US is about to shoot itself in the foot December 6, 2010 IT is not just Britain and Europe that are shooting themselves in the foot with stupid, job and wealth-destroying policies. The same is true of America, where investors, entrepreneurs and business leaders face the threat of a wave of new taxes. This ought to matter to everybody who works in London, because the health of [...]
QE3 is a real possibility, says Fed chairman Ben Bernanke December 6, 2010 AMERICA may need a third dose of quantitative easing (QE) to avoid its economy slumping back into recession, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke predicted as he reported a gloomy outlook for the economy. America’s recovery would suffer deflation and fail to become “self sustaining” without the Fed’s interventions, he claimed in a rare television interview [...]
Bernanke’s caution worries Wall Street December 6, 2010 US stocks ended little changed yesterday, held in check by worries about Europe’s debt crisis, which frustrated investors looking for a reason to take shares to new highs for the year. Germany rejected a call for Eurozone finance ministers to increase the size of a €750bn safety net for debt-stricken members. A decline in the [...]
AN ODD MIX OF SIGNALS, SO BUY GOLD December 6, 2010 CFD MARKET STRATEGIST, GFT THE LAST few weeks have seen an overall improvement in reported economic data, especially in the US. We have seen a pick-up in a number of influential reports, including the Richmond Fed manufacturing survey, the Chicago Fed National Activity index, Chicago PMI and consumer confidence. This led to a feeling that [...]
Fed could buy up more government bonds admits Bernanke December 6, 2010 The Federal Reserve could end up buying more than the $600bn in US government bonds it has committed to purchase if the economy fails to respond or unemployment stays too high, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said. The Fed will regularly review the policy and could adjust the amount of buying up or down depending on [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING December 5, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES IRISH BANKS FACE LOANS SELL OFF Ireland will have to accelerate the shrinking of its troubled banks’ balance sheets in return for gaining continued access to emergency European funding. According to people briefed on the details of Ireland’s €85bn (£72bn) bail-out by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, the banks will [...]
BoA meets Fed capital target December 5, 2010 BANK of America has paved the way to meet all regulatory requirements imposed on it when it agreed the repayment of the $45bn (£28.5bn) Tarp government bailout it received at the peak of the financial crisis. The bank was told it needed to raise an extra $3bn through asset sales by the end of the year. [...]
TNT to take big stake in demerged Express unit December 2, 2010 LOGISTICS firm TNT said yesterday that it will keep a 29.9 per cent stake in its Express unit once it is spun off from its Mail division in a bid to avoid raising funds, cheering investors who had feared a cash call. The move, details of which were announced in a capital markets day presentation [...]
FED’S $3 TRILLION IN EMERGENCY AID December 1, 2010 Ben Bernanke: Banks and firms used our temporary liquidity facilities 21,000 times during the crisis EUROPEAN banks were some of the biggest beneficiaries of the Federal Reserve’s $3.3 trillion emergency loan programmes during the darkest days of the financial crisis when the US central bank desperately tried to keep the global system functioning. The biggest [...]
Optimism for US recovery December 1, 2010 STEADY growth is being observed in the US, the central bank reported last night. In its latest beige book, the Federal Reserve said the economy “continued to improve, on balance” from early/mid-October to mid-November. Manufacturing activity continued to grow in “almost all” districts, reflecting optimistic results from yesterday’s ISM manufacturing index. The beige book found [...]