interest rates

The primacy of monetary policy continues unabated as central banks go further and further down the rat hole of increasingly desperate measures to boost demand. First, it was quantitative easing. Now, the latest scheme is negative interest…

The latest jobs report came in at 160,000 jobs added to US non-farm payrolls. As this number was below expectations, it effectively sidelines the Fed in June. And given we are in an election year, the chances of two rate hikes occurring are…

US and global economic growth is slowing. And this has caught the Fed out given its rate hike in December. The question, now, therefore is whether the Fed continues to hike in the face of this slowing, given the election looming in…

By Frances Coppola originally posted at Coppola Comment Japan has just introduced negative rates on reserves, following the example of the Riksbank, the Danish National Bank, the ECB and the Swiss National Bank. The Bank of Japan has…

The US economy is not in a recession right now and the latest numbers on US GDP confirm this view. And while the headline growth number was weak, the consumer spending and personal income numbers are supportive of 2%ish growth into 2016.…

The recent data coming out of the US has been almost unrelentingly negative outside of the recent jobs reports. The Atlanta Fed GDP now report was already down to 0.7% for Q4 when poor output and retail sales data came out. I expect the…

Editor's note: The data in the first time series depicted here is cut off in 2015, changing the tenor of the analysis. Please see the correction following this piece, that has a more negative cast regarding the US. The U.S. economy may be…

The jobs report today was a strong one, underscoring the ability of the US economy to power through. Am I uneasy about where we are in the economic and credit cycle and the accuracy of the Fed’s forward guidance? Yes - and I tend to think…

I am uneasy about where we are in the economic and credit cycle and the accuracy of the Fed’s forward guidance. I think we are above stall speed now. But I also think global policy divergence, slowing earnings growth and poor capex numbers…

Back in January, I said that as far as bond markets go, the convergence to zero would be a dominant issue as the deflationary macro environment made it difficult to raise interest rates. The US is trying to buck this trend, but in doing so,…