The Wall Street Journal – Jon Hilsenrath: Tame Inflation to Keep Fed on Course Federal Reserve officials are likely to continue their easy-money policies at the central bank’s policy meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday, in part because several recent inflation measures have fallen well below the Fed’s 2% target. With inflation now lower than the… Continue reading The Exit Strategy Becoming A Distant Memory
The Wall Street Journal – In Place of Austerity: What Comes Next? The backlash against austerity may be real. But much of the debate is fake. Behind much of the antiausterity campaign lies an assumption that the euro zone’s crisis response reflected a political choice whose intellectual underpinnings have been fatally undermined—not least by a… Continue reading The Anti-Austerity Debate
The Wall Street Journal – Bank of Japan Sends a Gift to U.S. Markets The Bank of Japan’s big bond-buying scheme is aimed at increasing Japanese households’ and institutions’ penchant for taking on risk. But a fair amount of that risk taking may happen in the U.S…The expanded quantitative-easing program should increase Japanese investors’ tolerance… Continue reading The BoJ & QE4
CNBC – ‘It Makes Sense’ for Central Banks to Own Equities: Jim O’Neill As the Bank of Japan ramps up its monetary stimulus to include buying equities, Jim O’Neill, chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, said it makes sense for central banks to own stocks. O’Neill spoke with CNBC at the Goldman Sachs Growth Markets… Continue reading Should Central Banks Own Equities?
MoneyBeat (WSJ Blog) – CBOE Outage No Big Deal to Retail Investors How scared were mom-and-pop investors this week when they couldn’t trade the fear gauge? Not really scared at all. Brett Marcus, a managing director of equity derivatives at Stifel Financial sa SF -1.49%id less than 10 clients called the company Thursday about the… Continue reading The CBOE Outage
MSN Money – Bill Fleckenstein: This is what tops look like Being a contrarian is not easy. If you are right about a new idea, it always takes time to prove out. In the short run, you usually appear to be wrong, and you look — and often feel — silly. While I don’t consider… Continue reading Contrarians Unite
The Financial Times – High-frequency traders face speed limits High-frequency traders are facing “speed limits” for the first time on a major trading platform, under a proposal that is being touted as a template for a regulatory clampdown on computer-driven activity. EBS, one of the two dominant trading platforms in the foreign exchange market, is… Continue reading High Frequency Trading
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Comment Yesterday we hosted a conference call titled “Can The Federal Reserve Create A Sense Of Permanence?” Below are the audio and PDF: Audio [audio:https://www.biancoresearch.com/bianco/SubscriberArea/503842-687791.mp3|titles=Conference Call] [pageview class=”PDFViewer” url=”https://www.biancoresearch.com/bianco/wp-content/plugins/PDFViewer/plugin.php?id=124″] Comment Since our call yesterday we discovered we had a “Reinhart/Rogoff moment” and discovered a spreadsheet error. We are humbled to be in the company of… Continue reading Conference Call: Can The Federal Reserve Create A Sense Of Permanence?
The Wall Street Journal- First-Quarter Growth, at 2.5%, Misses Expectations The U.S. economy failed to gather as much steam as expected in the first quarter, potentially setting up another year of sluggish gains with signs already emerging of slowing hiring and investment. The nation’s gross domestic product, a measure of all goods and services produced… Continue reading Market Capitalization As A Percentage Of GDP
<Click on chart for larger image> MarketWatch – Japan consumer prices fall for 5th month in a row Japan’s key retail-price gauge deflated in March from a year earlier, even as the index rose compared to February’s levels, the Finance Ministry reported Friday. The core consumer price index, which strips out volatile fresh-food prices, was… Continue reading Japan: The BoJ Is Going To Need More QE
The Wall Street Journal – Fed Zeroes In on Vulnerability to Rate Rise The Federal Reserve is scrutinizing the nation’s biggest banks to ensure they can handle an eventual rise in interest rates, as concern grows among regulators about the risks posed by a long low-interest-rate environment. On Thursday, a panel of federal regulators charged… Continue reading What Will The Federal Reserve Do Next? More QE or Taper?