<Click on chart for larger image> The Wall Street Journal – Silver Bears Pounce as Manufacturing Sputters Silver prices plunged deeper into bear-market territory, as weak manufacturing data from the world’s major economies stoked investor fears that the metal’s gradual decline this year is turning into a rout. Silver has shed over 20% of its… Continue reading Silver
Pimco.com – A Man in the Mirror I have always been a marginal or what I would call a measured risk taker; decently good at interest rate calls and perhaps decently better at promoting that image, but a risk taker at the margin. It didn’t work too well for a few months in 2011, nor… Continue reading Bill Gross Speaks
<Click on chart for larger image> Bloomberg.com – Illinois Begins First Bond Sale as Worst-Rated U.S. State Illinois sold $800 million of general-obligation bonds, its first offer since becoming Standard & Poor’s lowest-rated U.S. state. The yield penalty on some debt was almost triple the levels achieved in a deal last month by California, with… Continue reading Illinois Is Rated The Worst State
The Wall Street Journal – Hawk vs. Dove: Fed Officials Face Off It could have been billed as a duel between the hawks and the doves. Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker, a staunch skeptic of the Federal Reserve’s easy-money policies, and Chicago Fed President Charles Evans, part of a camp pushing the Fed to stick… Continue reading Hawks vs Doves
The Wall Street Journal – Key Bond Index Gets Bitten The guiding star for many bond investors is starting to flicker. The Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond Index, known as “the Agg”—which tracks the broader debt market the way the Standard & Poors-500 follows stocks—declined 0.12% in the first quarter, its first negative return in that… Continue reading The “Agg” Declines In The First Quarter
Reuters.com – Special Report: How the Fed fueled an explosion in subprime auto loans The Fed’s program, while aimed at bolstering the U.S. housing and labor markets, has also steered billions of dollars into riskier, more speculative corners of the economy. That’s because, with low interest rates pinching yields on their traditional investments, insurance companies,… Continue reading Sub-Prime Auto Loans And The Federal Reserve
Bloomberg.com – Americans Seize Second Chance Post-Foreclosure: Mortgages While underwriting standards remain restrictive compared to the real-estate boom, they’re easing as lenders approve loans for borrowers with lower credit scores. The average FICO score for conventional home purchase loans fell to 761 in February from 764 a year earlier, said Pleasanton, California-based Ellie Mae. Average… Continue reading Easy Credit
Bloomberg.com – Fannie Mae Beats Wal-Mart and GE With Record Profit in 2012 Fannie Mae (FNMA), the mortgage financier seized by U.S. regulators during the credit crisis, reported the largest annual profit in company history as a housing rebound helped wean the firm from federal aid. The government-sponsored enterprise had net income of $17.2 billion… Continue reading Record Profit For Fannie Mae
Business Insider – Is Bitcoin the new gold? Some former gold bugs certainly think so. And its value has skyrocketed in recent months. Last week, Bloomberg.com columnist Paul Ford opined they could now be the world’s last currency safe haven. But many readers at this point are probably wondering … what exactly is Bitcoin? Robert… Continue reading Is Bitcoin The New Gold?
Bloomberg.com – Money Funds Meet Zero Yields by Breaking Buck Taboo: Euro Credit A money-market fund failing to repay investors in full is said to “break the buck” and is forced to shut down. To avoid this, banks propose to change rules governing the investment vehicles so they can pass on losses to investors by… Continue reading Breaking The Buck
The Wall Street Journal – John Steele Gordon: ‘Carried Interest’ Is Not a Capital Gain The question of how to fairly and equitably tax capital gains has been a political problem since the modern personal-income tax was adopted in 1913. Actually, this question has been one of the drivers transforming the tax code from its… Continue reading Capital Gains And “Carried Interest”
CNBC – Cyprus Will Happen Everywhere: Marc Faber Growing wealth inequality means that the wealthy have nowhere to hide and that events like those in Cyprus will happen in more countries around the world, including developed nations, said Marc Faber, the contrarian investor and publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report. It will happen… Continue reading Doom And Gloom