Archive for October, 2014

A Chicken with Every New House

Sunday, October 12th, 2014

Via the FT:     October 12, 2014 4:41 am Buy one, get free chickens – Chinese developers resort to gimmicks By Jamil Anderlini in BeijingAuthor alerts Models dressed as imperial concubines, discounts for people who lose weight, appeals to patriotism and 1,000 live chickens for prospective buyers of apartments. China’s slumping real estate market has prompted ...

New Swaps Agreement

Sunday, October 12th, 2014

Via WSJ: Markets Banks Ink Swaps Deal With U.S. Regulators Agreement Aims to Address Key Concern Over ‘Too Big to Fail’ By Andrew Ackerman Updated Oct. 12, 2014 8:49 a.m. ET WASHINGTON—The largest lenders in the U.S., Europe and Japan on Saturday agreed to new procedures to help inoculate the global financial system against the failure of ...

Williams on Rising Use of Yuan

Sunday, October 12th, 2014

I wrote this yesterday about the ECB considering a move to add the yuan to its reserves. The WSJ story has a story quoting Fed San Francisco President Williams on the same topic. Via the WSJ:   Pedro Nicolaci da Costa The gradual but rising international use of the Chinese yuan is a natural ...

Fed’s Evans Comments on the Dollar and Inflation

Saturday, October 11th, 2014

Via Reuters: (Reuters) - A stronger dollar and weak global inflation are putting downward pressure on the pace of price increases in the U.S. economy, posing a challenge for the Federal Reserve, a top Fed official said on Saturday. "The dollar, it puts downward pressure on our inflation," Chicago Federal Reserve Bank ...

Vice Chair Fischer Speaks of Rate Hikes Deferred

Saturday, October 11th, 2014

Stanley Fischer, Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve, spoke today at a conference in Washington DC and said that if foreign growth were weak the Fed might remove accommodation more slowly than it would have otherwise. Here is the quote via Bloomberg as well as a link to the full ...

Dovish Tarullo

Saturday, October 11th, 2014

Federal Reserve Board Governor Tarullo  speaking at a conference in  Washington DC said that he thinks the  global economy e faces more downside risk than upside risk. Via the WSJ: Economy Fed’s Tarullo Expresses Concern About U.S. Productivity Official Says Fed Must Also Be Mindful of Other Economies as It Sets Policy; Watching ‘Shadow ...

Call for “Strict Discipline” in Finland

Saturday, October 11th, 2014

Via FT: October 11, 2014 12:26 pm Finnish PM calls for ‘strict discipline’ after downgrade By David Crouch in Gothenburg Finland’s prime minister has called for “strict discipline” in Finnish society after rating agency Standard & Poor’s cut its AAA long-term sovereign credit rating to AA+. “Alarm bells have been ringing for a long time, ...

ECB Weighs Adding Yuan to Reserves

Saturday, October 11th, 2014

I recently finished a book by William Silber regarding the financial crisis in 1914 which developed at the onset of World War 1 and led to the shuttering of the New York Stock Exchange for four months. The NYSE closed at the behest of Treasury Secretary McAdoo who wanted to ...

Currency Wars

Saturday, October 11th, 2014

Via Bloomberg: Lew Warns Against Competitive Devaluation as Dollar Gains By Kasia Klimasinska and Simon Kennedy Oct 11, 2014 12:01 AM ET U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew warned global policy makers against devaluing exchange rates for competitive advantage amid mounting concern over the strength of the dollar and slowing world growth. With counterparts ...

On Economic Weakness, Deflation and Policy Making

Saturday, October 11th, 2014

Via the NYTimes: Financial markets have been priced for perfection. And this week, the world economy looked far from perfect. That was the unnerving reality behind a whipsaw week on Wall Street that caused dramatic swings in the global markets for stocks, bonds, currencies and commodities like oil. The pattern continued on ...