interest rates

The decision to leave rates on hold was an easy one for the Fed to make.  The Fed still anticipates this will be the case for an extended period.  The statement seemed to recognize some of the less favorable data since it met…

A post by Annaly Capital Management. There has been some chatter recently on the direction of traditional monetary policy (i.e., the Federal Reserve changing the Fed Funds target rate to influence the availability and cost of money and…

By Annaly Capital Management. What is a dollar? As far as we can tell, there is no legal definition of what it is, no statement that begins, “The dollar is…” Instead, the dollar is something that is defined by other things. When the…

John Hussman is out with his latest weekly and he discusses... the ECRI Leading Indicators of course. Everyone is talking about these numbers.  He is bearish, but as I have also noted the ECRI data are not yet predicting…

I was recently contacted by Adam Kritzer who is a lead editor on Forexblog which is arguably the best one stop resource for people interested in FX (trading) and the importance of foreign exchange in general. He asked me whether I would…

Well after a pretty hectic 48 hours being pursued all over the virtual globe by the economic and financial press, I am finally coming up for air. Those who don’t know what I am talking about might try this, or this, or this (etc). Actually…

Australia The Reserve Bank of Australia met earlier today and as widely expected kept the official rate steady at 4.5%.  The tone of the statement was fairly neutral, as one might expect after 6 rates hikes since last October and…

Asian stocks fell as China released a bearish manufacturing report this morning. Added to this bearish news out of China is a spate of negative credit ratings news in Europe (Spanish Bank CAM, Brussels regional government, etc) and a…

On China via Andy Lees of UBS: The yields on two sets of bills moved in opposite directions. The PBOC issued 3 month bills at a yield 4bpts higher than the prevailing rate, whilst 3 year bill yields fell 2bpts. “The divergence underscores…

Frederick Sheehan is the author of Panderer to Power: The Untold Story of How Alan Greenspan Enriched Wall Street and Left a Legacy of Recession (McGraw-Hill, 2009). The Federal Reserve releases transcripts of the Federal Open Market…