The Wall Street Journal – Bank of Portugal Unveils Plan to Rescue Banco Espírito Santo Portugal’s central bank late Sunday unveiled a plan to rescue the country’s second-largest lender by breaking up the bank and pumping in billions of euros of state money. The fate of Banco Espírito Santo SA is surprising given that only… Continue reading Portugal Readies A Bailout Plan
Bloomberg.com – PBOC’s $162 Billion Loan Spurs Speculation on Easing A Chinese central bank loan that’s almost the size of the U.S. bailout of American International Group Inc. has spurred speculation that policy makers have adopted a new form of monetary easing to shore up growth. While the People’s Bank of China warns debt is… Continue reading China’s Stealth Easing
The Wall Street Journal – Jobs Report: Employers Add 209,000 Positions The Fed has kept short-term interest rates near zero since December 2008 to bolster the U.S. economy through a financial crisis, a deep recession and a lackluster recovery. The central bank now is winding down its bond-buying program and officials expect to begin raising… Continue reading Employment In Pictures
<Click on chart for larger image> <Click on chart for larger image> Bloomberg.com – Jobs Numbers Mean Nothing in a Part-Time Age Last month, 19.3 percent of the employed U.S. population worked part time, or less than 34 hours a week…The problem is that people who work fewer hours make less money, and not just… Continue reading Part-Time Labor
GaveKal Capital Blog – Treasury Bond Yields Following Perfectly the Reduction of QE with New 1-Year Lows Last weekend we wrote that The Flow of QE Suggests Lower Bond Yields and Stock Prices and it appears that is just what we are getting. Putting the stock part aside for now, we simply would like to… Continue reading The Correlation Between Fed Assets & Yields
<Click on chart for larger image> MoneyBeat (WSJ Blog) – Thursday’s Selloff, By the Numbers Here’s a look at the toll the selloff took on investors: 317 points: The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 317 points, or 1.9%, to 16563, its steepest drop since February and second-worst day of the year. The blue-chip index fell… Continue reading Yesterday’s Stock Rout
Bloomberg.com – No-Exit Strategy May Be Fed Burden in Unwinding Stimulus The Federal Reserve is trying to change as little as possible as it crafts its strategy to exit from record stimulus. The trouble is financial markets have changed so much that the still-developing plan may prove costly and ultimately unworkable. The approach, sketched out… Continue reading The Cost Of Keeping Fed Funds Market Alive
<Click on chart for larger image> The Wall Street Journal – The 2.1% Expansion Growth for the second quarter surprised on the upside at 4%, rebounding from the minus-2.1% plunge in the first quarter. The widespread hope is that this will finally mark the long-promised leap to a faster growth plateau five years after the… Continue reading GDP’s New Normal
The Wall Street Journal – Argentina: Solo Deadbeat The government of Argentina has done it again. By flouting the rule of law and vilifying foreign investors, President Cristina Kirchner succeeded Wednesday in driving the country into its second default in 13 years. This isn’t the global financial disaster predicted by some on the left, but… Continue reading More On Argentina’s Default
The Wall Street Journal – Asset Managers Notch an ‘Important’ Win After months of lobbying, large asset managers such as BlackRock Inc. and Fidelity Investments won a battle in their fight against tighter regulation Thursday. A panel of top financial regulators agreed to revamp their review of asset-management firms to focus on potentially risky products… Continue reading Defining Too Big To Fail
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