From Ben's Q&A today on the possibility of more QE – "We have been very accommodative. And we remain prepared to do more as needed to make sure this recovery continues and that inflation stays close to target......so those tools remain very much on the table. We will...
This week is the Milken Global Conference in LA - an event that I very much look forward to each spring. This year I will participate in a panel entitled - "Twist and Shout - the Limits of Monetary Policy". It should be a spirited discussion between Fed policy makers...
This week we will see the release of the FOMC's "Summary of Economic Projections" - the SEP. While there will be the usual focus on GDP, PCE and the U-rate, the key charts for the market will be the newly generated "Appropriate Timing of Policy Firming" and the...
Yes, another line from that song I cannot get out of my head - "Loca People". But I replaced "los DJs" with "los central bankers". It seemed appropriate as they are the ones keeping the beat and making this party lively. If it wasn't for DJ Benny B we would have the...
Last year we kicked off the Institutional Investor Fixed Income voting campaign with our "Vote for Pedro" commentary (attached at the end). For those that never saw the movie "Napoleon Dynamite", please read the original commentary first to better understand our...
A few days back, as the spoo was toying with 1350, we wrote a commentary entitled "Shhh!!! Don't tell anyone, Spanish banks have problems". It was a tongue-in-cheek title that attempted to poke fun at all the doom mongers running around stating the obvious - “Spain is...
Any investment professional who does not know that Spanish banks are having a lot of trouble should be fired immediately. This is NOT news - everyone worth their salt is painfully aware that the entire peripheral European banking system is technically insolvent....
On April 30th a new actor will likely arrive on the scene in Frankfurt to spice up the long running surreal horror show that is the ECB. His name is Panicos Demetriades, a Greek Cypriot professor from the University of Leicester with close ties to the only communist...
There are some important life lessons from the movie “Dumb and Dumber”. First and foremost, when you give people (or countries) easy access to funds that they can never pay back, things usually end badly. In the case of “Dumb and Dumber”, a suitcase full of cash...
In the minutes from the January FOMC meeting, the section on "Committee Policy Action", which usually contains most of the meat on the debate, had the following line - "A few members observed that, in their judgment, current and prospective economic conditions —...
In the minutes from the January FOMC meeting, the section on "Committee Policy Action", which usually contains most of the meat on the debate, had the following line - "A few members observed that, in their judgment, current and prospective economic conditions — including elevated unemployment and inflation at or below the Committee’s objective — […]
