I’ve Got 2 Tickets to Paradise

All aboard the Bernaghi Express - next stop risk asset paradise! The second iteration of "The Committee to Save the World" nailed it last week. The Fed is "closely monitoring" the situation and stands ready to provide "accommodation". These are code words for imminent...

Spanish Requests and US Jobs

First the easy one, US jobs. While payrolls was better than expected at 165k, the pop up in both the headline rate and the U6 rate are going to keep an "accommodative" Fed very much in play for September. This is probably the PERFECT number for risk assets. The data...

Words Are the New Bullets

While there was talk of BTP/Bono spread caps, LTROs, QE, SMP, rate cuts, forward language changes and central banking miracles of all kind before today, the markets got very little in terms of tangible central bank action from either the Fed or the ECB. That said, the...

Waiting for August 1st

The bears are back on red alert because the Spanish and Italian debt markets are apparently going to destroy global risk asset markets, capitalism and modern civilization - AGAIN. But while the Spanish 2yr was busy skyrocketing 132bps last week, the Irish 2yr rallied...

The Committee to Save the World- Part Deux

There is a famous Time magazine cover from 1998, with a picture featuring 3 of the leading "regulators" at the time - Bob Rubin, Larry Summers and Alan Greenspan. The caption on the cover reads - "The committee to save the world". Of course, in retrospect, these were...

Gimme an “I”, Gimme an “O”, Gimme an “E”…

....Gimme an "R". Yes it’s true, during the Q&A Ben put the IOER back on the table. Many pundits had written the IOER off as a policy tool after the minutes from September 2011 suggested officials were too scared of zero rates. According to Fed and financial industry...