CNBC here.
Showing posts with label CNBC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CNBC. Show all posts
Monday, February 24, 2025
In the aggregate US Treasury yields haven't moved much since the end of November, after which duration began to normalize, but looky here
On Nov 29, 2024 the yield curve averaged 4.356 in the aggregate, after which we began to see duration normalize.
On Feb 21, 2025 it averages 4.357.
Now, however, there are seven securities in the Bills category, not just six, with Treasury rolling out the new 1.5-month (6-week) security as part of debt-ceiling-forced "extraordinary measures". There are five in the Notes, and two in the Bonds.
Duration normalization has now partly reversed because of the extraordinary measures, at least on a weekly basis, with yields for Notes once again falling below those for Bills on average on Friday.
If you count just the traditional 1MO, 3MO, 6MO, and 1Y among the Bills, the Bills yield average is nearly identical to Notes at 4.2825.
These falling yields may be both signaling and spurring increased purchasing of UST, including among the Notes to lock in an anticipated disappearance of opportunity as Bills issuance surges to fund the Treasury General Account. The increased issuance of Bills means yields fall across the curve, at least temporarily, as investors lock in.
The special 6-week security rolled out at 4.41 on 2/18 and was paying 4.39 on Friday vs. only 4.15 for the 1Y and 4.42 for the 10Y, the latter's lowest yield all month. Falling yields for the 10Y is a specific goal of the Treasury under Trump. Evidently the temporary 6-week Bill is helping them achieve that . . . for now.
Reported Feb 5 and Feb 6:
Bessent's focus on 10-year US Treasury yield may let Fed off the hook
..."The president wants lower interest rates and ... in my talks with him, he and I are focused on the 10-year Treasury," Bessent said. "He is not calling on the Fed to lower rates. He believes that if we ... deregulate the economy, if we get this tax bill done, if we get energy down, then rates will take care of themselves and the dollar will take care of itself." ...
10-year Treasury yield drops as traders digest news on issuance, fresh data
... The [Treasury] department also said it will be issuing more short-term bills than usual as it uses “extraordinary measures” to keep the government operating while Congress battles over the debt limit. That announcement came despite new Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent previously criticizing his predecessor, Janet Yellen, for issuing unusually large amounts of shorter-term debt. ...
Trump appoints another election loser
Ex-Secret Service agent and conservative media personality Dan Bongino picked as FBI deputy director
... Bongino ran for a U.S. Senate seat in Maryland in 2012 and for congressional seats in 2014 and 2016 in Maryland and Florida, after moving in 2015. He lost the three races. ...
Friday, February 21, 2025
This is wild: This morning we learned Judge Ali again ruled that all foreign aid must be distributed, tonight Judge Nichols says it's OK for Trump to fire all the employees at USAID who do that
That doesn't make any sense!
Judge gives go ahead for Trump administration to gut USAID’s workforce
A federal judge Friday paved the way for the Trump administration to move forward with plans to remove thousands of U.S. Agency for International Development workers from their jobs.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols denied a request from labor groups to issue a preliminary injunction after the Trump administration said thousands of USAID employees would be placed on administrative leave and ordered agency personnel abroad to return to the U.S. within 30 days. ...
US District Judge Amir Ali stops just short of holding Trump administration in contempt for failing to comply with court's order allowing disbursement of foreign aid
Trump administration hasn’t complied with order to halt foreign aid freeze, judge says
U.S. District Judge Amir Ali last week ordered the administration to allow the disbursement of U.S. foreign assistance after hearing claims from federal contractors challenging an executive order signed by President Donald Trump pausing nearly all foreign assistance.
Ali determined that a “blanket suspension of congressionally appropriated foreign aid” had caused irreparable harm to the contractors and was likely not allowed under the Administrative Procedure Act. ...
“By enjoining Defendants and their agents from implementing any directives to undertake such blanket suspension, the Court was not inviting Defendants to continue the suspension while they reviewed contracts and legal authorities to come up with a new, post-hoc rationalization for the en masse suspension,” Ali wrote. ...
"to the extent Defendants have continued the blanket suspension, they are ordered to immediately cease it.”
The judge stopped short of holding the administration in contempt.
Thursday, February 20, 2025
Mitch McConnell, hated by ungrateful MAGA, won't run in 2026 after 40 years in the US Senate
WASHINGTON — Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the longest-serving Senate leader in history, announced Thursday on his 83rd birthday that he won’t seek re-election next year, bringing an end to his four-decade career in the chamber.
McConnell, first elected in 1984, climbed his way up to the Senate Republican leader position in 2007 and remained there until early 2025, serving during four administrations in the majority and the minority. ...
McConnell supported Trump’s presidential bids in 2016 and 2020. He made a crucial decision in early 2021 to vote to acquit Trump on impeachment charges of inciting an insurrection, even as he blasted Trump as “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day,” calling his actions a “disgraceful dereliction of duty.” Despite his misgivings, he went on to endorse Trump for president again 2024 after he clinched the Republican nomination for a third successive election. ...
McConnell oversaw Trump’s three Supreme Court confirmations during his first term, as part of a sweeping set of 234 judges inked over those four years — most of them young conservatives who will serve for generations — which he has regarded as his proudest achievement. ...
Senators Gary Peters of Michigan and Tina Smith of Minnesota have also announced that they will not run in 2026.
Trump just now checking the gold inventory at Fort Knox for some reason
“We’re going to go to Fort Knox, the fabled Fort Knox, to make sure the gold is there,” Trump said Wednesday on Air Force One.
Friday, February 14, 2025
Holy cow, a seventh prosecutor resigns over the renegade DOJ attempt to toss the Eric Adams case
A seventh federal prosecutor resigned Friday over the Department of Justice’s controversial order to dismiss criminal corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams.
The prosecutor, Hagan Scotten, in a blistering letter to top DOJ official Emil Bove, said “I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion” to dismiss the Adams case.
“But it was never going to be me,” wrote Scotten, who had been the lead prosecutor in Adams’ case for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
On Thursday, Scotten’s boss, acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon resigned in protest over Bove’s order to toss the case. ...
Scotten is a Harvard Law School grad, who clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts after serving in the U.S. Army in Iraq in the Special Forces. He also served as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when Roberts’ fellow conservative was sitting on a lower court.
More.
The new Attorney General Pam Bondi is really working overtime to accumulate obloquy.
Banana Republican Donald Trump denies meddling in New York Mayor Eric Adams case as 6 top prosecutors quit over DOJ dismissal order
... After Sassoon refused to dismiss the case Thursday, the matter was reassigned to John Keller, the acting head of the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, who then also refused to dismiss the case and quit, NBC reported. ...
Acting DOJ criminal division chief Kevin Driscoll also resigned Thursday after refusing to accept the Adams case.
At least three other senior officials in the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section quit after that following a meeting with the deputy attorney general. ...
Sassoon had been the lead prosecutor at the fraud and conspiracy trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, the former head of the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Bankman-Fried was sentenced last March to 25 years in prison.
More.
US District Judge Amir Ali orders resumption of foreign aid disbursements in place before Trump took office
. . . the latest blow to the administration’s sweeping efforts to halt international aid. ...
The judge said in his ruling that the administration has not yet “meaningfully contested detailed and credible evidence of harm to countless American businesses, ranging from shutting down programs, to furloughing and laying off employees, to shuttering altogether.” ...
More.
Thursday, February 13, 2025
Thirteen paragraphs in we learn that last month's wholesale price headline was, well, total fiction
Which means that this headline is what then?
Producer prices report points to softer Fed inflation measure than feared:
A gauge of wholesale prices rose more than expected in January ... Over the past year, the all-items PPI increased 3.5%, well ahead of the central bank’s objective. ...
“Wholesale price growth came in slightly higher than expected for January, and the read for December was adjusted upward,” said Elizabeth Renter, senior economist at personal finance site NerdWallet. “In other words, inflation at the producer level remains high, and one concern is that this inflation could ultimately be passed along to consumers.”
Revisions to the December numbers also complicated the inflation picture, with the gain now put at 0.5%, compared with the 0.2% increase previously reported.
Last month's headline: Inflation watch: Wholesale prices rose 0.2% in December, less than expected.
As usual, the truth is under the hood of the polished headline, or maybe next month's polished headline.
Nothing looks soft to me in the measures shown below, which are the not-seasonally-adjusted ones.
Overall producer prices are up 0.7% in Jan 2025, and 3.5% year over year. Core producer prices are up 0.5% in Jan 2025, and 3.6% year over year. At least until next month.
The billionaires never say, Raise taxes now or face an economic heart attack
The word "tax" appears nowhere in this story.
Ray Dalio is worth $19 billion.
“Make sure that you really know what you’re doing and you’re practical,
and do it on … the conservative side, because you know, how much can the
cutting actually be?”
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Steve Bannon pleads guilty to one count of first degree scheme to defraud in New York in plea deal to avoid trial and jail
Trump pardoned Bannon on the federal charges literally at the 11th hour in January 2021, but not Bannon's partners, who all went to the big house.
New York State went after Bannon separately.
... Bannon and three other men were accused of pocketing donations, while
the group managed to build a paltry three miles of fencing along the
southern border. ...
Monday, February 10, 2025
The cash consumer will pay the cost of the Trump-Musk penny-elimination gambit: Is it the harbinger of a coming cashless tyranny?
 |
| "The Amish have been galvanised to head to the polls and turn the battle ground red." |
The little guy voted for Trump, so naturally Trump is going to screw the little guy, the Amish in particular.
And not mentioned in the story below is the deep resistance to eliminating cash among the denizens of America's survivalist communities. They see this as a control issue, and a potential threat to freedom because you control the cash in your pocket, but not the digital currency in your account. Cross the authorities somehow, and your account can be wiped out with a keystroke.
We already have experienced lawful gun owners and gun businesses being de-banked over gun ownership, among other culture war issues contested by liberal elites using economic coercion.
Meanwhile The UniParty has devalued the 1913 dollar to three cents. If you've only got one, eliminating the penny means you've now got bupkis.
How does the observation go? It's always the Republicans who actually advance the liberalism which the people resist when the Democrats are in control.
Every. Damn. Time.
To the extent rounding up occurs more frequently than rounding down, cash consumers would be paying the price for the cost efficiency Trump and Musk are seeking, said Ajay Patel, a professor of finance at Wake Forest University School of Business. ...
. . . people at the bottom of the economic ladder will probably feel the penny pinch the most.
“The individuals paying for this benefit will be those who purchase products and services using cash and will continue to do so going forward because they are either unbanked or unable to access debit or credit cards or a digital wallet,” Patel said. ...
Laura Maike, of Burton, Ohio, notes that the Amish will feel the pinch right now.
“Here in Northeast Ohio’s Amish country, we still use pennies regularly,” Maike said of her area, which includes thousands of generally cash-using Amish. “How would this work for cash-only transactions? It would be impossible to give exact change as the purchaser or seller.”
More.
Meanwhile, there is real money: $2,905.98 the ounce, the seventh record gold price this year
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| gold content: about $542 at today's high |
Gold prices jumped more than 1% on Monday to hit a record high, as safe-haven demand surged on fears of a global trade war after U.S. President Donald Trump announced new tariff plans.
Spot gold was up 1.3% to $2,897.99 per ounce after hitting a record high of $2,905.98 earlier in the session — its seventh record this year.
U.S. gold futures rose 1.2% to $2,923.1.
“The precious metal is set to retain its upward bias, as long as President Trump’s policy threats continue to stoke fear and uncertainty through global financial markets,” said Exinity Group chief market analyst Han Tan.
More.
PM Update:
Spot gold surged 1.5% to $2,903.53 per ounce after hitting a record high of $2,911.30 earlier in the session.
Global coal electric capacity hit 2,175 gigawatts in 2024
China added nearly 31gw of new coal electric capacity in 2024 and India nearly 6gw while the US retired almost 5gw, according to the story:
. . . U.S. exports of coal have been rising steadily to satisfy growing global demand for the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel, even though its domestic consumption has decreased.
On top of that, the world’s coal capacity reached a new record high of nearly 2,175 gigawatts in 2024, data from Global Energy Monitor showed on Feb. 6. Coal capacity is the overall power output that can be generated from coal-fired power plants. ...
More.
According to Electric Power Annual for 2023 at the US Energy Information Administration, existing US coal electric capacity is down to 193gw, behind natural gas at 572gw and ahead of wind at 148gw. Nuclear is still a distant fourth at 100gw from 93 existing utility-scale generators.
Sunday, February 9, 2025
Friday, February 7, 2025
Trump appointed judge Carl Nichols stops 2,200 USAID workers from being placed on administrative leave tonight
During the hearing, Nichols questioned DOJ attorney Brett Shumate
about why the Trump administration needed to place 2,200 USAID workers
on leave so quickly.
“What is the urgency of this?” the judge asked.
“The President has decided there is corruption and fraud at USAID,” Shumate replied.
I'll say.
Buying co-president Elon Musk's Starlink terminals and funding Melania Trump's and Ivanka Trump's pet projects is corruption of the highest order.
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