Analysis Topic: Interest Rates and the Bond Market
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Friday, October 02, 2015
Can You Imagine The Fed Raising Rates In This World? Everything Going Wrong At Once Edition / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: John_Rubino
After the markets failed to embrace its most recent interest rate dither, the Fed dispatched pretty much its entire PR team to make sure we understood that rates would rise Next Month For Sure.
Then everything kind of fell apart. Emerging market capital flight accelerated…
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Friday, October 02, 2015
US Bond Market - How to Fix This / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
By: John_Mauldin
By Jared Dillian
This is a pickle wrapped in a conundrum surrounded by a puzzle, or something like that. The Fed declined to hike rates, which everyone thought was bullish, and then stocks got on the vomit comet. They’ve been going down on an elevator ever since.
I think what’s interesting here is how shamefully far behind the Fed is on this. Dudley is out there still talking rate hikes. Like, just the other day. He has gone right out of his tree. It’s almost as if he lost his B-Unit and can’t log into Bloomberg.
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Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Junk Bond Market Imminent Collapse Threatens (Unwelcome) BIG Rate Rises / Interest-Rates / International Bond Market
By: Clive_Maund
Everyone is so focused on looking at the Fed and whether or not it decides to raise rates by a puny 0.25%, that they are completely overlooking the fact that it is the market's role to set interest rates, and if the Fed is not up to the job, then the markets will eventually take over and do it in a manner that is likely to involve rises vastly greater than a mere 0.25%, which given the current fragile and extremely unstable debt structure, can be expected to have catastrophic consequences.
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Panic Is Spreading, Part 1: Surge in Junk Bond Defaults Imminent / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
By: John_Rubino
One of the early signs that a cycle is about to turn down is disorder in junk bonds. That’s because the companies that issue such bonds are by definition financially and/or operationally weak and therefore ultra-sensitive to changes in their environment. A modest drop in, say, consumer spending or the price of wind turbines will hardly be noticed by an Apple or GE but might threaten the survival of those companies’ weakest competitors. And as credit bubbles inflate, the weak in every field tend to proliferate as overexcited bankers and bond funds offer them plenty of rope with which to hang themselves.
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Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Interest Rates All Bad at 0%? / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Axel_Merk
We call on central banks to abolish their zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) framework before more harm is done. In our assessment, ZIRP is bad for all stakeholders and may even lead to war.
Friday, September 25, 2015
Central Banks Don't Dictate Interest Rates / Interest-Rates / Central Banks
By: Frank_Shostak
According to mainstream thinking, the central bank is the key factor in determining interest rates. By setting short-term interest rates the central bank, it is argued, through expectations about the future course of its interest rate policy influences the entire interest rate structure. (According to expectations theory (ET), the long-term rate is an average of the current and expected short-term interest rates.) Note that interest rates in this way of thinking are set by the central bank, while individuals in all of this have almost nothing to do and just mechanically form expectations about the future policy of the central bank. (Individuals here are passively responding to the possible policy of the central bank.)
Friday, September 25, 2015
The Fed’s Alice In Wonderland Economy - What Happens Next? / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: Casey_Research
By Nick Giambruno
After the president of the United States, the most powerful person on the planet is the chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Ask almost anyone on the street for the name of the U.S. president, and you’ll get a quick answer.
But if you ask the same person what the Federal Reserve is, you’ll likely get a blank stare.
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Friday, September 25, 2015
No U.S. Interest Rate Hike Until 2017, It’s Always 1982 Somewhere / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: John_Mauldin
By Jared Dillian
First, let’s get the gloating out of the way. I said that the Fed would not hike rates here and here. Nobody likes a chest pounder, so that’s the end of the discussion.
So now, what is the trade? Not only did the Fed not hike rates, but the directive was so dovish, it was far outside the range that any reasonable person thought was possible. Should be bullish, right?
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Friday, September 25, 2015
From ZIRP to NIRP Sudden End of Fed's Ambition to Raise Interest Rates / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Alasdair_Macleod
The sudden end of the Fed's ambition to raise interest rates above the zero bound, coupled with the FOMC's[1] minutes, which expressed concerns about emerging market economies, has got financial scribblers writing about negative interest rate policies (NIRP). Coincidentally, Andrew Haldane, the chief economist at the Bank of England, published a much commented-on speech giving us a window into the minds of central bankers, with zero interest rate policies (ZIRP) having failed in their objectives.[2]
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
Time for the Monetary Nuclear Option: Raining Money on Main Street / Interest-Rates / Quantitative Easing
By: Ellen_Brown
Predictions are that we will soon be seeing the “nuclear option” — central bank-created money injected directly into the real economy. All other options having failed, governments will be reduced to issuing money outright to cover budget deficits. So warns a September 18 article on ZeroHedge titled “It Begins: Australia’s Largest Investment Bank Just Said ‘Helicopter Money’ Is 12-18 Months Away.”
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
Federal Reserve Under Yellen / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: BATR
Now that the big bluff from the Federal Reserve that interest rates were poised to start their eventual rise has been played, when will the trigger actually be pulled? Assumptions that the Fed act as custodians of the national trust to balance and maintain the economic stability has been proven wrong time and again. Just how well has their efforts translated into the real economy of business activities that reflects positively for the average American? Obviously, if you are not a hedge fund speculator, your response will be guarded at best.
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Behind the Fed’s Decision: The Government Numbers Don’t Add Up / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Rodney_Johnson
After keeping the markets on edge in the days and weeks leading up to today’s decision, the Fed has decided once again to leave interest rates unchanged.As we’ve spent this week discussing “all things Fed,” it’s worth spilling a little ink on what the quasi-government-but-really-private organization is supposed to do.
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Tuesday, September 22, 2015
War on Cash, Bank of England Planning Hyper QE, Scrapping Cash for Digital Currency / Interest-Rates / Central Banks
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The Bank of England announces its latest cunning plan in its ongoing 'War on Cash' under the cover of Europe's refugee crisis that is witnessing Eastern European hypocrisy, such as that of Hungary forgetting its own past of sending hundreds of thousands of refugees westwards for over 60 years, and the most recent wave of 1 million or so of economic migrants many of whom receive in work benefits such as tax credits, nevertheless balk at the thought of giving refuge to a single refugee and instead have mobilised their crack troops against defenseless men, women and children.
Monday, September 21, 2015
Why The Big Banks Want Higher Interest Rates / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: John_Rubino
Something strange is happening in the banking business.
In theory, a low interest rate environment is good for banks because it allows them to borrow money for next to nothing and lend it to auto or home buyers for considerably more, making a nice fat spread.
And that’s pretty much how it’s been going. U.S. bank earnings were up 7% y-o-y in the second quarter, to a record $43 billion. Bank lending rose across the board from industrial to auto to mortgage loans, and delinquencies fell for the 21st consecutive quarter.
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Sunday, September 20, 2015
R.I.P. Interest Rates / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Investment_U
Andrew Snyder writes: I went to the doctor Friday morning. What a problem we have.
“How’s the pain? Do you want some pills for that?” he asked.
“No thanks, doc. Let’s just figure out what’s causing it.”
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Sunday, September 20, 2015
Has the Fed Lost its Mojo? / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: Mike_Whitney
After 6 full years of zero rates and extreme pump-priming that flushed more than $10 trillion dollars into global markets, the Federal Reserve decided that even the slightest uptick in its benchmark Fed Funds rate would trigger enough destructive volatility in emerging markets that it would be better to postpone the rate hike until some unknown date in the future. The announcement that the FOMC planned to keep rates pegged at zero sent stocks briefly higher after which they fell sharply pushing global indices deep into the red.
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Saturday, September 19, 2015
Higher U.S. Interest Rates? Not Next Month, Not Even Next Year, In Three Charts / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: John_Rubino
Not only did the Fed vote to keep interest rates stable yesterday, it did so overwhelmingly -- with just as many members apparently favoring lower rates as higher. Now all the people who bought the "rate normalization" promise/threat are backtracking. From today's Bloomberg:
Friday, September 18, 2015
Groundhog Day at the Fed / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Peter_Schiff
Every dictator knows that a continuous state of emergency is the best means to justify tyrannical policies. The trick is to keep the fictitious emergency from breeding so much paranoia that routine activities come to a halt. Many have discovered that its best to make the threat external, intangible and ultimately, unverifiable. In Orwell's 1984 the preferred mantra was "We've always been at war with Eurasia," even though everyone knew it wasn't true. In its rate decision this week the Federal Reserve, adopted a similar approach and conjured up an external threat to maintain a policy that is becoming increasingly absurd.
Friday, September 18, 2015
Three Reasons Why the U.S. Government Should Default on Its Debt Today / Interest-Rates / US Debt
By: Casey_Research
The overleveraging of the U.S. federal, state, and local governments, some corporations, and consumers is well known.
This has long been the case, and most people are bored by the topic. If debt is a problem, it has been manageable for so long that it no longer seems like a problem. U.S. government debt has become an abstraction; it has no more meaning to the average investor than the prospect of a comet smacking into the earth in the next hundred millennia.
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Friday, September 18, 2015
Fed Remains Paralysed by Fear, Keeps U.S. Interest Rates on Hold at 0.25% / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The FOMC once more decided to do nothing and keep US interest rates on hold at the panic low level of 0.25% with speculation now switching to whether the Fed will finally get the balls to raise interest rates at its October meeting, or will the Fed chicken out once more fearing that they may spark Financial Collapse 2.0.