
Analysis Topic: Interest Rates and the Bond Market
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Why Negative Interest Rates Will Fail / Interest-Rates / Financial Crisis 2016
By: Frank_Hollenbeck
It is now just a matter of time before the US central bank follows the central banks of Japan, the EU, Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland in setting negative rates on reserve deposits.
The goal of such rates is to force banks to lend their excess reserves. The assumption is that such lending will boost aggregate demand and help struggling economies recover. Using the same central bank logic as in 2008, the solution to a debt problem is to add on more debt. Yet, there is an old adage: you can bring a horse to water but you cannot make him drink! With the world economy sinking into recession, few banks have credit-worthy customers and many banks are having difficulties collecting on existing loans.
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Monday, February 15, 2016
Devalue or Die; Negative Interest Rate Wars Have Begun / Interest-Rates / Currency War
By: Sol_Palha
Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
Mark Twain
Tuhe “devale or die” currency wars are picking up steam; Japan’s central bankers are not alone when it comes to taking rates into negative territory. A host of European nations are now joining the bandwagon, and the latest victim is Sweden. We alluded to this development a long time ago and published a host of articles on this topic. Central bankers Worldwide understand that the only driving force behind the magical recovery in the U.S s hot money and that is the only weapon that can maintain that illusion. Get ready for negative rate wars; imagine having to pay the banks to keep your money; soon people will start to question the value of banks.
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Monday, February 15, 2016
Deranged Central Bankers Blowing Up The World / Interest-Rates / Central Banks
By: James_Quinn
It is now self-evident to any sentient being (excludes CNBC shills, Wall Street shyster economists, and Keynesian loving politicians) the mountainous level of unpayable global debt is about to crash down like an avalanche upon hundreds of millions of willfully ignorant citizens who trusted their politician leaders and the central bankers who created the debt out of thin air. McKinsey produced a report last year showing the world had added $57 trillion of debt between 2008 and the 2nd quarter of 2014, with global debt to GDP reaching 286%.
Friday, February 12, 2016
Is This the Debt Bubbles Last Rattle? / Interest-Rates / Global Debt Crisis 2016
By: Raul_I_Meijer
What we see happening today is why we called our news overview the “Debt Rattle” 8 years ago. The last gasps of a broken system ravished by the very much cancer-like progress of debt. Yes, it took longer than it should have, and than we thought. But that’s pretty much irrelevant, unless you were trying to get rich off of the downfall of your own world. Always a noble goal.
There’s one reason for the delay only: central bank hubris. And now the entire shebang is falling to bits. That this would proceed in chaotic ways was always a given. People don’t know where to look first or last, neither central bankers nor investors nor anyone else.
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Friday, February 12, 2016
Can the U.S. Fed Drop Interest Rates Below 0%? / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: EWI

For the financial markets, the biggest event of the week starts tomorrow: On Wednesday and Thursday (Feb. 10-11) Fed chair Janet Yellen will appear before Congress to deliver her semi-annual Monetary Policy Report.
"It's huge." That's how one strategist put it this morning, in a CNBC interview about the importance of Yellen's testimony.
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Friday, February 12, 2016
Why the Federal Reserve Always 'Happens' to Be Wrong / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: MoneyMetals

"The last duty of a central banker is to tell the public the truth." - Alan Blinder, former Federal Reserve Board Vice Chairman
The Federal Reserve Board finds itself back in a quandary of its own making. When Fed chair Janet Yellen pushed through an interest rate hike this past December, she confidently cited an "economy performing well and expected to continue to do so."
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Thursday, February 11, 2016
The War on Cash is About to Go into Hyperdrive / Interest-Rates / War on Cash
By: Graham_Summers
The global Central Banks have declared War on Cash.
Historically, one of the safest things to do when the markets begin to collapse is to move a significant portion of your holdings to cash. As the old adage says, during times of deflation, “cash is king.”
The notion here is that cash is a safe haven. And while earning 1-2% in interest doesn’t do much in terms of growing your wealth, it sure beats losing 20%+ by holding on to stocks or bonds during their respective bear markets
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Thursday, February 11, 2016
Negative Interest Rates: Their Devastating Impact on Our Economy / Interest-Rates / Financial Crisis 2016
By: Harry_Dent
Since late 2008, central banks around the world have used unprecedented QE to try and stoke the global economy.Then in June 2014, the ECB took it a step further. They went negative.
Zero short-term interest rates apparently weren’t enough. The ECB realized that if they couldn’t get banks to loan or consumers to spend, why not really light a fire under their ass and tell them: “if you’re not going to spend, you have to pay to keep your money in the bank!”
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Thursday, February 11, 2016
Through the Looking Glass on Interest Rates / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2016
By: John_Browne
On January 29th, Japan's central bank governor, Haruhiko Kuroda, announced that the Bank of Japan would introduce a Negative Interest Rate Policy, or NIRP, on bank reserve deposits held in excess of the minimum requisite. The European Central Bank, and central banks in Switzerland, Denmark and Sweden have already partially blazed this mysterious trail. The banks have done so in order to weaken their respective currencies and to light a fire under inflation. Swiss national bonds now carry negative rates out to maturities of eleven years, meaning investors must lock up funds for eleven years to receive even a small positive nominal return!
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
UK Interest Rates, Economy Forecasts 2016 and 2017 - Video / Interest-Rates / UK Interest Rates
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Is the UK 6 year long panic low of 0.5% interest rates over? Are rates about to start on a trend towards normalisation as the Bank of England Governor Mark Carney was stating would happen barely 6 months ago? Or will the Bank of England remain paralysed by fear of a banking sector armageddon? And what are the interest rate implications from Britain's forthcoming EU referendum i.e. the risks of BrExit that could trigger much market uncertainty.
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
The Fed Doesn't have a Clue! / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: Axel_Merk
"The Fed doesn't have a clue!" - I allege that not only because the Fed appears to admit as much (more on that in a bit), but also because my own analysis leads to no other conclusion. With Fed communication in what we believe is disarray, we expect the market to continue to cascade lower - think what happened in 2000. What are investors to do, and when will we reach bottom?
Saturday, February 06, 2016
UK Interest Rates, Economy GDP Forecasts 2016 and 2017 / Interest-Rates / UK Interest Rates
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Six months ago Bank of England Governor, Mark Carney in 'forward guidance' at the time gave his intentions to start to raise UK interest rates early 2016, that in the run up to the Fed December rate hike had galvanised many to expect a similar trailing response from the Bank of England to gradually follow the Fed towards normalisation of UK interest rates towards a target of 2.5% over 3 years i.e. by Mid 2018.
"Short-term interest rates have averaged around 4.5% since around the Bank's inception three centuries ago, the same average as during the pre-crisis period when inflation was at target...
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Friday, February 05, 2016
End of the Fed: It Can’t Do Any of the Things It’s Supposed to Do / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: Jeff_Berwick
[The following is by TDV’s Senior Analyst, Ed Bugos]
Janet Yellen has been in the news with her often-stated determination to create price inflation.
Why Fed officials are so scared to death of the deflation we all look for at the shopping mall each weekend is anybody’s guess. Ours is that it keeps the crony banking system and its inflated bureaucracy afloat – on a sea of green, like in a yellow submarine.
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Monday, February 01, 2016
The Fed Is Not Hiking Rates: Risk Assets To Perform / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Bob_Kirtley
The landscape of global monetary policy is changing. In late 2015 we had the Fed hiking, signalling more to come, the ECB holding back on fresh QE and even the BOJ, which has engaged in more easing than any other central bank in history, was sitting on its hands.
That tune has changed.
The BoJ moved to negative rates this week. The Fed didn’t hike and signalled that they aren’t going to hike in the short term. The ECB is making noises about expanding its QE programs. In this article we explore direction of monetary policy going forward and its implications for financial markets.
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Monday, February 01, 2016
US Dollar and US Treasury Bonds Big Picture / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
By: Rambus_Chartology
Since we covered the many different markets in detail last week I would like to focus back in on the US dollar and the TLT looking for clues for the big picture direction. The huge daily swings, in say the INDU last week, makes it very hard to keep and hold a short or long position unless you're perfect on your entry point. In a bull market it's two steps forward and one step backward and in a bear market it's two steps down and one step up. If an entry point in a bear market is not made in the first part of the two steps down sequence you'll find your self behind at some point in the trade if the entry point was made in step two. This is one reason why it's so important to know the direction of the big trend. Until something changes I believe the US stock markets are now in a bear market. There are a lot of things that can change that outlook but for today that's what the charts are suggesting.
Monday, February 01, 2016
BOJ Negative Interest Rates Central Banking Crime Syndicate's War on Cash for Triggering Panic Consumption / Interest-Rates / War on Cash
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Whilst most market commentators were fixated on the prospects for further Fed tightening, the so called unwinding of easy money quantitative easing in the United States. The Japanese arm of the central banking crime syndicate took the markets by storm Friday by effectively decreeing that inflation is just too low for the systematic stealth theft of bank deposits to continue so now it's time to ramp things up a notch with the next step which is for NEGATIVE INTEREST RATES. The FIRST instance of which will be that an interest rate of -0.1% will be applied to bank deposits (excess reserves) with the central bank, again this is just the FIRST instance with MORE or rather WORSE to follow which sends a discouraging message to all against holding Yen deposits, triggering an immediate drop of over 2% in the value of the Yen.
Saturday, January 30, 2016
Lacy Hunt: Inflation and 10-Year US Treasury Yields Headed Lower / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Gordon_T_Long
Dr. Lacy Hunt joins FRA Co-Founder Gordon T. Long in an in-depth discussion on the current debt dilemma and the decisions of the Federal Reserve. Dr. Lacy H. Hunt, an internationally known economist, is Executive Vice President of Hoisington Investment Management Company, a firm that manages over $5 billion for pension funds, endowments, insurance companies and others. He is the author of two books, and numerous articles in leading magazines, periodicals and scholarly journals. Included among the publishers of his articles are. Barron's, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, the Journal of Finance, the Financial Analysts Journal and the Journal of Portfolio Management.
Friday, January 29, 2016
Seven Years of Monetary Quackery; Can the Fed Admit it Got it Wrong? / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: Mike_Whitney
America’s richest investors are betting trillions of dollars that the US economy will stay lousy for years to come.
Who are these wealthy investors?
Bondholders. And their views on the state of the economy are reflected in the yields on long-term US Treasuries. At present, the yields on long-term debt are very low which means that investors think the economy will continue to underperform while inflation remains in check.
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Friday, January 29, 2016
Japan Just Lit the Fuse on a $9 Trillion Debt Implosion / Interest-Rates / Global Debt Crisis 2016
By: Graham_Summers
Last night the Bank of Japan implemented Negative Interest Rate Policy, or NIRP.
It is the second Central Bank to do so. The European Central Bank or ECB first went to NIRP in June 2014.
Thus, between Japan and Europe, over 20% of the world’s GDP is being managed by a Central Bank with NIRP.
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Friday, January 29, 2016
Janet Yellen "Peddling Fiction" on a Worsening Economy... Doesn’t Raise Rates and Downgrades Outlook / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Jeff_Berwick
We have made some very bold claims in the past. Since 2010, to many jears, we said that the Federal Reserve would never raise rates significantly again. Most laughed. They said that surely this crazy, emergency 0% interest rate policy was only temporary. Five long years passed, and even a Fed Chairman later, before finally, after seven years-to-the-day, on December 16th, Janet Yellen took the bold move to raise rates 0.25%.