The Financial Times – Gillian Tett: Russia sounds a warning on the frailties of global debt Should the dollar continue to rise, currency and funding mismatches could be exposed The BIS reckons that about half of the debt securities sold between 2009 and 2013 by emerging market entities, along with a large chunk of loans,… Continue reading Today’s Stories On Russia
CNBC – Russian reserves could be half of official tally ussia’s currency has lost about 45 percent against the dollar this year due to diving prices for oil, Russia’s main export, and Western sanctions imposed over the Ukraine crisis. But, since floating the ruble last month, the central bank has intervened on the currency market… Continue reading Is Russia Running Out Of Reserves?
Bloomberg.com – Bankers See $1 Trillion of Zombie Investments Stranded in the Oil Fields There are zombies in the oil fields. After crude prices dropped 49 percent in six months, oil projects planned for next year are the undead — still standing upright, but with little hope of a productive future. These zombie projects proliferate… Continue reading $1 Trillion Of Bad Oil Investments?
Bloomberg.com – In Search of Lost ‘Time’: Algos Didn’t Wait on Fed Nuance “But it’s hard to predict how automated news reading programs would react,” he said in an e-mail. “High-frequency trading firms regularly redesign their algorithms to take subtle wording nuances into account and to respond appropriately to other firms’ trading strategies.” Looking for… Continue reading Algos And The Fed Statement
The Financial Times – Investors bulk buy bond default insurance options Big investors have been buying hundreds of billions of dollars worth of exotic credit derivatives to protect themselves against the possibility that growing numbers of corporate bond issuers will default. Options that give investors the right to buy insurance against bond defaults have exploded… Continue reading CDS Makes A Comeback
<Click on chart for larger image> Bloomberg.com – Deflation Warning Sounds as 2-Year Break-Even Rates Go Negative Even with the Federal Reserve reminding investors that policy makers remain on course to raise interest rates next year, one corner of the bond market is warning of the risk of deflation. The difference in yields between Treasury… Continue reading A New Sign Of Deflation?
The Economist – Technology firms: Frothy.com A new tech bubble seems to be inflating. But when it pops, it should cause less damage than the dotcom crash of 2000 Instead, today’s financial excess is hidden partly out of sight in two areas: inside big tech firms such as Amazon and Google, which are spending epic… Continue reading Tech Bubble 2.0?
Bloomberg – Law school enrollment plummets to 27-year low With the continuous news of a weak market for young lawyers, enrollment of first-year law students at accredited schools is at a 40-year low and overall enrollment is at its lowest in 27 years. Coupled with the drop in LSAT test-takers this year, the likelihood of… Continue reading Possibly The Most Bullish News We Have Ever Read!
Comment On December 18, 2014 at 9 AM CT (10:00 AM ET, 7:00 AM PT, and 15:00 GMT), Bianco Research, in conjunction with Arbor Research & Trading, will be hosting a webcast/teleconference moderated by Jim Bianco. Join us Thursday as we discuss the collapse in oil, this week’s Fed meeting, equity markets, the economy and… Continue reading Looking Into 2015
[pageview url=”https://www.biancoresearch.com/bianco/wp-content/plugins/PDFViewer/plugin.php?id=229″] The Wall Street Journal – Jon Hilsenrath: Fed Sticks to Patient Tack on Rates Central Bank Holds to Dovish Approach on Monetary Policy Amid Low Inflation Federal Reserve officials took a delicate step toward raising short-term interest rates in 2015, introducing language into their policy statement that asserted they would be patient about… Continue reading The FOMC Pulls A “Mini-Bullard”
Real Time Economics (WSJ Blog) – Why the Decline in the Consumer Price Index Might Not Be Over November saw the steepest drop in consumer prices in almost six years, and that decline may have further to go as the collapse of oil continues to pull down prices…As we noted yesterday, State Street’s PriceStats index,… Continue reading The Case For Continued Decline In Inflation