FED

Fed tapering and the unstable equilibrium

Fed tapering and the unstable equilibrium

LONDON | By Jim McCormick at Barclays | Let’s explore how the start of Fed policy withdrawal will affect asset allocation. From Braclays, we do not see an early start to Fed tapering being especially disruptive for broader risk assets, and we’d expect US equity markets to be more vulnerable than most other risk assets.


FED Higher inflation target

Higher inflation target: A communication issue

LONDON | By Michael Pond and Chirag Mirani at Barclays | Some at the Fed believe that a higher inflation target could be a good strategy, though one that is difficult to communicate. Instead, in our view, it has an implicit near-term tolerance for above-target inflation; forward breakevens should be higher as a result.



dollar euro cashier2

Fed and ECB’s Similarities and Contrasts- Yet There’s a Common Goal

MADRID | By Julia Pastor | The Fed and the ECB launched their unconventional monetary policies starting from different positions as their economies’ financial structures are not the same. Also their forward guidance diverged, but both central banks tried to boost the real economy and were effective. The uncertainties about the future would revisit those similarities and contrasts.


No Picture

Yellen On Tapering: Not Quite There Yet

NEW YORK | By Ana Fuentes | Thursday was Janet Yellen’s big day. In front of the Senate Banking Committee she ran through her prepared speech (released by the Fed on Wednesday) and acknowledged “the risks” of injecting QE steroids to the U.S. economy for too long. However, she argued,  inflation is still too low and unemployment rate, too high. “The benefits exceed the costs” of the Fed’s current policies, she said. Will we see any tapering soon? Certainly, but not yet.


Low quality of FED governors

The low quality of some Fed Governors and the freedom to “speak-out”!

SAO PAULO | By Marcus Nunes | It is encouraging that Obama may soon have to fill up to 5 slots in the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. Maybe it´s expecting too much that he´ll think that´s a very important thing to happen at times like the present. He´s already ‘failed’ in a previous instance when he had 3 slots to fill, leaving them open for a long time and even failing to get an appointee approved! The low quality of some recent Fed Governors is glaring.


gdp plus 1

GDP plus should be GDP less

SAO PAULO | By Marcus Nunes | For less bounce! The Philly Fed has called the measure of GDP obtained from “crushing” the usual measure of GDP (expenditure based) and the income-based measure GDI GDP plus


John Taylor

FED: If John Taylor can repeat himself, why can´t I?

SAO PAULO | By Marcus Nunes | When Bernanke took the Fed´s helm the gap had been closed. What happened going forward, in particular the complete loss of nominal stability in 2008, which made the financial crisis immensely more severe, is the doing of the Bernanke Fed.



No Picture

Modest payrolls, patient Fed

LONDON | By Barclays analysts | We now expect Fed to taper in March 2014. The September payroll report was on the soft side, with nonfarm payrolls rising 148k and private payrolls rising only 126k. These numbers were below our (200k) and consensus (180k) expectations for headline payroll growth. In light of the moderate tone of the September employment report, we have pushed out our expectation for the first Fed tapering in the pace of asset purchases to March 2014 from December 2013.