Global Market Commentary, Analysis and Investments
Anything happen in the markets yesterday? To tell the truth, we forgot to check. Let’s have a look now, then…
Dow up by 80-something points. A barrel of the world’s currently-preferred energy sits pretty at $100, on the nose. Nothing much, in other words.
Ooh…but here’s something: “Gold extends post-Fed rally to 6-week high.” MarketWatch has the story…
[Read more...]It’s a plan so dumb you have to have to Ph.D. to believe it will do any good. Quantitative easing was dumb. This is dumber.
They are calling it Operation Twist. The Federal Reserve will buy $400 billion of long-dated Treasuries, financed by selling bonds with three years to go or less. The idea is to try to drive long-term rates lower, which the Fed thinks will help the mortgage market.
[Read more...]We had a fairly busy day on the desk yesterday as we were a few folks short; Kristin headed off to San Francisco to join Chuck at the Money Show and Ty is out in Seattle playing in an “old guys? soccer tournament. But luckily the currency markets seem to be on a late summer vacation with the dollar trading in a fairly tight range.
[Read more...]Well, the fans are getting their moneys worth. After staggering through the last four or five rounds, the Dow suddenly came back to life yesterday.
It got up off the mat. Straightened its shorts. Did a little dance. And then wham… By the time the bell sounded, it was up 284 points.
[Read more...]The FDICs problem bank list expanded again in the first quarter of this year. The total now is 775. Thats 10% higher than the previous quarter…when the number grew by 27%. So were still bleeding, just not as profusely.
The numbers are included in a report on the overall state of the banking industry, which crows about growing earnings numbers. Thats fine as far as it goes, but…
[Read more...]No amount of soothing words from Germany was going to stop the tailspin of the euro (EUR) yesterday, after S&P downgraded Spains debt, now… Its a European debt pandemic according to the people selling the euro like funnel cakes at a State Fair.
[Read more...]If left to its own devices, a truly free market would have already corrected many of the imbalances of the late, great credit bubble. Instead, US policymakers at the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department have been trying to re-inflate the credit bubble by pumping trillions of dollars of fresh credit and currency into the financial system. The Fed is still maintaining these Keynesian tactics, despite the increasing possibility that inflation and other adverse outcomes will result.
[Read more...]Deficits are a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, the cabin doors, covered in Foreclosure signs, followed by bailed-out bankers and incumbent Senators, begging every lowly taxpayer for alms.
Thus, we present a modest proposal: The American worker and investor has done so poorly over the last 10 years not because of easy money and rabid government spending…but because there actually wasnt enough of either.
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The Burgeoning Scam Market
“Monetary policy cannot fulfill each and every market expectation.”
So said the head of the Bundesbank, Jens Weidmann.
Why not, investors want to know.
Mr. Weidmann was talking to The Wall Street Journal. He was explaining why Germany was sticking to its guns. They don’t use that expression in Germany. But you know what he meant.
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