Category Archive

There’s a group of investors out there who are looking at what the Fed is doing and the policy action they’ve taken and the asset purchases, and saying ultimately this is inflationary.You’re going to invest in very short-term bills because you absolutely need not just the quality but also the absolute liquidity.
—Stuart Spodek, co-head of U.S. bonds in New York at BlackRock

The Fed made the dramatic announcement in March that it’s going to monetize some of that deficit. The difference in migrating to bills versus bonds is their exposure to interest rate movements. You’re taking less interest rate risk.
—Richard Clarida, PIMCO and Columbia University economist

We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history. Nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.
—Obama

While we’ve seen some tentative signs of improvement in the economic data very recently, it’s still impossible to know how deep the contraction will ultimately be

—Janet Yellen

Four points for financial system reform

1. Change the compensation and incentive structure
2. Prevent obvious regulatory arbitrage and charge for socialized risk
3. Quantify the systemic risk of large, complex financial institutions and “tax” their contributions to systemic risk
4. Enforce greater transparency of over-the-counter derivatives and off-balance-sheet transactions

I would point out, first, that although the United States has several thousand banks, only 19 have more than $100 billion of assets, and that after supervisory authorities evaluate their condition, it is likely that few would require further government intervention.

There has been much talk lately about a new resolution process for systemically important firms that Congress could enact, and I would encourage this be implemented as quickly as possible, but we do not have to wait for new authority. We can act immediately, using essentially the same steps we used for Continental.

An extremely large firm that has failed would have to be temporarily operated as a conservatorship or a bridge organization and then reprivatized as quickly as is economically feasible. We cannot simply add more capital without a change in the firm’s ownership and management and expect different outcomes.

You cannot wait until you know for sure the economy is recovering. We will watch every indicator of data that suggests we have a recovery under way.

It is a matter of running your economy properly. When the U.S. does that, and I think we will, I think we will remain the largest, most successful reserve currency on the face of the earth.

— Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Thomas Hoenig

We are seeing Asian exports fall off a cliff. What’s bad news for Asia is good news for the American economy.

—David Sloan, a senior economist at 4Cast

following…

The combination of a global recession and the global credit crunch are causing worldwide trade to dry up. The worst part for the trade deficit will be here in the first half of the year.

—Jay Bryson, a global economist at Wachovia

We are all the descendents of successful cooperators.

—David Brooks

Inflation worldwide is going to surge in the years to come. On the supply side, issuance of the securities as a ratio of overall government debt is sharply declining…linkers look very attractive.
—Mickael Benhaim, Pictet in Geneva, $32b AUM

Inflation is driven historically by wages, and clearly if you have the unemployment rate rising, it begs the question where will you get inflation from. We’re projecting that there will be a global healing but that the recovery will be anemic.
—Chris Lupoli, executive director for global inflation-linked strategy at UBS AG in London

[CPI] could go back to 4 percent or even higher…[at least] the TIPS market is showing that we’re going back to trend inflation.
—Brian Weinstein, oversees $9 billion in inflation bonds at New York-based BlackRock

Pumping money into the system is very inflationary. TIPS will outperform.
—Kenneth Volpert, who oversees $180 billion in taxable bonds, including $14 billion in a TIPS fund, for Vanguard

—Bloomberg

I’m always “getting the whale.”

Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street
—Felix Salmon