I'll keep this note short as I'm tooling around Amsterdam and Utrecht with a very limited amount of time for reading and writing. I see no real surprises in Mario's statement. The bond buying plans look to be as advertised with some minor positive changes on the...
The Colonel is baaaaack! In a page right off the script of a "A Few Good Men", a renitent Colonel Bernanke gave one of his strongest performances on the witness stand to date. And while he still won't admit to administering a "code red" - the practice of debasing the...
I was struck once again this morning by how good a central banker Mario Draghi has become. The guy rocks!! My only hope is that some folks at the Federal Reserve begin to take note of what he is really saying. For those that didn't read his Die Zeit article from...
"In terms of the quantity theory of money, we may say that the velocity of circulation of money does not remain constant. 'You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.' You can force money on the system in exchange for government bonds, its close money...
A little over 3 and half years ago I was holed up inside an office on the third floor of the Marriner S Eccles building on 20th and Constitution Ave in DC. As many readers know, I chose to leave the private sector in 2009 after spending 16 years on the street. At the...
In an interview with Der Speigel last weekend, Mario Monti said - "It is because of the risk of a euro collapse that the difference between Italy's interest rates and those of Germany are so great. In this way, the high interest rates that Italy is now having to pay...
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...
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...
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...
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 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 50bps, the spoo rallied 0.5 percent, the DAX rallied 1 percent, […]
