Archive for April, 2016

Early FX

Monday, April 11th, 2016

Via Kit Juckes at SocGen: Last week was the yen's week, and this morning, to the extent that anything is happening, is the yen's morning too, in G10FX. More widely, oil is up, the Korean won is up, and gold's up. Asian equities are mixed (China/HK up, Japan, Korea, Australia down). ...

Larry Summers on the End of Global Integration

Monday, April 11th, 2016

Via the FT: Since the end of the second world war, a broad consensus in support of global economic integration as a force for peace and prosperity has been a pillar of the international order. From global trade agreements to the EU project; from the Bretton Woods institutions to the removal ...

A “Bad Bank’ For Italy?

Monday, April 11th, 2016

Via Bloomberg: Plan said to target agreement for as early as this week UniCredit would be among investors in possible fund, CEO says Italian Treasury and central bank officials will meet with executives of major banks, including UniCredit SpA and Intesa Sanpaolo SpA, on Monday to discuss the creation of a fund that ...

Public pensions in US With Huge Shortfalls in Funding

Sunday, April 10th, 2016

Via the FT: The US public pension system has developed a $3.4tn funding hole that will pile pressure on cities and states to cut spending or raise taxes to avoid Detroit-style bankruptcies. According to academic research shared exclusively with FTfm, the collective funding shortfall of US public pension funds is three times ...

Feeble Global Growth

Sunday, April 10th, 2016

Via the FT: The world economy is beset by feeble growth and a recovery that is “weak, uneven and in danger of stalling yet again,” according to the latest Brookings Institution-Financial Times tracking index. In a publication ahead of the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank this week, ...

Energy Hit for Big Banks

Sunday, April 10th, 2016

Via the FT: US banks braced for hit on energy losses Damage from oil price fall expected to weigh on earnings   by: Ben McLannahan in New York Investors in big US banks are braced for a fresh round of disclosures on energy portfolios as regulators turn up the heat on lenders to take a ...

More Criticism of Negative Rates

Sunday, April 10th, 2016

Via Bloomberg: Ambrosetti Workshop in Cernobbio charts path to more growth Nomura's Koo calls negative rates `intellectually bankrupt' Negative interest rates, one of the latest central bank experiments to goad economies back into growth, got low marks at a financial and economic conference along Lake Como. Richard Koo, the chief economist at Nomura Research ...

Limits on Effectiveness of Negative Rates

Sunday, April 10th, 2016

Via the FT: Negative interest rates risk hitting consumer spending and undermining the economic growth they are intended to encourage, the head of the world’s largest asset management group has warned. Larry Fink, chief executive of BlackRock, said that not enough attention was being given to the effect of negative rates on ...

GDP Now: Almost Flat

Friday, April 8th, 2016

Via Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta: Latest forecast: 0.1 percent — April 8, 2016 The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2016 is 0.1 percent on April 8, down from 0.4 percent on April 5. After this morning's wholesale trade report from ...

Student Loan Defaults

Friday, April 8th, 2016

Via the WSJ: By Josh Mitchell Updated April 7, 2016 1:05 p.m. ET More than 40% of Americans who borrowed from the government’s main student-loan program aren’t making payments or are behind on more than $200 billion owed, raising worries that millions of them may never repay. The new figures represent the fallout ...