Finance

The key result of the ECB’s LTRO was a dramatic decline in the bond yields of Europe, especially Italy and Spain. Speculation of course was that the borrowing banks were playing the carry trade with the 1% financing but with 500b euros still being deposited overnight with the ECB we’re not exactly sure. The CEO...

Greece’s hourglass is running out of sand as officials scramble to turn it over again. As pressure continues to be brought upon Greek politicians to agree to more budget cuts before they get more bailout money and a PSI agreement remains elusive however close the parties continue to say they are to a deal, the...

The US economy added a net 243k jobs in Jan, 257k of which was in the private sector and both are well above expectations of 140k and 160k respectively. Revisions to the two prior months were up by 60k and the unemployment rate fell to 8.3% from 8.5% as while 508k people joined the labor...

ADP said 170k private sector jobs were added in Jan, 12k below estimates and Dec was revised down by 33k to 292k. The Dec figure though is still well above the Government Payroll figure of 212k reported last month. Also, ADP reported a 204k job gain in Dec while the Government said it was 120k....

The Conference Board Consumer Confidence figure at 61.1 was much weaker than expectations of 68 and is down from 64.8 in Dec. It is still though the 2nd best reading since May ’11 as it jumped almost 10 pts in Dec. The main driver of the fall was an 8 pt drop in the Present...

Verbalizing what many of us market participants have been thinking over the past month, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer said “the fact we’re still at the beginning of 2012 talking about Greece is a sign this problem hasn’t been dealt with.” ‘This problem’ remains a lack of structural reform and growth to finance too much...

After 3 quarters in a row that averaged just 1.2%, Q4 GDP grew 2.8%, a touch below expectations of 3.0% BUT Nominal GDP grew well below forecasts. Because the price deflator was up just .4% vs the estimate of 1.9%, Nominal GDP was up 3.2% vs the estimate of 4.9%. Personal Consumption rose 2.0% vs...

The 7 yr auction, the 1st of course since the Fed events of yesterday, was somewhat soft. The yield was above the when issued by about 1 bp and the bid to cover of 2.73 was below the 12 month average of 2.82. Direct and indirect bidders also took the least amount since May ’09....

The FOMC commentary on the economy and inflation is pretty much unchanged from the statement they gave in Dec. They continue to believe the economy has been expanding moderately, notwithstanding some slowing in global growth. The only real change of substance was they replaced the time frame of keeping rates ‘exceptionally low’ from mid 2013...

After strong gains in Oct and Nov that took the index to the highest since April ’10 when the home buying tax credit was being offered, Dec Pending Home Sales fell 3.5% m/o/m vs expectations of a decline of 1.0%. The fall was led by an 11% drop in the West and followed by declines...

The best way of reading the interest rate forecasts from the 10 voting members of the FOMC today is to know that the doves will want them low for longer and the hawks will be quicker to hike rates. Of the 10, 8 are doves, thus a blended forecast of where the fed funds will...

The FOMC tomorrow will tell us at what level they want to price fix the short term cost of money...