Topic: Interest Rates and the Bond Market
The new items published under this topic are as follows.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Want To Fix the Fed? Get Rid of It / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2008
By: Mike_Shedlock
Inquiring minds have been pondering Volcker's latest statements regarding stagflation, the CPI, regulation of banks, and even the need for an administrator to watch over the Fed.Let's see where Volcker is right and wrong with his analysis of the current economic situation and what to do about it.
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Tuesday, May 13, 2008
LIBOR Interbank Rate Credibility In Doubt / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2008
By: Mike_Shedlock
Bloomberg is reporting Libor Poised for Shake-Up as Credibility Is Doubted .
The benchmark interest rate for $62 trillion of credit derivatives and mortgages for 6 million U.S. homeowners faces its biggest shakeup in a decade as lawmakers question if banks are understating borrowing costs.
For the first time since 1998, the British Bankers' Association is considering changing the way it sets the London interbank offered rate, according to Chief Executive Officer Angela Knight, who appeared before a parliamentary committee in London today. ``We've put Libor under review,'' Knight said in an interview yesterday. The BBA will announce changes May 30, she said.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Bleak Economic Outlook Remains Positive for Treasury Bonds / Interest-Rates / Articles
By: Levente_Mady
The Treasury market improved once the 10 year auction was out of the way on Wednesday of last week. There were a couple of news items that I considered to be of high importance last week. First, the news in the financial sector is not only getting worse but the time horizons on the bad news are also extending. The list of illustrious institutions that recently reported worse than expected data included UBS, Fannie Mae, AIG, Citigroup. The Citigroup news was the one that I would consider most significant. Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, May 09, 2008
Socialization of the G7 Banking System and Food Crisis Horror Story / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2008
By: Ty_Andros
In today's missive we are going to cover the creeping socialization of the G7 banking system and the second act of the horror show known as biofuels. Slowly but surely, the central banks of the G7 are taking over the short term funding needs of the money center and investment banking industries. The march is set to accelerate as the income streams dive as outlined in the Tedbits 2008 Outlook (Wolf Wave at www.TraderView.com ).
In the second piece we will be covering the unfolding debacle known as biofuels versus food, and the impacts about to unfold in the grain markets. They are set to be quite dramatic. There is no escape from the math. The food price and availability crisis is about to get a whole lot worse .
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Thursday, May 08, 2008
UK Interest Rates Kept on Hold at 5% / Interest-Rates / UK Interest Rates
By: Nadeem_Walayat
In a widely expected move, the Bank of England's MPC meeting kept UK interest rates on hold at 5% following Aprils cut to 5% from 5.25%.
The growing weakness in the UK economy as a consequence of the deepening credit crisis ensures that the Bank of England will continue cutting UK interest rates throughout the year, despite the rise in inflation CPI 2.5%, RPI 3.8%.
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Monday, May 05, 2008
US Bond Market Outlook- Treasuries Cheap Relative to Stocks / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
By: Levente_Mady
The Treasury market was pretty much flat last week. The Fed dutifully lowered rates by 25 basis points to 2% as the market expected on Wednesday. The brave men on the FOMC actually came up short on declaring a neutral bias, but the markets pretended that they were close enough to act as if the financial crisis was just about over. We got the seasonal pressure that we were looking for in bonds again this year. Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, May 04, 2008
Fed Expands Term Auction Facility For Junk Mortgage Backed Debt / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2008
By: Mick_Phoenix
Welcome to the Weekly Report. This week we look at moral hazard and I show you how it's about to unleash forces that no Central Bank or Government can control and we look at next weeks trend indicators and targets.
I have spoken about moral hazard before, especially in relation to the current actions carried out by the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England after the bailouts of Bear Stearns and Northern Rock. To avoid moral hazard arising strict controls have to be placed upon the facilities that are created and the use of the assets supplied from those facilities. A failure to control the results of centralist intervention will encourage the very behaviour that caused the original problem.
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Friday, May 02, 2008
Ben Bernanke is No Paul Volcker / Interest-Rates / Inflation
By: Peter_Schiff
With what many have described as a flash of monetary discipline worthy of Paul Volcker, Ben Bernanke reduced short-term interest rates this week to a mere 2%, apparently turning a deaf ear to those on Wall Street who wanted more. But now that the dollar-crushing side effects of cheap money are widely understood, there is, in reality, little pressure remaining for steely-eyed Ben to resist.Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, May 02, 2008
Greenspan's Bond Market Conundrum Bites Back / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
By: Adrian_Ash
"...If Washington and the US consumer can't borrow cheap at the long end, then they'll just go to the short end for cheap money instead..."
WHAT'S A CENTRAL BANKER to do?
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Thursday, May 01, 2008
Financial Markets Second-Guessing the Fed / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Adrian_Ash
"...'Buy the rumor, sell the news' applies to all markets. Not least when the Fed is committed to reflating housing and stocks..."
"EVEN THE CASUAL OBSERVER can have no doubt that FOMC decisions move asset prices, including equity prices," noted Ben Bernanke, now chairman of the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee, in a speech of Oct. 2003.
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Thursday, May 01, 2008
US Fed Interest Rate Cutting Policy Exporting Stagflation to Europe / Interest-Rates / Stagflation
By: Jennifer_Yousfi
The U.S. Federal Reserve reduced the benchmark U.S. lending rate by a quarter point - from 2.25% to 2% - yesterday (Wednesday), and then hinted that it will take a break from one of its most-aggressive rate-cutting campaigns in decades.
"The substantial easing of monetary policy to date, combined with ongoing measures to foster market liquidity, should help to promote moderate growth over time and to mitigate risks to economic activity," the policymaking Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) said in the statement announcing the interest-rate move. Central bank policymakers also said that "recent information indicates that economic activity remains weak" before going on to say "uncertainty about the inflation outlook remains high" and noted that the Fed would continue to monitor both economic growth and inflation closely.
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Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Will the Fed's Interest Rate Rollercoaster Ride Save the US Dollar? / Interest-Rates / US Dollar
By: Michael_Pento
Why we Americans ever abdicated our financial freedom to a group of 12 unelected individuals who sit on the Federal Open Market Committee, is beyond me. That being said, we are stuck with a system that allows an unaccountable and unconstitutional institution dictate the appropriate level of interest rates instead of the free market. Our founding fathers made it clear that they wanted money to consist of only gold and silver. They did this so as to guarantee that the money supply had intrinsic value and would be limited in nature. This would also allow bank interest rates to be a function of savings vs. demand, not a matter of decree. Because of the above situation, we have been forced to endure a dizzying ride of interest rate gyrations that have created severe imbalances in our economy. Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Credit Crisis IS Over, the Old Inflation Crisis Returns / Interest-Rates / Inflation
By: Adrian_Ash
"...Is the foreign US bond-buyer now going on strike, just when the Treasury needs him to pay for tax rebates, investment bank bail-outs, and the first raft of post-Election housing aid...?"
CRISIS OVER then; the Fed has worked its magic! And things will only get better from here.
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Wednesday, April 30, 2008
US Fed Selling Treasuries as Federal Budget Deficit Doubles / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
By: Paul_L_Kasriel
In the 20 weeks ended April 23, the Federal Reserve's outright holdings of U.S. Treasury securities had fallen by $231 billion, which is an annualized decline of $600.7 billion (see Chart 1). Up until recently, the Fed has rarely been a net seller of U.S. Treasury securities (see Chart 2). Of course, the reason the Fed has become such a large net seller of U.S. Treasury securities is that it is now providing about 14% of total reserve credit via the discount window, the Term Auction Facility (TAF) and the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF) (see Chart 3). If the Fed does not want the fed funds rate to trade below its target rate, it has to drain reserves to offset the reserve injections via the discount window, TAF and PDCF.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
The Fed's Interest Rate Dilemma: Rescue the US Housing Market, or Feed the Poor? / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Martin_Hutchinson
At their two-day meeting that starts today (Tuesday), U.S. Federal Reserve policymakers will have to grapple with a moral choice that is well beyond the pay grade of central bankers - choosing between the financial stability of U.S. homeowners and world hunger.
That's not an exaggeration. Interest-rate policy normally only affects the world economy at the margin, but it has now been so expansionary for so long that the Fed's interest-rate strategy has turned into a moral dilemma of sorts. In short, the central bank's monetary policy will likely determine whether millions of U.S. homeowners lose their homes or millions of the world's poor starve.
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