Analysis Topic: Interest Rates and the Bond Market
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Tuesday, October 04, 2011
U.S. Treasury Bond Market Rally Strong Signal of Systemic Failure / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
The USTreasury Bond rally over the last few months has been celebrated. Some call it a contradiction of the Standard & Poors debt downgrade of USGovt debt. Some hail the rally as proof that the USDollar remains respected as global reserve currency. Some regard it as a sign of bond market health in general. Some claim the US remains the safe haven. These are all errant views to the extreme, comments from cheer leaders to a system in deep deterioration, distractions from reality. The United States is stuck in a powerful recession, its huge federal deficits set to expand further, the fiscal austerity to be sacrificed, the turmoil in Europe rendering the US panorama more alluring and cute.
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Tuesday, October 04, 2011
Operation Twist a Primer for QE3 Money Printing? / Interest-Rates / Quantitative Easing
Is Operation Twist a failure? The stock market plunged in disappointment when it was announced. Keynesians are tearing their hair out in frustration, as it appears the Fed failed to ramp up the printing press. Free marketers are disgusted by the blatant manipulation of the yield curve. A number of Federal Reserve (Fed) President Bernanke’s colleagues dissented and/or are voicing public opposition. However, as the dust settles, it appears there is a method to the twist: Bernanke may have a plan…
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Monday, October 03, 2011
PIMCO Wrong as Bond Bears Plow Into U.S. Treasuries / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Bill Gross at Pimco has had a change of heart. Bloomberg reports Bond Bears Piling Into Treasuries as Yield Forecasts Cut by Most Since ’09
Read full article... Read full article...Eight months ago Bill Gross, manager of the world’s biggest bond fund, said Treasuries “may need to be exorcised” and cleaned them out of his $245 billion Total Return Fund. The company then used derivatives to bet against the debt in March.
Monday, October 03, 2011
If They Have a Gun To Their Heads, Do the Banks Lend? / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2011
Sam Houston writes: Here we are three years after the financial crisis of 2008. The banks got bailed out. Their junk mortgages now sit on the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve. In exchange the Fed gave them face value in cash for their junk. Where did they get the cash? They created it out of thin air of course.
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Friday, September 30, 2011
Leider Mein Liebste; Its Spelt TALF Not TARP: Next ECB Will Print A Trillion Euros / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis Bailouts
Here’s an idea, if the Euro doesn’t exist anymore then the Greeks can pay back their Euro-denominated debts in imaginary money and everyone can live happily ever after?
Meanwhile; trust the Eurocrats to come up with a mind-baffling plan to kick the can down the road. It’s written in Deutchlitz which is what you get when you use a computer to translate a document originally written in German into French and from there you use another computer to translate that into an approximation of English. The words all spell on an English spell-checker but in aggregate anyone who speaks English hasn’t got a clue what they mean. For example, from the ECB Data Warehouse we are provided with:
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Friday, September 30, 2011
Don't Get Suckered by the Bond Market 'Bubbleistas' / Interest-Rates / International Bond Market
Keith Fitz-Gerald writes: To hear the "bond bubbleistas" tell it, the bond market is poised to collapse the second interest rates start to rise.
But if you're thinking about dumping all of your bonds, you should think again.
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Friday, September 30, 2011
Fed Officials Voice Dissenting Opinions Again / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
Chairman Bernanke highlighted the gravity of the unemployment problem in the Q&A session in his speech after markets closed yesterday.
“This unemployment situation we have, the jobs situation, is really a national crisis,” We’ve had close to 10 percent unemployment now for a number of years and, of the people who are unemployed, about 45 percent have been unemployed for six months or more. This is unheard of.”
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Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Operation Twist, The Fed's Long Shot / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Last week the Fed announced "Operation Twist," in which the central bank will buy $400 billion of longer-dated Treasury securities while selling the same amount of shorter-dated Treasuries. This episode epitomizes everything that is wrong with the modern, statist view of money.
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Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Greece Debt Crisis Keeps Getting Worse, ECB Will Inflate / Interest-Rates / Global Debt Crisis
"The politicians giveth, and the free market taketh away." ~ traditional saying that I just made up.
The Greek government is going to default on its interest payments to the bonehead European bankers and investors who thought that getting high interest rates on Greek debt was a great way to avoid suffering the low-interest rates on German government bonds. After all, Greece would pay interest in euros. No problem!
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Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Top 10 Most Extreme Monetary Policy Moves of 2011 / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2011
Here's a listing of the top ten most extreme monetary policy moves in the year to date of 2011 (as judged by Central Bank News). To be sure, there's still another quarter of the year to go, and with heightened concerns about global growth and the ongoing European debt crisis the list could yet be expanded. But for now, let's look over some of the most extreme moves in the year so far in monetary policy:
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Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Governor Raskin's Remarks Contain Noteworthy Observations about Credit Markets / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2011
Fed Governor Raskin’s comments today were largely devoted to soft and worrisome labor market conditions and a justification of the Fed’s unconventional policy actions. She also presented her views about credit availability pertaining to households and small businesses.
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Monday, September 26, 2011
Euro-zone Debt Crisis Contagion Has Spread / Interest-Rates / Global Debt Crisis
A chart is worth a thousand words and therefore we focus on charts and analysis. So with a few introductory words, we will present the charts.
The problem for the policy makers is that risk is being repriced faster than they counteract.The EU banking system is under-strain because they are being denied funding and also deposits are moving elsewhere. The speed of the adjustment is difficult for the banks to maintain their solvency. The confidence virus is a self-reinforcing one that requires an entity to backstop it just as the Fed did it during 2008. The under-capitalised EU banks are being required to de-leverage faster than they can re-capitalise.
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Monday, September 26, 2011
FED’s Adjusted Monetary Base / Interest-Rates / US Debt
When the FED started increasing the monetary base exponentially in 2008 we started tracking its growth in Elliott Wave terms. Our first piece on this topic was published in November 2010: http://caldaro.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/feds-adjusted-monetary-base/. Then, we expected the monetary base to bottom just under $2 tln and expand to $2.5 tln in the coming months. We followed that piece with an update in April as the base was reaching the targeted level: http://caldaro.wordpress.com/2011/04/01/feds-adjusted-monetary-base-2/. This weekend, with the current economic situation in mind, we reviewed the FED’s recent chart to determine if it could provide any clues of another Quantitative Easing program in the near future. It did, and more!
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Saturday, September 24, 2011
Operation Twist Paves the Way for QE III / Interest-Rates / Quantitative Easing
Earlier this week the Federal Reserve ignited a firestorm in the global markets by admitting that the U.S. economy is facing downside risks. Although it continues to sugar coat the unpleasant reality, never has such a stunningly obvious statement resulted is so much turmoil.
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Friday, September 23, 2011
U.S. Treasury 10-year Note Yield Hits Record Low, Will it Last? / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
The 10-year Treasury note yield was trading at 1.73% today, record low for this security. The Fed’s Operation Twist aims to bring down long rates such that it will spur economic activity by rendering a reduction in cost of home mortgages and new ventures of entrepreneurs and making replacement cost of machines and equipment less expensive. The 10-year Treasury note closed at 1.88% on September 21 after the Fed announced the launching of Operation Twist. Thus, the Fed appears to have succeeded, but the rally in the U.S Treasury market today is largely a flight to safety. The durability of this low reading is tied to the persistence of a weak global economy; incoming data point to slowing economic conditions in several major economies of the world.
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Thursday, September 22, 2011
Hello Global Economic Recession 2011 / Interest-Rates / Double Dip Recession
If you did not know it before, you should know it now: The global economy is in recession.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Federal Reserve Board: Operation Twist, "Significant Downside Risk"' to the Economy / Interest-Rates / US Debt
Nothing unexpected in today's Fed release. It was Operation Twist, with about $400 billion in Treasuries being rolled into the longer end of the curve from 6 to 30 years.
The Fed will be rolling over its Agency debt as it matured.
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Thursday, September 22, 2011
Greek Debt Crisis in Perspective / Interest-Rates / Global Debt Crisis
The only solution for the European debt crisis is if the ECB prints a trillion Euros and does a “Fed” by buying up dodgy bonds, and then puts them in cold storage; if it doesn’t do that, soon, then something nasty is going to happen.
The negotiations as we speak are to find a piddling $8 billion to pay the salaries of the Greek public sector in October; it’s that close to the wall. Meanwhile the European political process is paralysed and the ECB does not have the power to do anything; Europe runs on consensus and rules, when the consensus disappears and the rules get broken, what’s left? Don’t expect a TARP or a TALF.
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Thursday, September 22, 2011
FOMC Engages in Operation Twist, Another Unconventional Step / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
The Fed left the federal funds rate unchanged, as expected, at 0.0-0.25%. The much awaited action called “Operation Twist” was part of the policy announcement. It was not an unanimous vote, three Fed Presidents -- Richard Fisher of Dallas, Narayana Kocherlakota of Minneapolis and Charles Plosser of Philadelphia – who are concerned about inflation dissented. These three Fed officials opposed the FOMC's August 9, 2011, decision that included an assurance of holding short-term interest rates near zero until mid-2013.
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Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Fed's Operation Twist a "Visual" Success, 30-Year Treasury Bond Yield Drops 17 Basis Points / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Curve Watchers Analysis is following the Operation Twist Story.