interest rates

Unappreciated by many is the fact that the Italian economy has seen the largest contraction (7%) since the crisis began within the euro zone after Greece. Per capita income is back, according to former ECB's Bini Smaghi, to where it was in…

The financial crisis has reduced the ranks of countries with pristine macro fundamentals. Thus, the availability of safe assets has declined precipitously. Investors in a bind where they have funds to invest but a limited number of options,…

Back in October of last year the Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan said that his government's goal is to be able to complete the three-year Troika bailout on time and resume normal operation late in 2013. Now that Ireland has regained…

This morning, the Spanish government initiated its bond auction process this year. The auctions were a success with the yield on 10-year government bonds falling to 4.95%, below 5% for the first time since March 2012.

Australian property market is seeing transaction volume fall. Preliminary Melbourne sales data for 2012 from the Real Estate Institute of Victoria says that 69,000 home sales were registered last year. While that is a fall of only 3,000…

Spain had an estimated 350 billion euros of debt that it needed to roll over in the three years from 2011 according to analysts at Brockhouse Capital. Add in the likely need to fund regional government deficits and rollovers as well as the…

I am not going to do justice to the monumental change the Fed just instituted with the FOMC's policy statement yesterday but I am going to take a first stab at it here in this daily with a number of articles below to follow. Here's the crux…

By Marc Chandler The Federal Reserve was as aggressively dovish as any one expected. It added to QE $45 bln a month in US Treasuries, keeping the $40 bln of month of MBS purchases. It also changed from time reference for guidance to use of…

This is a good interview with Hugh Hendry, who I always enjoy. It runs twenty minutes. Hugh Hendry, of Eclectica Asset Management, takes the long view on investing at The Economist's Buttonwood Gathering on October 25th 2012. He was…

By Marc Chandler The Wall Street Journal brings to our attention the fact that the reserves at the Reserve Bank of Australia have risen sharply over the past two months. Its reserves have risen by A$863 mln over the past two months after…