The Big Picture (blog) – OMG! Timmy is Tweeting/Blogging As I tweeted earlier — God, I hate that phrase — Timmy (aka Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner), is now tweeting AND blogging. The Blog is called “Treasury Notes” (Get it? Notes? Its a LOL-pun!) and it promises to be updated regularly. As someone who has been… Continue reading Twitter Just Got A Bit More Interesting
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CBS News – 60 Minutes: Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s Take On The Economy Talks to Scott Pelley About Unemployment, The Deficit and Pressing Economic Issues Chairmen of the Fed rarely do interviews. But this week, Bernanke feels he has to speak out because he believes his critics may not understand how much trouble the economy… Continue reading Bernanke Speaks
Comment Jim Bianco was on CNBC on Friday discussing the 10-year note. To view the interview click on the image above. To view any of our recent interviews click here. In this interview we noted that the 10-year yield is about 50 bps higher since Bernanke’s Jackson Hole speech on August 27. Over the same… Continue reading Interest Rates
Bloomberg.com – Euro’s Worst to Come as Best Forecasters See Crisis Spreading The most accurate foreign-exchange strategists say the euro’s worst annual performance since 2005 will extend into next year as the region’s sovereign-debt crisis saps economic growth. Standard Chartered Plc, the top overall forecaster in the six quarters ended Sept. 30 based on data… Continue reading Europe
<Click on chart for larger image> <Click on chart for larger image> Zero Hedge (blog) – Projecting “The Jobs Chart” By now the infamous Minneapolis Fed “change from pre-recession employment” jobs chart (all too often misattributed to other sources) has made popular folkore. Naturally, that’s the chart which shows that 36 months after the start… Continue reading Payroll Post Mortem
<Click on chart for larger image> The Financial Times – Ireland: local v global politics An Irishman (by way of America) coined the phrase “all politics is local”. In Ireland’s parliament tomorrow, the local is shaping up for a bruising encounter with the global. Two “independent” MPs, who make up the government’s majority of two,… Continue reading Ireland
The New York Times – Mounting Debts by States Stoke Fears of Crisis The State of Illinois is still paying off billions in bills that it got from schools and social service providers last year. Arizona recently stopped paying for certain organ transplants for people in its Medicaid program. States are releasing prisoners early, more… Continue reading Munis
The Independent (UK) – Stephen King: The US economy requires realism to beat the slump – not quick fixes Outlook: Bernie Madoff may have created the biggest private-sector Ponzi scheme but theUS economy as a whole was slowly turning itself into something similar All the while, structural changes at the global level were poorly understood.… Continue reading Two Views On The U.S. Economy
<Click on chart for larger image> The Financial Times – Commodities Daily: Last contango in prospect? But for unsophisticated, long-only, passive commodities investors who pour money into first-generation indices such as the popular S&P GSCI or the DJ-UBS, backwardation – when futures prices are lower than the prevailing front-month price – is beautiful. In commodities… Continue reading Commodities and Contango
The New York Times – Value Sinking Fastest on Homes Priced Low to Start The S.&PCase-Shiller indexes released this week showed widespread declines in home prices in the third quarter of this year as the market suffered from the removal of temporary tax credits that had led to a small rally in home prices earlier… Continue reading Home Prices
The Wall Street Journal – As Bonds Flag, Stocks Beckon The long string of bad headlines for bonds left the 10-year Treasury note yield above 3% on Friday for the first time since late July. Bond yields rise as prices fall. But the jobs numbers, along with nagging worries about sovereign debt in Europe, are… Continue reading Bond Fund Flows