Archive for January, 2014

Morning Miscellany on a Mundane Monday

Monday, January 27th, 2014

Corporate bond supply last week totaled in the neighborhood of $40 billion. Conversations with market participants leads me to believe that the expectation this week is something either side of $20 billion. I think there are two reasons for the drop in issuance. First the pace of issuance early in ...

January 27 2014 Opening

Monday, January 27th, 2014

Prices of Treasury coupon securities have reversed course and are surrendering a small portion of the gains achieved late last week as emerging market currency turmoil motivated a fierce flight to the seemingly safe sanctuary of US Treasuries.  The Turkish lira and the South African rand have been at the ...

China Credit Trust Finds Some Funding

Monday, January 27th, 2014

Bloomberg reports that the China Credit Trust,which many in market fear will be unable to make scheduled payments on Friday, has found some funding. The Bloomberg story leaves the reader unsatisfied as the story refers to potential funding. Via Bloomberg: China Credit Trust Says It Reached Pact on Troubled Product (2) 2014-01-27 08:12:41.9 ...

World Trade Center Fence To be Dismantled

Sunday, January 26th, 2014

Robert Frost begins his poem "Mending Wall" with the opening line, "Something there is that doesn't love a wall". Well the developers of the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan must have paid the poet some heed as the WSJ reports that sometime in 2014 the developers will remove ...

Debt Ceiling Addendum

Sunday, January 26th, 2014

I composed this post earlier about the GOP and its desire to gain some favor or advantage for passing the debt ceiling increase. TheHill.com has posted a story which notes that the GOP has not arrived at a collective epiphany regarding what might satisfy it so that the increase might ...

Yen Opening

Sunday, January 26th, 2014

The Yen has opened below 102.00 and as I compose this electronic missive it is trading at 101.95. One FX salesman who is a fully paid up subscriber (and friend of this blog since its first incarnation) wrote on Friday that there should be support at 101.60/65 and then he  ...

McConnell on Debt Ceiling

Sunday, January 26th, 2014

In a Thehill.com story story Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell suggests that a vote for an increase in the debt ceiling should involve some quid pro quo. That is a position completely at odds with the Administration which has stated and restated that the debt ceiling in non negotiable. This ...

Some Sunday Reading

Sunday, January 26th, 2014

This Washington Post story describes post mortems in the Obama White House on its 2013 failures.The author recounts a White House memo which conclude the President spent to much time governing as a Prime Minister rather that as President. Talking heads have concluded that the White House will turn its focus ...

Elite Failure

Sunday, January 26th, 2014

Martin Wolf is a writer for the Financial Times and he recently authored an essay on the failure of the elites and how that threatens our society. He suggests that there is an analogy between our current political and socio economic and cultural circumstances with the situation which prevailed in ...

Some Weekend Nuggets

Saturday, January 25th, 2014

Vix Rising Academic Take on markets and FOMC Policy Shifts Internecine Warfare in the GOP and the Debt Ceiling This is a very interesting post from the Washington Post on the cancellation of emergency unemployment benefits by North Carolina in July 2013. There has been a significant amount of academic ...