The Wall Street Journal – Athens Braces for Visit by Merkel The Greek capital was bracing for a security clampdown as Prime Minister Antonis Samaras prepared to welcome German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday on her first visit to Athens since the debt crisis began. In a sign of the reception Ms. Merkel is likely… Continue reading Greece Welcomes Angela Merkel
The Financial Times – Total warns over ‘inaccurate’ benchmarks One of the world’s largest oil trading groups has warned of “inaccurate pricing” in the benchmarks for the energy market that underpin billions of dollars of trading each day in contracts such as Brent and West Texas Intermediate. Total Oil Trading SA, the trading arm of… Continue reading Pricing Problems For Energy Benchmarks?
The Wall Street Journal – Laurence Fink: How to Restore Confidence in the Financial Markets Virtually every developed nation today suffers from the reluctance of investors and CEOs to invest in new businesses, jobs or ideas. Investors have adopted a wait-and-see attitude because markets are missing the two components essential for confidence: trust and certainty.… Continue reading The Public Does Not Trust The Markets
<Click on chart for larger image> The Financial Times – The dollar’s days as reserve currency are numbered The global trading and financial systems require lubrication by an adequate supply of homogeneous assets that can be bought and sold at low cost and are expected to hold their value. For half a century, US Treasury… Continue reading The Dollar’s Status As A Reserve Currency
<Click on chart for larger image> The Wall Street Journal – Companies Feast on Cheap Money Companies are taking advantage of investors’ appetite for yield—and fear of riskier bets—by issuing more long-term bonds, aiming to reduce their refinancing needs in coming years, when interest rates are likely to be higher. Investment-grade companies have sold more… Continue reading Corporate Issuance
Spiegel Online – How Monetary Policy Threatens Savings Germany’s central bank, the Bundesbank, has established a museum devoted to money next to its headquarters in Frankfurt. It includes displays of Brutus coins from the Roman era to commemorate the murder of Julius Caesar, as well as a 14th-century Chinese kuan banknote. There is one central… Continue reading Germany Still Fears Hyperinflation
CNBC – One Algorithm Made Up 4% of Quote Traffic Last Week A single mysterious computer program that placed orders – and then subsequently canceled them – made up 4 percent of all quote traffic in the U.S. stock market last week, according to the top tracker of high-frequency trading activity. The motive of the… Continue reading High Frequency Trading
Bloomberg.com – Hedge Funds Cutting Trading Budgets Amid Slump, Survey Finds Hedge funds are cutting trading costs amid a decline in volumes and muted performance for the $2.1 trillion industry, a survey found. Forty-four percent of hedge funds polled by Greenwich Associates said they will spend less on their trading desks than in 2011, according… Continue reading Hedge Funds Scale Back
The Wall Street Journal – PBOC Injects $42.14 Billion China’s central bank pumped a massive load of cash into the country’s banking system for a second time in two weeks, spurring stock market rallies from Shanghai to Sydney, and signaling to some investors a stronger resolve by the government to stimulate the ailing economy. The… Continue reading China Pumps More Money Into Its Banking System
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Comment Jim Bianco was on Reuters TV on Friday discussing the markets. To view the interview click on the image above. To view any of our recent interviews click here. In the interview we discussed the fall in the unemployment rate. This is calculated from the household survey which showed 873,000 jobs were created. Of… Continue reading About Part-Time Jobs
Comment Jim Bianco was on Bloomberg TV on Friday discussing the markets. To view the interview click on the image above. To view any of our recent interviews click here. At the end of the interview, Jim Bianco asked Mark Zandi, “Why is it that the vast majority of economists do not think QE3 will… Continue reading Who Believes In QE3?