Central Bank Watch
February 2, 2023
The Bank of England‘s 50-basis point base rate hike to 4.0% was not supported unanimously. Monetary Policy Committee members Tenreyro and Dhingra voted to leave the rate unchanged in a 7-2 decision, citing a recession already underway that is likely to soften labor market conditions in light of the lagged impact of earlier monetary restraint […] More
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New Overnight Developments Abroad - Daily Update
February 2, 2023
Officials at the European Central Bank and Bank of England raised their policy interest rate by 50 basis points to their highest levels since 2008. The size of those increases matched expectations. The policy rates of the Hong Kong and Macao Monetary Authorities matched the Fed’s 25-basis point increase. Brazil’s Selic interest rate was kept […] More
Tags: Bank of Brazil, Bank of England, European Central Bank, U.S. labor productivity and unit labor costs
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Central Bank Watch
February 1, 2023
The FOMC agreed to the as-expected 25-basis point interest rate hike, lifting the federal funds target range to 4.50-4.75%, and to continuing the balance sheet reduction by not reinvesting all maturing assets purchased when the Fed was easing in a quantitative way. Not only was the size of the interest rate hike the smallest since […] More
Tags: FOMC statment
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Central Bank Watch
February 1, 2023
Beginning last March, the federal funds rate target was increased at the last seven scheduled FOMC meetings in 2022 by a total 425 basis points to a range of 4.25-4.50%. Forward guidance has lately been framed around three questions: how much to lift at each instance — how high does the rate need to be […] More
Tags: FOMC preview
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New Overnight Developments Abroad - Daily Update
February 1, 2023
The FOMC policy statement at 19:00 GMT today (14:00 EST) will be followed half an hour later by the start of Chairman Powell’s press conference. Officials are expected to raise the target federal funds corridor by 25 basis points to 4.50-4.75%. This is the first scheduled FOMC meeting of 2023 and therefore the one in […] More
Tags: Central Bank of Azerbaijan, Euroland CPI and unemployment, manufacturing purchasing managers indices
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New Overnight Developments Abroad - Daily Update
January 31, 2023
On this last day of January, the weighted DXY dollar index has edged 0.1% higher but will post its fourth monthly decline in a row. Overnight dollar rises were strongest against the the Aussie dollar (0.9%), kiwi (0.6%), and sterling and loonie (both up 0.4%), but the euro slid only 0.1%, the Swiss franc is […] More
Tags: Euroland GDP, German import prices, IMF World Economic Outlook, Japanese retail sales and industrial production, U.S. employment cost index
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Central Bank Watch
January 30, 2023
In Ghana, where consumer price inflation soared from 12.6% at end-2021 to 54.1% last month, officials at the Bank of Ghana increased the policy interest rate from 14.5% coming into March 2022 to 27.0% by last November. The near doubling was accomplished in just five months, with increments of 250 basis points in March, October […] More
Tags: Bank of Ghana
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New Overnight Developments Abroad - Daily Update
January 30, 2023
U.S. equity futures point to a drop of around 1% at the opening bell. Share prices closed down 2.7% in Hong Kong, 1.4% in South Korea, 0.5% in Singapore, 0.4% in Indonesia but up 0.2% in Japan and 0.1% in China. Major European stock exchanges are down about 0.5% thus far. Ten-year sovereign bond yields […] More
Tags: Bank of Ghana, Euroland economic sentiment, German GDP
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New Overnight Developments Abroad - Daily Update
January 27, 2023
While awaiting the monthly U.S. report on personal income, personal consumption, and the Fed’s favored PCE price deflator, investors got some disquieting price news from other countries. In Japan where consumer price data for Tokyo are reported a month earlier than national statistics, today’s January figures showed an acceleration of the total CPI to a […] More
Tags: Australian PPI, Central Bank of Argentina, Central Bank of Chile, Spanish GDP, U.S. personal spending and consumption
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Uncategorized
January 26, 2023
Instead of a 50-basis point rate hike to 7.50% by a 3-2 vote of policymakers, the five-person Monetary Policy Committee voted 3-2 to increase South Africa’s repo rate to 7.25%. The interest rate had been at 6.5% coming into the pandemic year of 2020 and was sliced to 3.5% in five moves by May of […] More
Tags: South African Reserve Bank
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