The Economist – Electric cars: The death of the internal combustion engine It had a good run. But the end is in sight for the machine that changed the world The internal combustion engine has had a good run—and could still dominate shipping and aviation for decades to come. But on land electric motors will soon… Continue reading The Death Of Gas Engines
Bloomberg – Fed Taper Plan Brings Risk to Mortgage Debt Unseen in Treasuries The Fed owns more than a quarter of the $6.86 trillion in agency mortgage-backed securities, and those central bank holdings are likely to dwindle to almost nothing at some point because it only bought the securities as an emergency measure to prop… Continue reading Winding Down The Fed’s Mortgage Holdings
Comment Today at 9 AM CT (10 AM ET, 7 AM PT and 15:00 BST) Bianco Research, in conjunction with Arbor Research & Trading, will be hosting a webcast/teleconference moderated by Jim Bianco. ECB president Mario Draghi speaks in Jackson Hole at the end of the month. The Fed is expected to begin reducing their… Continue reading What Moves Rates Webcast Today At 9AM CT
Bloomberg – Emerging-Market Debt in Peril on Tight Fed, Morgan Stanley Says Big shifts in U.S. rates, dollar brings risk: Morgan Stanley The exposure is a result of substantial external debt linkages. Most emerging-market external debt — 20 percent of gross domestic product — is denominated in a foreign currency, with the largest component being corporate… Continue reading Emerging Market Debt and the Fed
Bloomberg – `Fire and Fury’ Sends Vol of Vol Surging as U.S. Stocks Slumber The U.S. equity market has largely remained placid even as tensions surrounding North Korea intensified, but something is stirring underneath the surface. The CBOE VVIX Index — a measure of VIX volatility, or vol of vol — surged to a fresh peak relative to the… Continue reading The S&P 500 Has Reached a State of Nirvana
Financial Times – PBoC strengthens renminbi trading band midpoint past Rmb6.7 China’s central bank strengthened the trading band for the renminbi by the most in more than two months on Thursday, pushing its midpoint below Rmb6.7 per dollar for the first time in over ten months. The People’s Bank of China set the midpoint around which the… Continue reading Chinese Yuan Stable Against Basket as it Surges Against Dollar
Bloomberg – Bullard Says Yellen Successor Should Hold More Press Conferences Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said Janet Yellen’s successor should consider holding press conference after every policy meeting, if she isn’t picked for a second term at the helm of the U.S. central bank. “Chair Yellen has had an opportunity… Continue reading The Case For More FOMC Pressers
Comment Jim Bianco was on CNBC yesterday and discussed the productivity labor market with Rick Santelli. Click the image above to view the interview. During the interview, Jim and Rick discussed the two charts below. The first chart is from Finding Quality Labor Becoming a Significant Dilemma.
Bloomberg – Bond Bubbles Tend to Slowly Deflate, Not Burst As an investment vehicle, bonds are very different from stocks in the way they’re structured — higher up the capital structure, set payment dates, set maturity dates, etc. Stocks are much more unpredictable than bonds, which is why they tend to see much wider swings… Continue reading While Stock Bubbles Pop, Bond Bubbles Deflate
MarketWatch – Caroline Baum: Can we get through the debt-limit showdown without talking about default? Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, following in the footsteps of his predecessors, has asked Congress to pass a clean debt-ceiling increase, with no strings attached. Unlike his predecessors, he has not dangled the threat of default, a feature of previous debt-ceiling… Continue reading More On The Debt Ceiling
The Financial Times – The long and winding road to economic recovery The financial crisis that began in the US housing market had turned, by August 2007, into a full-blown global credit crunch that plunged countries around the world into recession. In the US, the economic downturn was the deepest since 1945 and the longest… Continue reading Another Look At The Great Recession, 10 Years Later