New Zealand dollar
Bolder Official Efforts to Influence Currency Movements
September 25, 2014
Officials outside the United States had for some time been frustrated by the weakness of the dollar in spite of superior U.S. fundamental economic comparisons of real growth, labor market conditions, and interest rates. Now that the Federal Reserve’s third round of quantitative easing is wrapping up and speculation is heating up about an initial […] More
Aftermath of U.S. GDP Shocker
June 26, 2014
Markets continue to ponder the implications of yesterday’s announced revision in U.S. GDP last quarter to a contraction of 2.9% from previous estimates of -1.0% made in May and +0.1% made in April. After such a weak start to 2014, GDP will not expand as much as presumed previously in full-2014. Slack in the U.S. […] More
New Zealand Interest Rate Hike and Soft Chinese Data
March 13, 2014
New Zealand became the first advanced economy to lift its benchmark interest rate. The central bank, RBNZ, raised the Official Cash Rate to 2.75% from 2.5% and signaled that more increases will be forthcoming over the coming two years. The action sent the kiwi to a new trade-weighted high. Chinese industrial production growth in January-February […] More
March 2011 Jobs Day
March 4, 2011
Investors are looking for U.S. non-farm jobs to have advanced about 200K in February, which which would cap off a week with several encouraging labor market and other U.S. economic indications. Note that forecasters were overly optimistic in January and December. The unemployment rate may have ticked back higher but only by a small amount. […] More