Central Bank Watch
Fed Embraces Quantitative Easing: Lessons from Japan and Implications for the Dollar
December 16, 2008
By unanimous vote the Fed reduced the Fed Funds target to a range of zero to 0.25% from a point target of 1.0%. Much more importantly, officials “will employ all available tools to promote the resumption of sustainable economic growth and to preserve price stability.” In the present context, “price stability” refers to avoiding deflation, [...] More
Vital Market Signs at Selected Prior FOMC Meetings
December 16, 2008
EUR/$ $/JPY 10Y, % DJIA Oil, $ 06/30/04 1.2173 109.44 4.63 10396 37.95 06/30/05 1.2090 110.89 3.96 10370 57.00 06/29/06 1.2527 116.07 5.20 11077 73.41 06/28/07 1.3452 123.17 5.10 13456 69.82 08/07/07 1.3749 118.55 4.73 13510 72.27 09/18/07 1.3888 115.75 4.51 13475 81.42 10/31/07 1.4458 115.28 4.42 13873 93.59 12/11/07 1.4682 111.49 4.11 13645 89.78 01/30/08 1.4792 107.31 3.70 12454 91.70 03/18/08 1.5786 98.73 3.41 12257 107.53 04/30/08 1.5562 104.58 3.83 12953 111.54 06/25/08 1.5568 108.37 4.18 11837 133.62 08/05/08 1.5445 108.42 3.97 11484 119.82 09/16/08 1.4144 105.16 3.36 10936 91.18 10/08/08 1.3625 99.87 3.50 9447 87.02 10/29/08 1.2933 97.15 3.81 9145 67.38 12/16/08 1.3763 89.84 2.50 8668 45.89 The Fed is perceived to have cut rates aggressively, yet there have been four scheduled FOMC meetings since the global financial market began when policy was left unchanged, those being in August 2007, June 2008, August 2008, and September 2008. The Federal funds rate was sliced from 5.25% to 1.0% in increments of [...] More
New Overnight Developments Abroad - Daily Update
New Overnight Developments Abroad: Awaiting FOMC and U.S. CPI and Housing Starts
December 16, 2008
A mixed dollar sees such off by 0.8% against the kiwi, 0.7% versus the yen, 0.4% against the Swissy and 0.2% relative to the Aussie dollar but up by 0.3% against sterling and 0.2% against the euro. The Canadian dollar is unchanged. Equities are similarly mixed. In Asia, the Nikkei lost 2.1%, and the Philippine and [...] More
