The Federal Reserve raised interest rates again today. The Fed funds rate inched higher by 25 basis points to 3.0%, only just below inflation’s pace, measured by the consumer price index, which advanced by 3.1% for the year through March. Twelve months previous, CPI was rising by 1.7% and the Fed funds rate was 1.0%. In short, the real (inflation-adjusted) Fed funds rate is close to being neutral, as opposed to negative, for the first time since 2002.
Author Archives: James Picerno
TOUGH GUYS, TOUGH TALK & TOUGH CHOICES
Robert Portman, the newly minted U.S. trade representative, promises to get tough with China. Red ink is the reason.
“Part of [the U.S. trade] deficit is because the Chinese do not always play by the rules,” he told the Senate Finance Committee via Bloomberg News a week before he received confirmation for ascension to the trade post from his former life as a Republican congressman from Ohio.
JUNK SALE
If the high-yield bond market is the fixed-income equivalent of the fat lady singing, the diva appears to be yodeling. Just what she’s saying, and what it means for the markets is debatable, but there’s no doubt that there’s a whole lot of singing going on.
THE SCIENCE WAS A BIT MORE DISMAL TODAY
The economy expanded at its slowest pace in two years in the first quarter, the government reported today, handing pessimists one more piece of ammunition for claiming that a slowdown is upon us.
DURABILITY TEST
One freshly published number in the dismal science can mean a lot these days when it comes moving investor sentiment. The case du jour comes to us from The U.S. Census Bureau, which reported this morning that durable goods orders posted an unexpected March decline—and a sharp decline at that.
THE BUYING GAME
There was no news yesterday at President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, but there was plenty of talk when the head of the world’s biggest oil-consuming country chatted with his counterpart from the world’s biggest supplier.
TURNING OVER ROCKS IN MR. MARKET’S GARDEN
Is the market efficient? Efficiency as in prices reflect all known and relevant market information. By those terms, prices are by definition efficient, which is another way of saying that neither hidden value nor veiled excess lurk in the shadows.
THE NEW NEW GOLDEN AGE OF OPEC
The House of Representatives has embraced the much-debated energy bill, or as it’s known formally in the hallowed halls of Congress, H.R. 6. But don’t hold your breath that this creation of politicians will provide delivery into the promised land of energy independence or affordable prices for oil and its byproducts. H.R. 6 is legislation, not divine intervention, and as legislation goes, it leaves more than a few things to be desired.
THE DECLINE & FALL OF JOBLESS CLAIMS
The Labor Department this morning delivered another wake-up call to the Federal Reserve regarding its still-negative real (inflation-adjusted) Fed funds rate. The buzzer sounded with the release of the weekly report on initial jobless claims, a widely followed number for gauging economic momentum, or lack thereof.
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
The bond market decided to err on the side of optimism again today—optimism, that is, from a bond trader’s perspective. Whatever you call it, there was a fair amount of it in and around trading of the benchmark 10-year Treasury Note, which now yields 4.20%, the lowest in more than two months.