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FED

fed

Markets 12th May 2014

Nobody waiting for the Federal Reserve

WASHINGTON| By Pablo Pardo | The US private sector already reached the same employment figures it had before the subprime crisis started. This is one of the first solid signs of the so-called Gran Recession at the other side starting to fade. Given that the Federal Reserve has a dual mandate, including price stability as well as full employment, that suggests the still leading world economy- which could become the second after China if the World Bank’s forecast is correct- is beginning to take cruising speed.

 

No Picture

Markets 10th April 2014

Market chatter: T-bills auction time!

MADRID | By Jaime Santisteban | Time for EU peripherals’ sovereign debt auctions: Spain, Italy, Ireland and most importantly, Greece, which is back on the market after 4 years. Note that the successful Greek sale pushed down the yields of its neighbors. Besides, Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund has become shareholder of Colonial, following the steps of big finance firms like Fidelity that recently renewed their bet for Spanish listed companies and volatile real estate. Colonial rose by 14.3 % at the closing bell.

inflation

World economy 10th April 2014

Inflation: the “target” has become a “barrier”

SAO PAULO | By Marcus Nunes via Historinhas | The Fed’s (and central banks in general) preferred tactic is “wait-and-see”, usually expressed in the form of “we will monitor closely”! Instead of becoming a focal point for the coordination of expectations, inflation has become a barrier to getting the economy’s recovery back on track.

No Picture

World economy 3rd April 2014

Disinflation, interest rates and risks to monetary policy

MADRID | By Luis Arroyo | In the last two years, the FED did not meet the inflation target (the same as the ECB, although the latter has a commitment of 2% tops), which has grown at a slower pace than announced –as we can see in the chart above (by Ryan Avent at The Economist).

stress tests

Markets 31st March 2014

Stress tests: the quality of its judgment

ANIMAL SPIRITS IN WASHINGTON | By Pablo Pardo | Throughout the last two years, bank regulators have identified a number of increasingly exotic assets in the already-full-of-exotic assets banks’ portfolios. For instance, some institutions are accumulating massive amounts of Credit Default Swaps (CDS). At a time when debt spreads are not just falling, but crashing, what is the logic to hedge in such manner? The short answer is: stress tests.

can

World economy 19th March 2014

Fed kicks can down the road

SAO PAULO | By Marcus Nunes | That’s the image that came to mind when I saw this chart from Bank Paribas that Binyamin Appelbaum reproduced in his post [see above].

debt

Markets 16th March 2014

Land of the Free and Home of the Debt

WASHINGTON | By Pablo Pardo | Does anybody remember where the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index was five years ago? At 666. Since then, the S&P 500 has gone up a whopping 175 percent. The market has defied fiscal cliffs, Republican obstructionism, three rounds of Quantitative Easing, the start of the Fed’s ‘tapering’, the change in Chinese leadership, the euro near-collapse, a nuclear catastrophe in Japan, a wave of revolutions in the Middle East, and even a Russian invasion of Crimea.