Analysis Topic: Interest Rates and the Bond Market
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Sunday, October 19, 2008
The Mechanism Of Capital Destruction / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2008
Address at the Annual Dinner of theCommittee for Monetary Research and Education, CMRE
on October 16, 2008
New York City
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Friday, October 17, 2008
Why Mortgage Interest Rates Are Rising Despite Government Actions! / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2008
Mike Larson writes: The government is throwing everything … and I do mean EVERYTHING … at the credit and mortgage markets.
It has taken over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
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Thursday, October 16, 2008
Debt vs Interest Rates Conundrum / Interest-Rates / US Debt
I've written before about the dramatic rise in fixed income rates that face investors in the very near future due to the funding issues associated with our entitlement programs coupled with the incalculable measures taken by the government in the past few weeks to stem the credit crisis. Those efforts ensure the amount of Treasury issuance will explode.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
U.S. Forcing Banks to Resume Lending at Bazooka Point / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis Bailouts
For now, you can force banks to take money, but you can't force them to lend it. Let's explore this theory starting with a look at the Drama Behind a $250 Billion Banking Deal .
The chief executives of the nine largest banks in the United States trooped into a gilded conference room at the Treasury Department at 3 p.m. Monday. To their astonishment, they were each handed a one-page document that said they agreed to sell shares to the government, then Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said they must sign it before they left.
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Tuesday, October 14, 2008
US Treasury Bond Market Crash / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Martin here with an urgent update on these wild, wild markets.
The key factor many investors seem to be forgetting: While stock markets have enjoyed a historic rally, bond markets are suffering a dramatic decline.
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Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Treasury Bonds ETF Inverse Trend to Stock Market Indices / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
To some degree, the TLTs (Lehman 20 Yr T-bond, ETF) trades inversely to the equity indices like the SPYs (for instance); however, my sense is the recent upside explosion in the stock averages and the recent plunge in TLT prices have "corrected" and defused the bulk of that relationship, which if accurate, means that a new relationship is forming based less on flight-to-safety and more on the still-challenging (to put it mildly) economic fundamentals that will not be corrected any time soon.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, October 13, 2008
How Credit Crises Begin and End / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2008
From the standpoint of investor sentiment the credit crisis has reached the point of maximum saturation. Every TV news program and political commentator, every newspaper and every magazine in town is writing about it. It is being depicted as a virtual apocalypse that can't be stopped. For example, the headline for the latest cover of Time magazine reads: "The New Hard Times.” It features a photograph of a soup line from the Great Depression.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, October 13, 2008
Rising Bond Yields Despite Interest Rate Cuts / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2008
The bond market traded sharply lower last week despite the ever intensifying turmoil in world financial markets. The Treasury decided to auction a special $40 Billion 10 year Notes to ease the demand for Treasury paper in the bond market. So all of the sudden it appears that in spite of the safe haven qualities of US Treasury Bonds and Bills, the market has realized that with all the government bailouts and guarantees, there will be no shortage of government bonds going forward.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, October 13, 2008
$62 Trillion Credit Default Swaps Threaten U.S. Government Bonds / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Gold experienced sharp falls on Friday but was still up by more than 3% on the week. This was a very impressive performance considering that major equity indices crashed some 20% to 25% for the week (see Performance table).Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, October 10, 2008
U.S. Fed Fears Loss of Power in Preventing Financial Collapse / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
Shah Gilani writes: The truth? You can't handle the truth.”
The truth is, the U.S. Federal Reserve does not directly control the Federal Funds rate, and its efforts to reduce the benchmark rate from 2.0% to 1.5% may do more damage than good – though for reasons you'd never guess. Attempts to lower the Fed Funds rate could irreparably damage Fed credibility and may actually narrow the Fed's credit-crisis-management options.
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Thursday, October 09, 2008
Dollar Libor Jumps to New Credit Crisis Extreme / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2008
Lending remains in a deep freeze as the Libor Dollar Rate Jumps to Highest in Year .
The cost of borrowing in dollars for three months in London soared to the highest level this year as coordinated interest-rate reductions worldwide failed to revive lending among banks for any longer than a day.
Thursday, October 09, 2008
LIBOR Interbank Money Market Earthquake Signals UK Debt Recession / Interest-Rates / UK Economy
The LIBOR interbank money market rates have FAILED to respond to the co-ordinated and unprecedented interest rate cuts across the world by key central banks which includes the U.S. Fed, Bank of England and the European Central Bank (ECB), in conjunction with extra liquidity and in Britain's case a bank bailout package that could total as much as £500 billion or 41% of GDP which is on par with the amounts as a percentage of GDP the United States required to recover from the 1930's Great Depression.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Credit Crisis Commercial Paper Disaster / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2008
Shah Gilani writes: The commercial paper market is the thoroughfare where Wall Street merges into Main Street. Corporations, finance companies and banks rely on Main Street investors for the cash they deposit into money-market funds and other short-term investment vehicles. Ultimately, that cash buys the commercial paper that's issued to help fund everything from corporate payrolls to a manufacturing company's production inventories.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, October 09, 2008
UK Interest Rate Forecast 2009 / Interest-Rates / UK Interest Rates
October 8th , 2008 Issue #33 Vol. 2Dear Reader,
The credit crisis has intensified during the last few weeks to a new manic stage as entire countries are put at risk of bankruptcy due to their banking system rescue attempts exploding liabilities, as the demand goes out for 100% guarantees of depositors and country after country buckles under the pressure so as to prevent a collapse of their individual banking systems.
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Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Credit Default Swaps Weapons of Financial Mass Destruction / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2008
The latest downward spiral in the global commodity and stock markets, coinciding with several high profile bank failures, is conjuring up fears of the calamities of the Great Depression of the 1930's. European and Asian stock markets are plunging as terror and panic hits Wall Street. The US Congress finally passed a massive $700 billion rescue package to unclog the credit markets, yet US stock markets have continued to plummet, shedding $1.5-trillion in value last week.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
UK Interest Rate Cut Surprises Markets / Interest-Rates / UK Interest Rates
The Bank of England took emergency action ahead of the scheduled Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) rate setting meeting tomorrow to cut the UK base interest rate by 0.50%.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Unprecedented Global Coordinated Interest Rate Cut / Interest-Rates / Global Financial System
The US Federal Reserve along with the Bank of Canada, Bank of England, the European Central Bank, Sweden Riksbank and the Swiss National Bank acted in concert to reduce short term lending rates in pre-market hours this morning.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
UK Interest Rate Forecast 2009 / Interest-Rates / UK Interest Rates
The credit crisis has intensified during the last few weeks to a new manic stage as entire countries are put at risk of bankruptcy due to their banking system rescue attempts exploding liabilities, as the demand goes out for 100% guarantees of depositors and country after country buckles under the pressure so as to prevent a collapse of their individual banking systems. However ever increasing and desperate government bailout cash in the form of escalating amounts of daily interbank liquidity, capital injections, and mortgage bond buy back schemes in addition to issuing depositor guarantees increases the liabilities of ALL countries the immediate consequences of which are being played out in ever increasing volatility in the currency markets and stock exchanges as record breaking points swings take place on alternative days. In such a panic stricken climate there are increasingly deafening calls are for immediate interest rate cuts across the western world including for an Imminent UK Interest Rate Cut.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
LIBOR OIS Spread Signals Credit Crisis Earthquake / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2008
Keith Fitz-Gerald writes: More than a year ago, even before the subprime-mortgage crisis had revved itself up into the full-fledged credit crisis that's now threatening global growth, we pointed to the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) and other interbank rates that suggested that the worst was yet to come.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, October 06, 2008
Bailout Bill Will Do Nothing for the Real Economy / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis Bailouts
We are on the edge of pure fear and panic when it comes to the stock market. By just about every indicator you may use to measure the market it is extremely oversold and ready for a bottom. The number of stocks below their 20, 50, and 200 day moving averages are at extremely low levels not seen in decades. The ratio of down to up volume on the Nasdaq was over 95% two days last week, hitting 97% last Monday, which is a level I've never seen before. The VIX is above 40 and has been at an elevated level for the past three weeks. According to the Investors Intelligence Survey there are more bears than bulls in the market, which is a positive from a contrarian standpoint.Read full article... Read full article...