Analysis Topic: Interest Rates and the Bond Market
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Friday, September 25, 2015
From ZIRP to NIRP Sudden End of Fed's Ambition to Raise Interest Rates / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
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]
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Wednesday, September 23, 2015
Time for the Monetary Nuclear Option: Raining Money on Main Street / Interest-Rates / Quantitative Easing
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.”
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Wednesday, September 23, 2015
Federal Reserve Under Yellen / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
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.
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Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Behind the Fed’s Decision: The Government Numbers Don’t Add Up / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
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
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.
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Monday, September 21, 2015
Why The Big Banks Want Higher Interest Rates / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
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
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
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
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:
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Friday, September 18, 2015
Groundhog Day at the Fed / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
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.
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Friday, September 18, 2015
Three Reasons Why the U.S. Government Should Default on Its Debt Today / Interest-Rates / US Debt
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
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.
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Friday, September 18, 2015
The Central Bankster Crucifix / Interest-Rates / Central Banks
The FRB, the ECB, the PBoC, and the BoJ are all central banksters. It matters not which country they infest. It matters not which form of gooberment they act as marionette. It matters not how much economic destruction they instigate. Their wicked intent is the same. Total power. Total domination. Total rule. Total control. Total enslavement.
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Friday, September 18, 2015
Fed Keeps US Interest Rates Unchanged - Comparison of Sep and July Statements / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
The Fed kept rates unchanged with an unambiguously dovish statement, focusing on weakening inflation, rising market turbulence and a new reference to foreign developments. The dot forecasts pointed to slower growth and lower core inflation and lower fed funds projections. The only hawkish dissent to the decision was from Richmond Fed's Lacker, but this point was made moot by not only due to Lacker's well documented hawkish stance, but also by the fact that the dot plot showed one Fed member expecting negative rates, even if this member is the widely dovish Minneapolis Fed's Kocherlakota.
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Thursday, September 17, 2015
Stock Market Optimism Ahead Of Fed's Interest Rate Decision Release / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
Briefly: In our opinion, no speculative positions are justified
Our intraday outlook is neutral, and our short-term outlook is neutral:
Intraday outlook (next 24 hours): neutral
Short-term outlook (next 1-2 weeks): neutral
Medium-term outlook (next 1-3 months): bearish
Long-term outlook (next year): bullish
Thursday, September 17, 2015
Don't Buy the Fed's New "Bribe-a-Bank" Interest Rate Policy / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
MoneyMorning.com Lee Adler writes: After seven long, strange years, we're now looking at the end of ZIRP as we know it.
And good riddance, too. It's been a disaster for the U.S. economy, the middle class, the housing market – just about every facet of American economic life has suffered from this fiscal disaster masquerading as coherent monetary policy.
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Thursday, September 17, 2015
U.S. Fed Must Avoid Bank of Japan Errors / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
No, the US is not Japan and the Federal Reserve is not the Bank of Japan. But when we assess the implications of what could be the first Fed rate after 7 years of zero interest rate policy in the US, there's no better reference than the BoJ.
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Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Lowdown on U.S. Rate Hikes / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
Will she raise or will she not? As financial markets focus on whether we will see a Fed rate hike this week, investors may be in for a rude awakening.
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Wednesday, September 16, 2015
U.S. Interest Rate Hike - Will The Fed Pick A Winning Combination? / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
It’s highly amusing to read all the ‘expert’ theories on a Federal Reserve hike or no hike tomorrow, but it’s also obvious that nobody really has a clue, and still feel they should be heard. Don’t know if that’s so smart, but I guess in that world being consistently wrong is not that big a deal.
Thing is, US economic numbers are so ‘massaged’ and unreliable, the Fed can pick whichever way the wind blows to argue whatever decision it makes. As long as jobs numbers get presented for instance without counting the 90-odd million Americans who are not in the labor force, and a majority of new jobs are waiters, just about anything goes in that area. Numbers on wages are just as silly.
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Tuesday, September 15, 2015
One and Done Fed is a Wall Street Fantasy / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
One of the current myths promulgated by Wall Street is that the Federal Reserve will raise rates once this year, breathe a sigh of relief, and be done until the "12th of never". But those who are familiar with our central bank's history are aware that the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) has never tightened the Fed Funds Rate just once. A quarter point hiking cycle has no historical basis and is just wishful Wall Street thinking.
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