Pimco.com – Bill Gross: Kings of the Wild Frontier Nothing in the Congressional compromise reached over the weekend makes a significant dent in our $1.5 trillion deficit. “Out year” fantasies, as opposed to “current year” realities, is an apt description of the spending cuts that characterize this compromise. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB)… Continue reading Bill Gross Speaks
<Click on chart for larger image> Zero Hedge (Blog) – Food Stamp Use Surges By Most In Years As Alabama Foodstamp Recipients Double In May Yes, that’s 45.8 million people (obviously an all time record) living on foodstamps which amount to the whopping $133.80 per person (an increase of $0.54 M/M) and $283.65 (an increase… Continue reading Record Number of People Receiving Food Stamps
The Financial Times – Debt Ceiling: winners 1. Brinkmanship 2. Bondholders. 3. Municipalities. 4. Fundamentals 5. Congress 6. Millionaires 7. Defence stocks 8. The UK 9. Swiss Franc 10. Cliches The Financial Times – Debt ceiling: losers 1. The budgetary process 2. The unemployed 3. Graduate students 4. Stimulus supporters 5. The Bowles-Simpson plan 6.… Continue reading The Winners And Losers of The Debt Deal
The intoxicated Federal Reserve chairman informs bar patrons of the dangers of reckless spending. The Onion (Satire) – Drunken Ben Bernanke Tells Everyone At Neighborhood Bar How Screwed U.S. Economy Really Is Claiming he wasn’t afraid to let everyone in attendance know about “the real mess we’re in,” Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke reportedly got… Continue reading Bernanke Lets The Truth Slip Out
h/t The Big Picture
The Financial Times – Short-term US funding highly restricted Conditions in the short-term US funding market remained highly constrained on Monday, with a key financing rate for Treasuries climbing to its highest level in 11 months, as investors awaited key votes on raising the federal debt ceiling. Although a deal to raise the $14,300bn debt… Continue reading Will A Downgrade Cause A Funding Crisis?
The Wall Street Journal – Uneasy House OK’s Debt Deal The House passed a $2.4 trillion debt-ceiling increase Monday night with the Senate planning to follow on Tuesday, after one of the most ferocious fights ever over government spending…Lawmakers and other officials raised questions Monday about how the complicated agreement will unfold in the coming… Continue reading More On The Debt Deal
The Financial Times – Reinhart: Deal or no deal, a US downgrade is justified Even if this deal is done, the US will continue to feel considerable external pressure, in the first instance from the rating agencies, unless more progress is made. Even by Washington standards, $2,800bn sounds like a big number, but the underlying… Continue reading The Ball Is Now In The Rating Agencies Court
Bloomberg.com – Deficit-Cutters Ignore El-Erian’s Growth ‘Denominator’ U.S. and European policy makers arguing about budget deficits and debt may be failing to combat the other plague on their economies: sluggish growth…What officials may also need to execute are the fundamental changes needed on both sides of the Atlantic to make economies function better and thus… Continue reading El-Erian Thinks Debt Is Only Half The Equation
Bloomberg.com – Fed May Weigh More Stimulus on Flagging Recovery Federal Reserve policy makers may start weighing additional steps to prop up the recovery after growth fell below 1 percent in the first half of this year and economists began cutting second-half growth forecasts. “At a minimum, the FOMC will have a serious debate about… Continue reading Bye Bye Exit Strategy, Hello Stimulus (aka QE3)
The Wall Street Journal – Earnings Forecasts Get Scarce With earnings season more than halfway done, fewer companies than usual are offering quarterly forecasts. That’s little wonder as weeks of wrangling in Washington over the nation’s fiscal deficit and debt ceiling made the earnings landscape cloudy. The weak economic recovery isn’t helping matters. Last week… Continue reading Earnings Forecasts
<Click on chart for larger image> The Wall Street Journal – Italian, Spanish Bonds Hammered Italian and Spanish 10-year bond yields hit fresh euro-era highs, safe-haven German bunds and U.K. gilts surged, and the euro fell Tuesday as worries about the euro-zone sovereign debt crisis and a global economic slowdown returned to rattle investors. The… Continue reading Problems In Europe Intensify