SOV CDS Indicative Level

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SOV CDS Indicative Levels

Country 5yr CDS/10yr CDS Change Curve Euro/USD
Austria 242/262 -5 -20/-5 8/18
Belgium 137/147 -3 -10/-2 6/12
Finland 78/88 -2 -3/0 4/9
France 83/93 -5 -4/0 5/10
Germany 80/90 -3 -4/0 5/10
Greece 240/265 unch -25/-8 9/20
Ireland 330/360 -10 -30/-10 10/22
Italy 184/194 -5 -12/-2 7/11
Netherland 122/130 unch -8/0 5/12
Norway 53/65 unch -2/2 n/a
Portugal 125/138 -4 -12/0 8/14
Spain 140/153 -2 -8/-1 8/14
Sweden 136/152 -3 -8/-1 n/a
UK 142/158 -5 -8/-2 6/12
US 85/98 -3 -4/0 3/6


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2009-03-11 USER

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MBA Mortgage Applications (Mar 6)

Survey n/a
Actual 11.3%
Prior -12.6%
Revised n/a

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MBA Purchasing Applications (Mar 6)

Survey n/a
Actual 253.30
Prior 236.40
Revised n/a

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MBA Refinancing Applications (Mar 6)

Survey n/a
Actual 3470.70
Prior 3063.40
Revised n/a

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Bloomberg Global Confidence (Mar)

Survey n/a
Actual 5.95
Prior 8.49
Revised n/a


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Re: Bernanke missing the point on repo

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(email exchange)

The Fed already has thousands of designated agents, the banks, to lend and take in deposits.

If I were in charge I’d eliminate the cap on FDIC insured bank deposits and legislate any insured pension funds keep their excess cash in insured deposits.

And borrowers can go to the banks as well.

And if I wanted spreads narrower that could also be done via adjusting capital requirements and risk weights as desired.

>   
>   On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 10:00 AM, Pat wrote:
>   
>   Bernanke is lending credence to our idea of a centralized, regulated exchange for repo which
>   we have been calling the RPX project.
>   

Chairman Ben S. Bernanke — At the Council on Foreign Relations, Washington, D.C.

Mar 10 (Federal Reserve) — The Federal Reserve and other authorities also are focusing on enhancing the resilience of the triparty repurchase agreement (repo) market, in which the primary dealers and other major banks and broker-dealers obtain very large amounts of secured financing from money market mutual funds and other short-term, risk-averse sources of funding.


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EU Finance Chiefs Rebuff US Calls to Boost Economic Stimulus

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Yes!

Europe Snubs US Calls for More Stimulus Before G-20

by Jennifer Ryan and Agnes Lovasz

Mar 10 (Bloomberg) — European finance ministers rejected calls from the U.S. to do more to battle the economic crisis, saying stimulus plans already in place need time to work.

“Recent American appeals insisting that the Europeans make an additional budgetary effort to combat the effects of the crisis were not to our liking,” Luxembourg Finance Minister Jean-Claude Juncker said yesterday after leading a meeting of euro-area finance chiefs in Brussels. “We want to see what the effect of the recovery package is going to be.”


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Iraq and Iran holding hands

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Well done- we facilitated the realization of the dream of the Iraq-Iran Shiite super state Saddam had been keeping apart.

Iraqi president meets top Iranian leaders

Feb 28 (AFP) — Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is meeting top Iranian leaders on Friday on his second trip to the Islamic republic in almost two years, the offical IRAN news agency reported.

Talabani, a Kurd, will hold talks with his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the head of Iran’s Expediency Council Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and others.

Other media reports said Talabani is also expected to meet Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The Iraqi leader arrived in Iran on Thursday on his way home from a trip to South Korea. He is accompanied by a high-level delegation from the ministries of foreign affairs, trade and electricity.

He previously visited Iran in June 2007.

Ahmadinejad travelled to Iraq in March 2008 in the first ever visit by an Iranian president to the former arch-foe, symbolizing the flourishing ties between Tehran and the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.

The two Shiite-majority countries fought a war between 1980 and 1988 in which around one million people died.

Relations have warmed considerably since the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated regime in Iraq by US-led forces.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki visited Tehran in January to seek Iran’s help in rebuilding the country and the two neighbours agreed to establish a high-ranking joint committee to improve cooperation.


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2009-03-10 USER

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ICSC UBS Store Sales YoY (Mar 10)

Survey n/a
Actual -0.9%
Prior -0.8%
Revised n/a

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ICSC UBS Store Sales WoW (Mar 10)

Survey n/a
Actual 0.2%
Prior -0.6%
Revised n/a

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Redbook Store Sales Weekly YoY (Mar 10)

Survey n/a
Actual -1.4%
Prior -1.9%
Revised n/a

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Redbook Store Sales MoM (Mar 10)

Survey n/a
Actual -0.2%
Prior 0.8%
Revised n/a

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ICSC UBS Redbook Comparison TABLE (Mar 10)

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Wholesale Inventories MoM (Jan)

Survey -1.0%
Actual -0.7%
Prior -1.4%
Revised -1.5%

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Wholesale Inventories YoY (Jan)

Survey n/a
Actual 1.0%
Prior 3.4%
Revised n/a

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Wholesale Inventories ALLX 1 (Jan)

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Wholesale Inventories ALLX 2 (Jan)

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IBD TIPP Economic Optimism (Mar)

Survey 43.0
Actual 45.3
Prior 44.6
Revised n/a


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Bernanke to ‘deploy all tools’ except the right ones

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The right tools have yet to be deployed:

  1. Lending to member banks on an unsecured basis (demanding collateral is redundant).
     
  2. Providing banks with term financing at rates set by the FOMC (mortgage rates, etc. can be directly set as desired).
     
  3. Prohibiting bank sales of financial assets (buy and hold only and no interbank markets).
     

Instead we have the results of a government that doesn’t understand its own monetary arrangements and has implemented policy that for the most part has made a difficult situation all the more difficult.

Feel free to distribute for comment!

Bernanke Says Fed to ‘Deploy All Tools’ for Economic Revival

by Steve Matthews

March 7 (Bloomberg) — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the central bank will “forcefully” use every resource to restore financial-market stability and revive U.S. economic growth.

“We will continue to forcefully deploy all the tools at our disposal as long as necessary to support the restoration of financial stability and the resumption of healthy economic growth,” Bernanke said in prepared remarks for an event today in Dillon, South Carolina. The Fed chief returned to his hometown to attend a ceremony naming a highway interchange after him.

Bernanke didn’t comment on specific Fed policies in his remarks. He said he was aware Dillon now “faces challenges” with the economy in a recession.


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Summers on stimulus

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World Coordinated Stimulus Needed: White House

Mar 9 (Reuters)

NOT!!!

We are much better of doing it all unilaterally.

This is the cost of having leadership that does not understand our monetary system.

Summer’s comments, ahead of next month’s G20 summit in London, suggest the U.S. administration wants all industrialised nations to pull together to engineer a demand-led recovery.

That will be music to the ears of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown who has trumpeted internationally-coordinated stimulus measures as the best way to tackle the downturn.

Him too.

“The right macro-economic focus for the G20 is on global demand and the world needs more global demand,” said Summers.

Yes, but we are better off if the demand is here and they export to us.

Summers, who served as Treasury secretary under the Clinton administration in the 1980s, said the view that the market was inherently self-stabilising had been dealt a “fatal blow.”

“This notion that the economy is self-stabilising is usually right but it is wrong a few times a century. And this is one of those times,” he said.

No, it is self correcting, but the ugly way as the automatic stabilizers increase the deficit via falling revenue and rising transfer payments until the deficit gets large enough to turn it all around.


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