saturday, August 28, 2010
Translation of Bernanke's Jackson Hole Speech / Interest-Rates / Central Banks
It is far easier to translate Bernanke than Greenspan. Both men had this task: to deceive the public. Greenspan adopted verbal obfuscation as his technique. Bernanke has adopted boredom.
I hope this exercise will help you understand his speech of August 27.
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Saturday, August 28, 2010
U.S. Fed About to Launch Monetary Shock and Awe / Interest-Rates / US Debt
The equities markets are in disarray while the bond markets continue to surge. The avalanche of bad news has started to take its toll on investor sentiment. Barry Ritholtz's "The Big Picture" reports that the bears have taken the high-ground and bullishness has dropped to its lowest level since March ‘09 when the market did a quick about-face and began a year-long rally. Could it happen again? No one knows, but the mood has definitely darkened along with the data. There's no talk of green shoots any more, and even the deficit hawks have gone into hibernation. It feels like the calm before the storm, which is why all eyes were on Jackson Hole this morning where Fed chairman Ben Bernanke delivered his verdict on the state of the economy on Friday.
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Saturday, August 28, 2010
U.S. Fiscal Debt and Monetization are taking the Financial System Down / Interest-Rates / US Debt
The Congressional Budget Office thinks the country faces serious budget problems, as well as serious economic problems, because it estimates that the deficit for 2011 will be $1.066 trillion. In addition it sees fiscal 2010, which ends on September 30th, at $1.34 trillion, or 9% of GDP. Last year was 9.9%.
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Friday, August 27, 2010
Gold and Stocks Yield Relationship and Buy Signals / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Time was, stocks were riskier than bonds and should have the higher yield. But then came inflation...
AT THE START of this week, stocks on the Dow Jones, Tokyo Nikkei and FTSE100 in London offered a bigger dividend-yield than you'd earn in interest from their local government bonds.
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Friday, August 27, 2010
U.S. Treasury Bond Rally Tiring, Gold Moving Higher / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
What might Bernanke's speech have said or implied that triggered the market response that we have witnessed so far today? How about: Don't fight the Fed...The economy is anemic, and the outlook might be uncertain-to-poor, but the Fed will pump, buy, and do whatever it takes to turn it around. The Fed will keep short rates at ZERO for a long time, and force companies and investors to take risk....
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Friday, August 27, 2010
Interest Rates Remain Low as Economic Concerns Persist / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
National average mortgage rates remain historically low and there appears to be no end in sight to the Fed’s low to no interest rate policy. A less than stellar Commerce Department report on the second quarter gross domestic product Friday (August 27) morning is the latest contributor to the sense of pessimism hanging over the US economy.
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Thursday, August 26, 2010
Play the Treasury Bond Market Yield Curve with New ETNs / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Many individual investors spend their time thinking about stocks. Which stocks are going up? How high are they going? Should I buy now?
These can be important questions, but stocks aren’t the only financial market. So why do eyes glaze over when the bond news comes on? My guess is that people don’t understand how big the bond market is — or how much influence it has on everything else.
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Thursday, August 26, 2010
Marc Faber and Peter Schiff on the U.S. Treasury Bond Bubble / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
As I've been saying for some time that the bond market is screaming for an imminent burst, now Dr. Marc Faber and Mr. Peter Schiff also spoke with CNBC on Aug. 23 warning of a bond bubble trouble.
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Wednesday, August 25, 2010
UK Government Bonds Gilts vs Gold, Vying for “Safe Haven” Money / Interest-Rates / UK Interest Rates
“I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man that controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply,” declared Baron Nathan Mayer de Rothschild, - once the richest man in Europe. In 1840, NM Rothschild was appointed as the bullion broker to the Bank of England, and went on to operate the Royal Mint Refinery in 1852. Nathan gained a position of such enormous power in the City of London that he was able to supply enough money to the Bank of England to enable it to avert a market liquidity crisis.
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Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Spike High for Treasuries / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Based on my near- and intermediate-term work, the patter and momentum configuration in the iShares Barclays 20+ Yr Treas Bond ETF (TLT) argue that the price structure hit a spike high this morning at 109.50, reflecting the flight to safety surge in buying of US Treasury paper despite the puny yields.
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Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Why Are You Buying a Stinkin' Bond Fund Now? / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Dr. Steve Sjuggerud writes: You're guilty... You're busted.
But it's not just you... Everybody is doing it. Everybody is buying bond funds.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Is the U.S. Treassury Bond Bubble About to Burst? / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Jason Simpkins writes: Bonds have provided a welcome safe-haven for investors seeking shelter from the financial maelstrom of the past two years. But now many analysts fear bonds have entered bubble territory and pose a rising threat to their holders.
The amount of money flowing into bonds is "probably not sustainable on a consistent basis" Joel Levington, managing director of corporate credit at Brookfield Investment Management Inc., told Bloomberg News. "Eventually it won't be sustainable. Whether that means five years from now or five weeks is a little difficult to tell."
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Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Self Fulfilling Prophecy: The U.S. Treasury Bond Trade / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
The 10 year T-Note is currently yielding 2.5%, and the Fed`s latest quantitative easing initiative is becoming counterproductive to their stated purpose of trying to stimulate the economy by encouraging more risk taking, i.e., private capital utilization seeking attractive return on investment opportunities. The issue is that Mr. Ben Bernanke and the Fed governors although great academicians have failed to take account for how traders and financial markets impact and take advantage of Fed policy.
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Wednesday, August 25, 2010
The True U.S. National Debt / Interest-Rates / US Debt
When I read Paul Krugman and the other Keynesian boneheads saying that our debt is not a problem, they quote figures about our debt of $13.3 trillion versus our GDP of $14.6 trillion not being so bad. That is only 91% of GDP. They point to World War II when our national debt reached 120% of GDP. They say everything worked out after that.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
At Least Be Aware Of The Current Risk In Treasury Bonds! / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Money continues to pour into bonds at a ferocious pace, with investors confident they are a safe and conservative holding in the midst of all the economic and stock market uncertainty.
With last week’s further rally, the 30-year Treasury bond had its biggest weekly gain in price since May, pushing their yield down to just 3.66%. The yield on 10-year Treasury notes was pushed down to 2.61%, while the yield on two-year notes fell to 0.496%.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
U.S. Treasury Bonds, The Fed's Biggest Bubble / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
I've made a living out of exposing economic fallacies, but there's one whale that I can't seem to harpoon. Even top-flight Wall Street analysts seem to believe that the Fed's doubling of the monetary base after the credit crunch has not had an inflationary impact on our economy. Their logic can be summed up like so: "The money the Fed created and dropped from helicopters has all been caught in the trees." In other words, the Fed is creating money, but it is just being held as excess reserves by the banking system instead of being loaned to the public. Therefore, the money supply hasn't truly increased, there is no money multiplier effect, and aggregate price levels are behaving themselves.
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