There has been lots of talk about Greece, Portugal, Spain, etc. leaving the EUR, revaluing their currency, getting their fiscal houses in order, and then coming back more competitively to the Eurozone. Rubbish! It’s the Germans that look like the odd country out in...
So it’s a pretty exciting opening day at the Milken Global Conference. The early morning panel with Steve Forbes, Ken Griffin, Mark Lasry and Mohamed El-Erian was very entertaining. All panelists saw unemployment at 8% to 9% in 12 months time and equities rallying...
1. Fed 2009 consolidated financial statements 2. Separating Derivatives businesses from commercial banking business 3. Poor initial claims data Fed statements – I have spent some time in commentaries recently going through the odd hedging issues on the ML portfolios...
There is so much to discuss surrounding this SEC investigation. First and foremost landmark financial reform is around the corner. The big banks have been lobbying hard to water down any attempt at ending TBTF (too big to fail) and their oligopoly in the OTC...
Initial claims was disappointing - 484, after 460 last week is just not a step in the right direction. This data is our best high frequency look at the US labor market, and unfortunatly that look is a bit grim. I guess there is a silver lining in that this data will...
The text of the EU statement on Greece is at the end of this commentary. In a nutshell, the no bailout clause has been completely circumvented and we are seeing direct bilateral aid to Greece. As Percy Shelley wrote many years ago (and Bill Clinton restated in 1999) -...
Front end trades ok post numbers. Back end feels soggy. I still cannot get excited about selling a market that’s sits at the high end of the yield range. The number had something for everyone but less census than expected and more private payrolls than ADP indicated...
So there is the individual non-agency MBS CDS book with 2000+ line items. Then there are the interesting positions where they were shorting muni CDS on Nevada, California and Florida. And back in MBS space, there are billion dollar slugs of subprime mezz bonds and...
I assume some payroll expectation revisions will start flying across the screens – there were a few 350/400 numbers out there! Whoops!!! Looking at the ADP report details, it was another tough month for small goods producing firms coming in at -27k. With this survey...
It is quiet. Rates are holding at the top end of the range and the curve is maintaining a steepening bias. Swap spreads have stabilized, the Bund/US spread continues to widen, vol is drifting lower and MBS is widening a smidge. It feels like a whole lot of nothing as...
It is quiet. Rates are holding at the top end of the range and the curve is maintaining a steepening bias. Swap spreads have stabilized, the Bund/US spread continues to widen, vol is drifting lower and MBS is widening a smidge. It feels like a whole lot of nothing as we await quarter end flows, […]
