The Wall Street Journal – Easy Money Doesn’t Mean Easy Times for Japan’s Small Businesses New Bank of Japan Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda started work Thursday with a daunting mission: pumping trillions of yen into the world’s third-largest economy to encourage businesses and individuals to spend. Yet the country’s small businesses are divided over whether this… Continue reading Japan’s Easy Money
The New York Times – Floyd Norris: Masked by Gibberish, the Risks Run Amok Can anyone manage a big bank these days? Should anyone try? Or should we simply conclude that playing in the modern world of derivatives is best left to those whose survival is not critical to the nation’s economy, and who do… Continue reading Are Large Banks Too Big To Manage?
Bloomberg.com – Gary Shilling: Stimulus Spending Only Delays Chronic Deflation The experimental, almost desperate, reaction by major central banks to the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, subsequent recession and continuing weak recovery resembles the fiscal responses to the Great Depression in the 1930s. In that era, policy makers realized that the collapse in demand relative to… Continue reading The Case Against Stimulus
Bloomberg BusinessWeek – Jittery Spaniards Seek Safety in Bitcoins Since Sunday, a trio of Bitcoin apps have soared up Spain’s download charts, coinciding with news that cash-strapped Cyprus was planning to raid domestic savings accounts to pay off a $13 billion bailout tab. Fearing contagion on the other end of the Mediterranean, some Spaniards are… Continue reading Some Spaniards Prefer An Imaginary Currency
<Click on chart for larger image> MarketBeat (WSJ Blog) – Dr. Copper, or How One Analyst Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Divergence Between Stocks and Copper Worried about what the weakness in copper prices this year means for equities? Don’t be, says Jonathan Krinsky, technical analyst for Miller Tabak. Dr. Copper, as the… Continue reading Dr. Copper’s Relationship To Stocks & The Dollar
[pageview class=”PDFViewer” url=”https://www.biancoresearch.com/bianco/wp-content/plugins/PDFViewer/plugin.php?id=119″] The Wall Street Journal – Fed Continues Bond Buying Amid Mixed Outlook Federal Reserve policy makers on Wednesday modestly upgraded their assessment of how the economy is performing but kept the central bank’s easy-money policies intact in part because they don’t see growth accelerating much. Fed officials saw “a return to moderate… Continue reading A New Sentence In The FOMC Statement
Comment An interesting question was posed to Chairman Bernanke. Even more interesting was his answer: QUESTION: Peter Barnes with Fox Business, sir. The stock market has been hitting all-time highs. It’s recovered all of its losses from the financial crisis. I just want to know if I — from you, if I still have time… Continue reading Mr. Bernanke … Is It Too Late?
<Click on chart for larger image> <Click on chart for larger image> The Wall Street Journal – Stagnant Japan Rolls Dice on New Era of Easy Money Japan’s new central bank governor, Haruhiko Kuroda, begins work Thursday on a feat no one before has managed: reversing nearly two decades of falling prices to lift wages… Continue reading Japan And Easy Money
Huffington Post – Ben Bernanke: ‘I Agree With Elizabeth Warren 100 Percent’ On Too Big To Fail Lest there was any doubt, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke made it loud and clear on Wednesday: The problem of too-big-to-fail banks is still a major threat to the economy. “Too Big To Fail is not solved and… Continue reading Bernanke Comments On Too Big To Fail
Bloomberg.com – Bernanke Saying He’s Dispensable Suggests Tenure Ending Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said he’s “spoken to the president a bit” about his future and that he feels no personal responsibility to stay at the helm until the Fed winds down its unprecedented policies to stimulate the economy. “I don’t think that I’m… Continue reading Bernanke Believes He Is Dispensable
The Financial Times – Investors have a right to ask for cash This in turn outrages Martin Lipton, the lawyer who invented the poison-pill defence. He believes they are “sacrificing the future for a quick buck” and compares pressure on US technology enterprises to share cash to the “bootstrap, bust-up, junk-bond takeovers” of the past,… Continue reading More On Cash On The Sidelines