Analysis Topic: Interest Rates and the Bond Market
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Margin Rules Changes Force New Private Funding Of Public Debt / Interest-Rates / US Debt
By: Dan_Amerman
The Federal Reserve and other regulators around the world (including all members of the G-20) have recently agreed to alter margin rules, which will allow them to claim new powers over lending and leverage. In the United States these developing regulatory changes will not be restricted to the Fed's legal oversight over banks alone, but will affect all financial companies.
The new margin rules will impact about $4.4 trillion in investments in the US. In combination with new rules for $2.7 trillion in money funds, the regulations are changing for about $7 trillion in investments. And the combined effect of these changes may be to drive up to $2.5 trillion out of the private investment markets and into purchasing the debts of a heavily indebted US government, thereby providing a very low cost source of funds.
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Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Junk Bonds Slump - Will 2016 be The Year The Fed Fails? / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Clif_Droke
To many economists, the biggest mistake the Fed has made has been a lack of aggression in raising interest rates. After all, they reason, the U.S. job market is as strong as it has been since 2007 and the economy, even if sluggish, is at least back on an even keel. These same observers cheered the Fed's decision to raise the Fed funds rate in December by a quarter percentage point.
Yet there is even more reason to worry that the raising of the Fed funds rate last month may have been a policy blunder of major proportions. In this commentary we'll briefly examine the distinct possibility that the Fed has put the U.S. financial market on the cusp of another troublesome year ahead.
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Monday, January 18, 2016
Central Banks: the Biggest Short of All / Interest-Rates / Central Banks
By: Mario_Innecco
Transcript Excerpt: Monday January 18th 2006 still like to talk about the big short book written by
mouth Michael movers who is really a lot of other books about finance he wrote
liars poker that was the region no
also lashed boys Wall Street that came out in 2014 the bigger shirt came was
written in and came out in 2010 and I watched the new movie that's come out
the big short that came out on December 15th in the USA is interesting because
it was the day before
hydrates and Wikipedia call in the American biographical comedy drama and
it's interesting to see that it cost twenty million to me the movie and it's
already grossed seventy million dollars in box office which is not bad for a
Sunday, January 17, 2016
The Bursting of the Bond Bubble Has Begun - Pt 2 / Interest-Rates / International Bond Market
By: Graham_Summers
As we wrote earlier this week, bursting of the bond bubble has begun.
The decision by Central Banks to “inflate” the system’s debts away post-2008 has resulted in the misallocation of trillions of Dollars of capital.
The worst offenders were Chinese corporates. China has created the single largest mountain of bad debt in the world. Indeed, things are so out of control in China that 45% of all proceeds from new bond issuance are being used just to pay off interest on old loans.
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Friday, January 15, 2016
The Bond Bubble Has Begun Bursting / Interest-Rates / Corporate Bonds
By: Graham_Summers
The bursting of the bond bubble has begun.
As I’ve outlined previously the primary concern for Central Banks is the bond bubble. CNBC and other financial media focus on stocks because the asset class is more volatile and so makes for better content, but the foundation of the financial system is bonds. And bonds are THE focus for Central Banks.
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Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Summers: Global Economy Can't Withstand Four 2016 Fed Hikes / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Bloomberg
Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers spoke with Stephanie Ruhle and David Westin on Bloomberg TV's "Bloomberg <GO>." On the expectation of four rate hikes in 2016, Summers said: "I'd be surprised if the world economy can comfortably withstand four hikes. And I think that basically markets agree with me. And that's why despite the statements that are being made, markets aren't expecting four hikes."
Summers also said: "If you ask if there are risk that we're going to find ourselves in a situation within the next two years where policy is going to have to reverse, yes. I think that is a significant risk."
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Monday, January 11, 2016
Junk Rhymes with Subprime / Interest-Rates / Corporate Bonds
By: Michael_Pento
On December 16th 2008, in what Ben Bernanke averred took a tremendous amount of "moral courage", the Federal Reserve officially arrived at its Zero Interest Rate Policy. ZIRP was a huge win for borrowers because it drove down the carrying cost of debt to historic lows. Unfortunately, savers didn't fare as well.
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Monday, January 11, 2016
Rigged U.S. Ttreasury Bond Market Double Barreled Hidden Q.E. To Infinity / Interest-Rates / Quantitative Easing
By: Jim_Willie_CB
We were just treated to a fake official rate hike, and it was cleverly executed. The recent supposed USFed rate hike was a gigantic fraud, a misdirection, a clever ploy, and an act of extreme desperation. We were told of an official 25 basis point interest rate hike. But a hike of 0.25% is nowhere to be seen. The reality is that the USFed is so strapped, so deeply under siege, so overwhelmed, that it requires urgent help from the USDept Treasury. So they have expanded QE to become Double Barreled Hidden QE to Infinity. It has an important feature now, with national security stamped on it. This is truly the end game for the USDollar. Big thanks to Rob Kirby and EuroRaj on my colleague team for leading the way and shining the spotlight. Their abilities to see through the maze, smoke, mirrors, and din is impressive.
Saturday, January 02, 2016
The Fed’s Academic-Based Theories Are Creating a BRUTAL Economic Reality / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: Graham_Summers
One of the most frustrating aspects of today’s financial system is the fact that the Fed is being lead by lifelong academics with no real world banking or business experience.
Consider the cases of Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen.
Neither of these individuals has ever created a job based on generating sales of any kind. Neither of them has ever had to make payroll. Neither of them has ever run a business. What are economic realities for business owners (e.g. operating costs, capital and profits) are just abstract concepts for Bernanke and Yellen.
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Saturday, January 02, 2016
A 'Witch's Brew' Bubbling in Bond Market ETFs / Interest-Rates / Corporate Bonds
By: Gordon_T_Long
We believe the Credit Cycle has turned and with it will come some massive unexpected shocks. One of these will be the fall out in the Bond Market, centered around the dramatic growth explosion in Bond ETFs coupled with the post financial crisis regulatory changes that effectively removed banks from making markets in corporate bonds. It is a 'Witch's Brew' with a flattening yield curve bringing it to a boil.
Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Does The National Debt Supercycle Override The Normal U.S. Interest Rate Cycle? / Interest-Rates / US Debt
By: Dan_Amerman
Markets and economies usually run in cycles and there have been numerous previous reversals where falling interest rates have been replaced by rising interest rates. The soothing reassurances from many financial authorities and much of the financial media are that there is no need for the general public to worry - because this sort of thing is quite normal.
But is this actually true? Have we really been "here" before?
Or are there are major differences between this time around and the previous cycles of rising interest rates which mean that much of recent history may not apply at all?
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Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Get Your Money Out of Italian Banks Now! Austerity and Bail-Ins Fan Populist Flames / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2015
By: Mike_Shedlock
Austerity and Bail-Ins Fan Populist Flames
The Italian economy is growing, albeit barely. But Italy is still saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Citizens are upset about a recovery that has passed most of them by. For example, youth unemployment is a whopping 39.8%.
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Tuesday, December 29, 2015
Monetary Policy Monster With A Key To Its Own Cage / Interest-Rates / Global Debt Crisis 2015
By: John_Rubino
Out on the fringes of monetary policy, a merger of sorts is taking place between the debt jubilee and Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). The result — likely to emerge sometime in 2016 — will make the past decade’s bank bailouts and QE programs look like kid stuff.
Let’s start by defining these terms:
The debt jubilee — an idea from biblical times in which debts are periodically forgiven — involves the government creating a lot of new currency and giving it to debtors, either through stepped-up public spending, tax cuts, or some sort of direct transfer. A more recent term for this is “helicopter money,” which reflects a central bank’s ability to simply drop newly-printed bills out of an aircraft if necessary.
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Tuesday, December 22, 2015
Is This Interest Rate Hike Rigged? / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Anthony_Cherniawski
It’s official.This week the Federal Reserve raised the key overnight Fed Funds rate by 0.25%. The move was discussed, debated, argued, and telegraphed to death. We all heard about it until we hoped anything else financial would happen so we could finally put the tired story to rest.
Now that the rate hike is on the books, we can start talking about outcomes, like how in the world the Fed intends to enforce the rate hike, what it means, and what comes next.
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Monday, December 21, 2015
Beware of Central Bank Success / Interest-Rates / Central Banks
By: Michael_Pento
The most important question investors will soon have to face is: "what's going to happen once central banks finally meet their inflation targets?"
For example, let's assume after years of monetizing government debt, bidding up equity prices, and forcing debt on the public by keeping borrowing costs at or below zero; that the ECB is finally able to achieve its inflation target rate of 2%. This would only occur once money supply growth becomes both robust and sustainable. It is silly to believe ECB President Mario Draghi can bring inflation to just 2% and nail it at that level. Inflation will continue to rise past 2% until the ECB raises interest rates by reducing its pace of bond buying. So, we will have the environment where inflation is rising north of 2% and the central bank will be forced to start cutting back its purchases of debt and preparing the market for eventual outright sales.
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Monday, December 21, 2015
Yellen has Lift Off, But Rates Won’t Go To The Moon / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Sam_Kirtley
At the FOMC meeting last week the Fed raised interest rates for the first time since 2006. This was a historic moment marks the first rate hike after the Fed engaged in massive quantitative easing programs to combat the Global Financial Crisis and the Great Recession. However, we are not economists or economic historians. We run a trading service and are therefore concerned with where the markets will go next. This means that our key point of analysis is around where rates will go next, rather than what they did last week.
Monday, December 21, 2015
Ron Paul - Do We Need the Fed? / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
Stocks rose Wednesday following the Federal Reserve's announcement of the first interest rate increase since 2006. However, stocks fell just two days later. One reason the positive reaction to the Fed's announcement did not last long is that the Fed seems to lack confidence in the economy and is unsure what policies it should adopt in the future.
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Sunday, December 20, 2015
U.S. Interest Rates Yield Curve Flattening Further, Why it Matters / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Dan_Norcini
I am becoming increasingly concerned over the flattening yield curve. This curve enables us to get a first hand view of sentiment towards economic growth among bond investors and other large players in the interest rate markets, some of whom are among the most sophisticated observers of the financial scene anywhere.
Saturday, December 19, 2015
U.S. Fed Mission Accomplished / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Peter_Schiff
On May 1, 2003 on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln then President George W. Bush, after becoming the first U.S. president to land on an aircraft carrier in a fixed wing aircraft (in a dashing olive drab flight suit), declared underneath an enormous "Mission Accomplished" banner that "major combat operations" in Iraq had been concluded, that regime change had been effected, and that America had prevailed in its mission to transform the Middle East. 13 years later, after years of additional combat operations in Iraq, and a Middle East that is spiraling out of control and increasingly disdainful of America's influence, we look back at the "Mission Accomplished" event as the epitome of false confidence and premature celebration.
Friday, December 18, 2015
U.S. Yield Curve and Spreads: Fed's Real Policy Error in Pictures; What's Next? / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Mike_Shedlock
Inquiring minds may be interested in a detailed look at the yield curve and spreads between various durations following the Fed's Wednesday rate hike. Let's start with a long-term chart from 1996 to 2015.