reserves

The claims about “unsustainable deficits” gained new urgency this week as S&P warned that it was downgrading US federal government debt from stable to negative (see here for recent debate). This appeared to be a blatantly political…

Analyzing official China comments in order to make a currency call is a fool’s errand. However, suffice it to say that all of these comments suggest a reduced patience for the status quo and an increased willingness to recalibrate China FX…

China data came in stronger than expected, and supports the view that PBOC is moving behind the curve with its gradualist approach and that it needs to get more aggressive. Q1 11 GDP growth slowed slightly to 9.7% y/y from 9.8% y/y in Q4…

We saw that Joseph Stiglitz proposes a new reserve currency to alleviate pressure on trade imbalances. Michael Pettis is now also proposing a similar move away from the U.S. dollar. In an FT Op-Ed, Michael wrote that every generation we…

This topic needs a lot more attention. And I think today's so-called Bretton Woods II fiat system is unstable. Excess money creation and trade imbalances are secular problems that fiat currency has allowed to become destabilizing. If…

Bernanke (and Dudley) have been testifying that inflation is not an issue. But what signs and maps are they reading? Bernanke specifically invokes inflation expectations as being most important, and he contends they are low. They both note…

Since the financial crisis hit in 2008, excess reserves have piled up in the U.S. financial system. There were almost no excess reserves in the system during the period of recorded data from 1959 onwards. But after the post-Lehman…

By Claus Vistesen Events in Japan and Libya do not seem to have derailed the ongoing positive sentiment in the market. But they just might have alerted various Masters of the Universe that black holes (or was that swans?) are both…

Short-Run Actions Have Consequences In the spring of 2003 there was worldwide concern that the U.S. economy was falling into a “Japanese-like” malaise; the recovery was stalling, deflation was likely to occur and unemployment was…

The Fed could announce a federal funds target of 3% but the tsunami of excess reserves now out there swamps any conceivable demand, so the federal funds rate would be guaranteed to remain stuck at zero. The target would be meaningless.…