Analysis Topic: Interest Rates and the Bond Market
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Friday, September 18, 2015
Groundhog Day at the Fed / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Peter_Schiff
Every dictator knows that a continuous state of emergency is the best means to justify tyrannical policies. The trick is to keep the fictitious emergency from breeding so much paranoia that routine activities come to a halt. Many have discovered that its best to make the threat external, intangible and ultimately, unverifiable. In Orwell's 1984 the preferred mantra was "We've always been at war with Eurasia," even though everyone knew it wasn't true. In its rate decision this week the Federal Reserve, adopted a similar approach and conjured up an external threat to maintain a policy that is becoming increasingly absurd.
Friday, September 18, 2015
Three Reasons Why the U.S. Government Should Default on Its Debt Today / Interest-Rates / US Debt
By: Casey_Research
The overleveraging of the U.S. federal, state, and local governments, some corporations, and consumers is well known.
This has long been the case, and most people are bored by the topic. If debt is a problem, it has been manageable for so long that it no longer seems like a problem. U.S. government debt has become an abstraction; it has no more meaning to the average investor than the prospect of a comet smacking into the earth in the next hundred millennia.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, September 18, 2015
Fed Remains Paralysed by Fear, Keeps U.S. Interest Rates on Hold at 0.25% / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The FOMC once more decided to do nothing and keep US interest rates on hold at the panic low level of 0.25% with speculation now switching to whether the Fed will finally get the balls to raise interest rates at its October meeting, or will the Fed chicken out once more fearing that they may spark Financial Collapse 2.0.
Friday, September 18, 2015
The Central Bankster Crucifix / Interest-Rates / Central Banks
By: Barry_M_Ferguson
The FRB, the ECB, the PBoC, and the BoJ are all central banksters. It matters not which country they infest. It matters not which form of gooberment they act as marionette. It matters not how much economic destruction they instigate. Their wicked intent is the same. Total power. Total domination. Total rule. Total control. Total enslavement.
Friday, September 18, 2015
Fed Keeps US Interest Rates Unchanged - Comparison of Sep and July Statements / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Ashraf_Laidi
The Fed kept rates unchanged with an unambiguously dovish statement, focusing on weakening inflation, rising market turbulence and a new reference to foreign developments. The dot forecasts pointed to slower growth and lower core inflation and lower fed funds projections. The only hawkish dissent to the decision was from Richmond Fed's Lacker, but this point was made moot by not only due to Lacker's well documented hawkish stance, but also by the fact that the dot plot showed one Fed member expecting negative rates, even if this member is the widely dovish Minneapolis Fed's Kocherlakota.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, September 17, 2015
Stock Market Optimism Ahead Of Fed's Interest Rate Decision Release / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Paul_Rejczak
Briefly: In our opinion, no speculative positions are justified
Our intraday outlook is neutral, and our short-term outlook is neutral:
Intraday outlook (next 24 hours): neutral
Short-term outlook (next 1-2 weeks): neutral
Medium-term outlook (next 1-3 months): bearish
Long-term outlook (next year): bullish
Thursday, September 17, 2015
Don't Buy the Fed's New "Bribe-a-Bank" Interest Rate Policy / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: ...
MoneyMorning.com 
Lee Adler writes: After seven long, strange years, we're now looking at the end of ZIRP as we know it.
And good riddance, too. It's been a disaster for the U.S. economy, the middle class, the housing market – just about every facet of American economic life has suffered from this fiscal disaster masquerading as coherent monetary policy.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, September 17, 2015
U.S. Fed Must Avoid Bank of Japan Errors / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Ashraf_Laidi
No, the US is not Japan and the Federal Reserve is not the Bank of Japan. But when we assess the implications of what could be the first Fed rate after 7 years of zero interest rate policy in the US, there's no better reference than the BoJ.
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Lowdown on U.S. Rate Hikes / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Axel_Merk
Will she raise or will she not? As financial markets focus on whether we will see a Fed rate hike this week, investors may be in for a rude awakening.
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
U.S. Interest Rate Hike - Will The Fed Pick A Winning Combination? / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Raul_I_Meijer
It’s highly amusing to read all the ‘expert’ theories on a Federal Reserve hike or no hike tomorrow, but it’s also obvious that nobody really has a clue, and still feel they should be heard. Don’t know if that’s so smart, but I guess in that world being consistently wrong is not that big a deal.
Thing is, US economic numbers are so ‘massaged’ and unreliable, the Fed can pick whichever way the wind blows to argue whatever decision it makes. As long as jobs numbers get presented for instance without counting the 90-odd million Americans who are not in the labor force, and a majority of new jobs are waiters, just about anything goes in that area. Numbers on wages are just as silly.
Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
One and Done Fed is a Wall Street Fantasy / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Michael_Pento
One of the current myths promulgated by Wall Street is that the Federal Reserve will raise rates once this year, breathe a sigh of relief, and be done until the "12th of never". But those who are familiar with our central bank's history are aware that the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) has never tightened the Fed Funds Rate just once. A quarter point hiking cycle has no historical basis and is just wishful Wall Street thinking.
Monday, September 14, 2015
Next Generation QE Money Printing Coming Soon / Interest-Rates / Quantitative Easing
By: John_Rubino
The intellectual groundwork is being laid for the next stage of the Money Bubble, and it's going to be epic. Here are excerpts from two articles that appeared over the weekend (and which should be read in their entirety). Both deal with Japan, which went all-in on debt monetization, lost badly, and now needs a new plan.
Sunday, September 13, 2015
How the Fed Is Hurting U.S. Manufacturing / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: Investment_U
Sean Brodrick writes: Whether he deserves it or not, Obama is getting kudos on his handling of the economy, particularly the declining unemployment rate. In August, the official headline unemployment rate dropped to 5.1%. But that same jobs data out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) contained some sobering news: Manufacturing payrolls are getting shredded.
Sunday, September 13, 2015
Three Critical and Disturbing Facts About the Debt Market / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
By: Investment_U
Andrew Snyder writes: The next five days are going to be some of the most important days for investors in recent history. What happens next will set the stage for big profits or a sustained downturn.
We are worried about what the Fed has done to the interest rate game. As Yellen and her troops prepare to raise rates for the first time in over half a decade, the distortions they created in the market have become flat-out dangerous.
Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, September 12, 2015
The US Has Already Tightened — Which Explains A Lot / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: John_Rubino
Next week we’ll find out if the longest-ever will-they-or-won’t-they drama involving a virtually insignificant quarter-point interest rate change will amount to anything. But either way, US monetary policy is already a lot tighter than it was a year ago.
The Fed’s balance sheet, for instance, is a measure of how much new currency it is pumping into the banking system. And it’s up only $79 billion, or 1.8%, in the past year. In real terms, that’s flat to slightly negative.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, September 11, 2015
Bloomberg Interest Rate Hike Odds Still Wrong; Deflationary Bust Coming / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Bloomberg
As of September 10, the CME has the of a September hike by the Fed at 24%. Bloomberg says the probability of a move is 28%.
Thursday, September 10, 2015
Confusions About Interest Rates Part 2 / Interest-Rates / Economic Theory
By: Frank_Hollenbeck
Following the 2001 dot-com crisis, interest rates were lowered to 1% and then slowly raised to 5% over a 4-year period. This timid policy still created a massive bubble in housing that finally bust in 2008. Instead of learning from the past, we doubled down on this same failed policy. Interest rates were then lowered to 0% and have been held there with little political will to raise them one iota.
We are now on the eve of another major financial crisis, yet economists (except Austrians) still don’t really understand the role played by interest rates in a capitalist economy. To avoid repeating economic mistakes of the past, we must understand the faulty logic that led us to these errors.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, September 10, 2015
Confusion About Interest Rates Part 1 / Interest-Rates / Economic Theory
By: Frank_Hollenbeck
Since 2008, central banks have rushed to lower interest rates to spur growth. This has induced mal-investments in almost all asset classes. For example, with oil prices below $50 a barrel and trending lower, the shale oil industry is in serious trouble as is the banking industry that lent it over $1 trillion.
Of course, economists and faulty economic theory are 100% responsible for what is to come. The professional economist today is like the doctor of the past whose prescription to bleed the patient was considered state-of-the-art medicine; the cure, of course, being much worse than the disease.
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, September 09, 2015
Why the Greeks Should Repudiate Their Government’s Debt / Interest-Rates / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: MISES
Simon Wilson writes: In apportioning blame for the Greek government debt crisis, it would be difficult not to lay the major share on Greece itself. With government jobs paying three times the private sector average, a national rail service with a wage bill four times its annual revenue, a public pension system that would pay out generous benefits at fifty for anyone classified as working in “arduous” professions like hairdressing, there is no shortage of taxpayer-funded largesse running rampant through Greek society.
Wednesday, September 09, 2015
Fed Interest Rate Tightening Cycles and USD Performance / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Ashraf_Laidi
Is the peak of the US dollar behind us? Depending on your USD measure of choice, the dollar may have already peaked, when using EUR and JPY, the two largest and most liquid currencies aside from the greenback. If the bulk of the USD bull market starting in summer 2014 was based on heightened expectations of a Fed hike, then would an actual Fed hike signal the peak of the US dollar? Here is our analysis on the response of the US dollar to each of the last three Fed tightening cycles (1994-1995, 1999-2000 and 2004-2006). One common theme was found.