monetary policy

Risk appetites returned in a big way in October, as equities, emerging markets, commodities and currencies all generally advanced and smartly so, recouping much of the ground lost in September. The events in the week ahead will likely set…

The BoJ announced today that it will expand its asset purchase programme by JPY5trn (USD66bn), with all the purchases being directed at JGB's. Add that to the GBP75bn (USD120bn) by the BoE, CHF50bn (USD57bn) by the SNB and the EUR341bn…

According to the IMF, Iceland has graduated from its Fund-supported programme with unqualified success. This column begs to differ.

Gold is up big today and trading like the monetary printing presses are ready to kick into overdrive. We believe the recent Fed speak about QE3, possible BofJ intervention to weaken the yen, and growing expectations that tomorrow’s…

I was just looking at Barry Ritholtz’s synopsis of Felix Zulauf’s observations from an in-office interview Barry had with him and I have to say I agree with the man 100%. But is the die cast? Are we headed into something much worse?

The quantity of debt grows as the quality recedes. The problem of bad loans is no longer just the pre-2008 mortgages, CDOs, and LBOs. Debt issued after the bust is defaulting, such as Greek sovereign bonds, issued in June 2010. Some…

The auxiliary objective of QE by the Fed is to weaken the USD. Herein lies the rub. Quite simply, with the recent announcement by the BOE of another round of QE worth £75 billion, with the ECB now willingly or unwillingly being forced into…

As the US is well short of full employment and the economy is at a low ebb, there has been considerable discussion about what the Fed should do, especially given the lack of fiscal support for the economy. I have a view here, but I am not…

The Turkish central bank took a turn back to orthodox policy today despite leaving the benchmark 1-week repo rate unchanged at 5.75%. It dropped the language from several previous meetings about potential easing. The bank did hike the…

Last November, in anticipation of QE2, I wrote a post called “How Quantitative Easing and Permanent Zero are Toxic To Bank Net Interest Margins”. The gist of the post was that if the ‘extended period’ for low rates was too long, net…