Wall St slips as US Fed ends bond buying – New York Report October 29, 2014 US STOCKS closed with slight losses yesterday, finishing off their lows of the session, after the Federal Reserve ended its stimulative monthly bond-buying programme and expressed confidence in American economic prospects. In a statement after a two-day meeting, the Fed ended its quantitative easing programme of bond purchases, as had been expected. At its peak, [...]
As QE ends in the US, has it changed the world for the better? October 29, 2014 Sam Bowman, research director at the Adam Smith Institute, says Yes. Many people, including me, expected QE to cause uncontrollable inflation and end in disaster. How wrong we were. The US and the UK, which did QE, are growing healthily. The Eurozone, which didn’t, is in ruins. QE helps to keep nominal spending steady during [...]
Markets keep their cool as Federal Reserve ends quantitative easing October 29, 2014 The Federal Reserve has announced the end of its monthly $15bn bond-buying programme, adding that its intention is to maintain low interest rates for "considerable time". The Fed was more bullish on the state of the US labour market, and all its members with the exception of one voted to draw quantitative easing (QE) to [...]
Is the world ready for the end of quantitative easing? Global markets rise on great Fed expectations October 29, 2014 What a difference a year makes. This time in 2013, markets across the world were thrown into turmoil as rumours abounded that the US Fed would begin tapering its quantitative easing programme. Fast forward 12 months, and the same markets have remained cheerful, even as the US' rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee prepares to make [...]
Anne Richards: We need a new plan to bring women back into the square mile October 26, 2014 "It is bad, shocking, awful. Since 2008 it has got worse. As an industry we’ve managed to deter a chunk of half of the population. We’ve got to get that sorted.” Aberdeen Asset Management’s chief investment officer Anne Richards does not hold back on the City’s gender imbalance. For her entire professional life, [...]
US Fed set to call time on its stimulus plan – New York Report October 26, 2014 UNLESS it springs a major surprise, the US Federal Reserve will call time this week on its programme of government bond purchases, which at one point was pumping $85bn (£52.83bn) a month into financial markets and the economy. The Federal Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) interest rate-setting is meeting on Wednesday. Other indicators include Tuesday’s data [...]
New dictionary words: How well do you know this year’s finance entries? October 24, 2014 Hear ye, hear ye, financial wordsmiths – the 12th edition of the Collins English Dictionary was out yesterday, and with it 50,000 new words to add to your Scrabble repertoire. The financial crisis has definitely taken hold at Collins HQ, with 14 new financial additions to the dictionary, including Fed chief Janet Yellen's ever-popular "taper" [...]
This market storm may not be over – CNBC Comment October 20, 2014 I simply can’t resist the temptation to draw parallels between markets and the autumn storms in the UK last week. The tempest is back. Yes, it was a quiet summer, with volatility in equity, FX and bond markets dropping to multi-year lows. But the lashing of the first storm is still painful, and the finger-pointing [...]
Navratilova blasts ITF silence over Russian’s Williams brothers slur October 20, 2014 EIGHTEEN-TIME grand slam winner Martina Navratilova has criticised the International Tennis Federation (ITF) for its failure to punish the Russian official who referred to Serena and Venus as the “Williams brothers”. Shamil Tarpischev, the president of the Russian Tennis Federation, landed a £15,000 fine and a one-year ban from the Women’s Tennis Association for the [...]
Ebola to Ukraine: The West has failed to pay the piper – with terrible results October 19, 2014 Something truly terrible happened in Hamelin, Germany in the early Middle Ages, something so dire it has become embedded in western consciousness as the fairy tale “The Pied Piper.” Whether the town experienced a severe case of the Black Death, a rush of emigration to Eastern Europe, suffered through the Children’s Crusade, or was the [...]