Category: Finance

He adds that “no doubt” that Yellen will say at her press conference that Fed expects to tighten over time; yet hard for Fed to be “overly hawkish” since September statement will need to explain why policy makers aren’t hiking this week. FOMC may decide statement should remain neutral, leave it to Yellen to deliver “close but not quite there yet” message. Looking at the […]

The Eurozone’s banking system, incorporating the national central banks and the ECB, bound together in a bizarre settlement system called TARGET, became the means for member nations to buy German goods on credit. Very good for Germany, you may say, but the problem was that the credit was supplied by Germany herself. It is the same as lending money to the buyer of your business […]

“The Chinese economy is definitely on the downward trend. That hasn’t changed,” said Ma Xiaoping, an economist with HSBC. Ma said demand from both home and abroad is still weak and investors are downbeat about China’s economic outlook.

Iraq is OPEC’s second biggest producer after Saudi Arabia, and the increase in its output, alongside that of Iran, could aggravate the global oil glut and complicate discussions between OPEC and non-OPEC producers on output limits to prop up prices.

Last month’s strong jobs growth should reinforce the Fed’s confidence in a labor market that officials view as at or near full employment. Fed Chair Janet Yellen has said the economy needs to create just under 100,000 jobs a month to keep up with population growth. The U.S. central bank raised interest rates for the first rise in nearly a decade last December, but since […]

Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Glenn Stevens, one policy meeting away from retirement, will leave his deputy and successor, Philip Lowe, with an inheritance that’s confounding counterparts worldwide: very low inflation and limited policy ammunition to combat it. The best result for Australia would be a depreciation in the exchange rate, but with interest rates low and even negative across the developed world, yield-hungry investors […]

For the last 50 years, the world economy has benefited from a demographic boom that has contributed 1.8 percent to average annual global GDP increases, helping to generate an unprecedented level of growth.1This demographic tailwind is coming to an end. With populations aging and fertility rates dropping around the world, the growth rates of the past 50 years may prove to be the exception, not […]

In summary, a turbulent period may be ahead as Japan transitions from monetary to fiscal stimulus, but at least the BOJ’s direct purchases in the equity market should keep stocks modestly propped up.

With inventories once again on the rise, demand set to seasonally tumble, and production on the rise, the lagged response to the bounce in crude prices continues in the US oil rig count, rising 3 last week to 374. This is the 8th rig count rise in the last 9 weeks. The 58 rig rise (+18% off the lows) is the fastest since Jan 2010. […]