Up & Down Wall Street Daily (Barron’s Online) – Randall W. Forsyth: Corporate Earnings Look Marginal Are stocks cheap? That depends if you believe the numbers. For particular stocks, they look good; but for the market as a whole, it’s not so clear. Wall Street strategists interviewed for this week’s Barron’s cover story (“Which Way… Continue reading Corporate Earnings Forecasts
The Financial Times – Obama in $450bn push for growth In a sign of the White House’s own bleak assessment of the recovery, the proposal, which was presented in an address by the US president to Congress, is more than half the size of the stimulus package enacted by Mr Obama shortly after he took… Continue reading The American Jobs Act
<Click on chart for larger image> The Financial Times – Euro falls to six-month low against dollar The euro dropped to a six-month low against the dollar on Friday as the single currency remained under pressure after the European Central Bank abandoned its hawkish stance on interest rates. The euro suffered on Thursday after Jean… Continue reading The Euro
The Financial Times – Stephen King: I can’t hear the markets but I can smell fear The financial crisis stems not just from the misjudgments of debtors but also the mistakes of creditors. Both groups are now realising that there is no easy way out. It is easy to argue that the stimulus offered so… Continue reading Interpreting Low Government Yields
<Click on chart for larger image> The Telegraph (UK) – Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Germany pushes Greece to the brink in dangerous brinkmanship Germany and Holland have threatened to block rescue payments to Greece unless the country complies to the letter with bail-out terms, raising the spectre of default and a chain-reaction through southern Europe German finance… Continue reading Greece
<Click on picture above to view video> The Financial Times – Strains rise in short-term eurozone lending Strains in the eurozone short-term lending markets have jumped sharply this week amid worries that the sovereign debt crisis will deepen, threatening the ability of banks to fund themselves. The main gauge of tension in the funding markets… Continue reading Short-Term Eurozone Funding Strained
CNBC – Hedge Funds Thrown Into Negative Territory Add hedge funds to the list of asset classes now negative on the year. Hedge funds declined by more than 2 percent in August, according to new data from Hedge Fund Research. While that performance significantly outpaced the S&P 500 (which lost roughly 5.7 percent over that… Continue reading Hedge Funds
The Economist – Europe’s debt crisis: Fudge, the final frontier European leaders are at a fork in the road. They’ll probably go straight on SEPTEMBER is a cruel month in international monetary history, when regimes that once seemed inviolate have shattered. In 1931 it was the month when Britain went off the gold standard. In… Continue reading To Bail Out Or Not To Bail Out
The Economist – Banking regulation: Capital punishment Measuring the price of regulation Rewriting the rule book, for retail and corporate lenders as well as investment banks, makes sense in terms of financial stability but risks constraining the supply of credit or raising its price as banks seek to bolster returns. This is not an abstract… Continue reading Bank Capital
<Click on chart for larger image> The Financial Times – Chinese inflation falls in August to 6.2% China’s consumer inflation slowed in August from a three-year high in July as government attempts to rein in surging prices began to take effect. Most economists said inflation had likely peaked as the country’s consumer price index rose… Continue reading Chinese Inflation
Safe Haven – PIMCO’s Gross: QE1 and QE2 ‘destroyed’ Credit Creation Bill Gross of PIMCO appeared on Bloomberg Television’s “Surveillance Midday” with Tom Keene this afternoon to discuss the impact of the Fed’s asset purchases and the outlook for market reaction to tonight’s speech by President Obama. Gross said that QE by the Fed “destroyed”… Continue reading More From Bill Gross On Credit Creation