The Financial Times – Robin Harding: America’s economic growth is built on sand Washington could do much to place the recovery on firmer foundations Twelve weeks in to his presidency, when the Great Recession was at its darkest and he was still the embodiment of hope, Barack Obama gave a speech about rebuilding and rebalancing… Continue reading The Recovery In The US
Time.com – The Myth of Financial Reform Five years on from the financial crisis, the disaster that was Lehman Brothers can seem a distant memory. We’re out of the Great Recession, and growth is finally back. But amid all the backslapping, a larger truth is being lost. The biggest banks in the country are larger… Continue reading Five Years Later, Wall Street Won!
Comment In the video above, Hank Paulson reminisces about the crisis five years ago. In particular, he and the CNBC anchors all shine a very favorable light on TARP, basically stating that it saved the world at that time. Shortly after this interview, Dick Kovacevich, CEO of Wells Fargo, was interviewed on the same subject.… Continue reading Remembering TARP
The Wall Street Journal – Embattled J.P. Morgan Bulks Up Oversight Bank to Increase Spending, Staff as It Faces Host of Regulatory and Legal Woes J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., facing a host of regulatory and legal woes, plans to spend an additional $4 billion and commit 5,000 extra employees this year to clean up… Continue reading JP Morgan Readies For More Fines
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MoneyBeat (WSJ Blog) – Stock Investors Shrug off Rising Rates The stock market’s one-way ticket higher this month has ignored the major elephant in the room: rising interest rates. The S&P 500 has risen every day in September and sits only 1.2% off record highs. Yet the rally comes amid the sharp rise in the… Continue reading The Stock/Bond Relationship
<Click on chart for larger image> Reuters.com – Hedge fund chief says Japan needs another “big round” of stimulus Hedge fund titan Ray Dalio said on Friday the Japanese economy will need another big round of stimulus to boost sluggish growth, and some emerging markets are on the path to crisis. Dalio, chairman and chief… Continue reading Japan And Abenomics, Some People Will Never Be Satisfied
Bloomberg.com – New Fed Seen Unable to Return Genie of Secrecy to Bottles Bernanke, 59, has explicitly encouraged diverse views since becoming Fed chief in 2006, producing a cacophonous public debate on policy — in direct contrast to the autocratic chairmanship of his predecessor, Alan Greenspan. District bank heads from San Francisco to Boston have… Continue reading FOMC Communication
FT Alphaville – Digging into dealer inventories There’s an oft-quoted number in the debate raging over liquidity in the bond market.* It is, depending on the week, 75-78 per cent — the percentage amount by which dealer banks’ inventories of corporate bonds are said to have declined since their peak of $235bn in 2007, according… Continue reading Dealer Liquidity
Bloomberg.com – Druckenmiller Says Fed Exit Would Be Big Deal for Markets The Fed is poised this month to start reducing unprecedented bond purchases that have fueled a four-year market rally, economists said. Chairman Ben S. Bernanke has said the central bank may end its bond-buying program in mid-2014 if the economy finally achieves sustainable… Continue reading Timing The Taper
<Click on chart for larger image> The Financial Times – Derivatives move from banks into the shadows Shadow financial institutions have taken advantage of the wave of new regulation to steal the lion’s share of the derivatives business from the major banks in a blow to those institutions’ profitability, according to traders. Bankers fear the trend,… Continue reading The Changing Landscape Of Shadow Banking
<Click on chart for larger image> The Financial Times – China is growing faster, again, in the same old ways Chinese macro data have been on a good run recently. Today’s release of August industrial production was particularly strong, beating consensus forecasts by a relatively wide margin, although not in a way that bodes especially… Continue reading Chinese Growth