Archive for August, 2014

Clam Shells on Liberty Street

Saturday, August 23rd, 2014

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York building is a beautiful edifice which looks much like Italian castles in Florence. When my wife and I visited Italy in the spring I remarked to her several times in Florence regarding building which resembled the Fed building at 33 Liberty Street in ...

Cheap Liabilities

Saturday, August 23rd, 2014

The FT with a story on record bond issuance around the globe as companies lock down cheap financing. Via the FT: August 22, 2014 4:09 pm Global bond sales at post-crisis high By Christopher Thompson Global economic uncertainty has failed to dent bond markets as debt volumes have surged to the highest since the financial ...

How Dangerous is ISIS

Saturday, August 23rd, 2014

Via the NYTimes: Politics U.S. Isn’t Sure Just How Much to Fear ISIS By MARK MAZZETTI and HELENE COOPERAUG. 22, 2014   WASHINGTON — Earlier this year, President Obama likened the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria to a junior varsity basketball squad, a group that posed little of the threat once presented by Osama ...

Not So Humanitarian

Saturday, August 23rd, 2014

Via Reuters: By REUTERSAUG. 23, 2014, 6:29 A.M. E.D.T. KIEV — A Ukrainian military spokesman said on Saturday that Russian aid trucks, which crossed into Ukraine without official permission on Friday, had been loading up production equipment from military plants in Ukraine. The spokesman, Andriy Lysenko, told journalists that the equipment was taken ...

Merrill Lynch on Yellen Testimony

Friday, August 22nd, 2014

Merrill takes the tack that because she was not overtly dovish the speech was hawkish. Via Merrill Lynch: It's up to the data.This week marked a remarkable shift in the way the market views the Fed, as first the Minutes from the July FOMC meeting were surprisingly hawkish, as they revealed that ...

Unintended Consequences

Friday, August 22nd, 2014

New rules by regulators on the topic of bank liquidity may cause some harm to municipalities as it appears that municipal bonds will not be classified as high quality liquid assets. Many are high quality but I think many are not so liquid. Anyway, an interesting read. Via the WSJ: Regulators to ...

Harry Reid Tells Asian Jokes

Friday, August 22nd, 2014

Harry Reid is an insipid hack and it shocks me that he holds his current position in which he controls the flow of legislation in the United States Senate. TheHill.com is carrying a story about the Majority Leader telling Asian jokes at a dinner recently. There is a double standard in ...

En Fuego

Friday, August 22nd, 2014

The Long Bond is on fire and is posting robust gains on the day. I have found some buyers as I make calls but what am hearing is central bank and money manager money diving into the 3 year through 7 year sector. I can not locate the action in ...

UBS on Yellen

Friday, August 22nd, 2014

Via Drew Matus at UBS On the One Hand at Jackson Hole + The Two-Handed Approach to Policy Chairwoman Yellen's speech at Jackson Hole described the questions about the labor market with which the Fed is grappling. However, we believe her view that her focus on "cyclical" versus "structural" somewhat misses the point. ...

TDSecurities on Yellen Testimony

Friday, August 22nd, 2014

Via Eric Green at TDSecurities: No new ground here on well-articulated views on the labor market and monetary policy. There is "significant" slack in the labor market as evidenced by tepid wage inflation and in an environment where the unemployment rate is a less useful gauge of labor market slack, policy ...