interest rates

The 98,000 jobs added to payrolls in the US in March were well below the consensus estimate of 178,000, especially when you consider downward revisions to January and February totalled 38,000. I don’t believe this matters for the Fed…

The consensus for the March jobs report is for an addition of 178,000 jobs. The unemployment rate is expected to remain unchanged at 4.7%. Other data show the risk is to the upside here.

What about running down the balance sheet — reverse QE if you will? I think this is where the Fed minutes offered some new thinking.

We are now three months into 2017 and we can look back on 2016 as a fairly good year economically for the US. So given that backdrop, was it right to worry about a recession in 2016? And what does that say about 2017? Here’s my view below.

As expected, the Bank of England left rates unchanged at a record low 0.25% in today’s Monetary Policy Committee decision. There was a dissent, however, with soon to be departing MPC member Kristin Forbes wanting a quarter-point rise.

Today the Federal Reserve raised the base USFed Funds interest rate a quarter percentage point to the range between 0.75% and 1.00%. There was only one dissent from Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari. And because this move was…

Starting in 2007, global markets were buffeted by a series of financial and economic crises that created the greatest deflationary scare since the Great Depression. We have left out-and-out crisis mode. But the challenges are still…

A recent post by Matthew Klein on central banks over at FT Alphaville that dovetails with some of the themes I have been writing about here at Credit Writedowns for the past decades is what preciputated this post. Let me summarize my thesis…

Now the market are putting the odds of a hike next week at 96%, a virtual certainty. But the very fact that Yellen and her compatriots commented on the likelihood of a rate hike at a specific meeting has been the subject of consternation.

For years, many Fed watchers have claimed that the Federal Reserve has a secret third mandate beyond inflation and full employment. And this past February 21st, for the first time a Fed President said directly that, indeed, the Fed does…