2012

By Sober Look As an example of how frothy fixed income markets have become, Reynolds did a $3.25 billion HY issuance today. They repaid a great deal of existing debt, but also took half a billion of cash for general purposes - in effect…

I am still deciding what this week's weekly post will be on. Clearly, I need to write a bit more substantively about QE3 than I have so far. And I have two media appearances from last week to use to update you on my viewpoint. The broad…

By Sober Look Credit Suisse has made an important point with respect to the Fed's purchases of MBS. As we know, a mortgage borrower is long an option to prepay. That means a mortgage lender is short this same prepayment option. Therefore a…

By Michael Pettis For the past two years, as regular readers know, I have been bearish on hard commodities. Prices may have dropped substantially from their peaks during this time, but I don’t think the bear market is over. I think we…

By Marshall Auerback Germany’s Constitutional Court gave a green light on Wednesday for the country to ratify Europe’s new bailout fund, boosting hopes that the single currency bloc is finally putting in place the tools to resolve its…

Catalonia is the region that was first to announce plans to tap the Spanish government's 18 billion euro bailout fund as the region has been locked out of debt markets. Earlier today, the Spanish government announced that it had obtained 3…

In today's links was a Figaro article which pointed to a slowdown in French housing transactions in Q2 2012. As sales are the first to decline in a housing bust, this turn of events bears watching, especially because France is embarking on…

Here are some quick thoughts on QE3. Central banks around the world are taking the lead on reflation where fiscal agents refuse to do so. And the policy stances have become increasingly aggressive. Right now, every major central bank is…

Due to the continued high rate of unemployment, the Federal Reserve today took an aggressive policy stance that is being dubbed QE3. The Fed will purchase $40 billion mortgage bonds per month and extend the maturity of its holdings of…

The Federal Reserve Board issued the following statement in conjunction with the FOMC's decision to begin an aggressive round of quantitative easing. Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in August suggests that…