The Fed’s concern about U.S. banks dominated last month’s FOMC meeting. According to today’s release of the March 21-22 meeting minutes, the Fed was apparently so concerned over banking problems and the potential for an ensuing credit crunch that officials tempered calls for rate hikes...
The Federal Reserve Board reduced banking reserve requirements to zero in March 2020. So banks in the United States are technically not required to back customers' deposits with anything.
One thinks Tesla’s stock is a buy and headed back to $300; the other believes it’s a sell and will fall to $150.
The International Monetary Fund has caused some consternation with the long-range forecasts in its April World Economic Outlook. It predicts that once the current bout of nasty global inflation abates, interest rates will return close to zero.
Western countries have become increasingly wary of sharing technology with China, with the US and Netherlands recently imposing new restrictions on exports of semiconductors and the equipment used to make them.
Almost $1.5 trillion of US commercial real estate debt comes due for repayment before the end of 2025. The big question facing those borrowers is who’s going to lend to them?
Bailouts of the banking system create social tension. Eventually, bailouts introduce so much risk into the system that failures and bailouts become too costly for society to bear. The government creates draconian rules to prevent them, which kills innovation and new business, and the result is a stagnating economy.
It is not every day that I read a prediction of doom as arresting as Eliezer Yudkowsky’s in Time magazine last week. “The most likely result of building a superhumanly smart AI, under anything remotely like the current circumstances,” he wrote, “is that literally everyone on Earth will die.
“Thinking the Unthinkable.” What does that phrase bring to mind? To me it suggests a situation that has become so stressed you are forced to consider undesirable solutions.
Central Banks are on the verge of declaring the yearlong interest-rate hiking cycle over. The reason: Banks have taken the wheel and are pressing the brakes.
In the face of banking stress and a hawkish Federal Reserve, stocks have advanced impressively so far this year, but narrow breadth doesn't bode well for continued strength.
Global equities were volatile in the first quarter, as turmoil in the banking sector jolted markets.
History suggests the lagged economic effects of tighter central bank policy are arriving on schedule, but any eventual normalizing or even easing of policy will still likely require inflation to decline further.
How do you serve up a culture that supports growth? I have three recommendations.
Here are five ways to respond when you know someone is lying, blowing you off, or dodging your questions.
As banks back away from credit creation, we think certain assets could reassert their leadership. In our Quarterly Strategy Report, we analyze the Credit Crunch.
For many of those – now a clear majority – who believe climate change is a serious long-term threat, the recently announced breakthrough that nuclear fusion has at last produced net energy is an extremely hopeful sign. First, however, they need to read this article.
Remember when banks were small? Those old enough to have a bank account in the 1970s should. Back then, most people did their banking with a locally owned institution, often the First National Bank of (Your Town).
When Microsoft Corp. launched its $1 billion Climate Innovation Fund three years ago, it was the lone tech giant pledging serious money to tackle rising temperatures. The dangers facing the planet have since become more acute, and the fund has about $400 million left.
The benchmark S&P 500 Index is wrapping up its second straight quarterly gain, rising 5.50% through Thursday and adding to the 7.08% surge in the final three months of 2022.
What are the implications of the ongoing volatility in the banking sector, and what does it mean for markets in Europe and globally?
US equity capital markets are having the slowest start to a year since 2009, and dealmakers fear a rebound is nowhere near.
When we talk about shadow banking, we think of China, one of the world’s most indebted nations. Lending by companies that do not own a banking license has reached 50 trillion yuan ($7.3 trillion), or about 42% of gross domestic product, according to Moody’s Investors Service.
Congress is asking the Federal Reserve and other financial regulators what went wrong at Silicon Valley Bank and why they didn’t see it coming. In due course, they’ll admit some mistakes, draw some lessons and tweak some rules.
The economic signals and a host of geopolitical risks confronting investors suggest that 2023 could be as challenging as 20022 for both stocks and bonds.
For all of you following the banking crises in the US and Europe, and asking why this is all happening again, I have bad news: Regardless of what laws are passed, or which regulations are issued, banking crises will recur — and not infrequently.
Recently I saw someone share a clip from their weather app. It said, “Rain expected at 3 pm,” right above a little graphic showing a 30% chance of rain at 3 pm. What’s wrong with that picture?
Yields on 10-Year Japanese Government Bonds have fallen by about a third over the past two weeks, as shown in the chart below.
Easing financial conditions globally have made Morgan Stanley “outright bullish” on growth stocks in Asia and emerging markets versus their value peers.
We have been reminding everyone that we believe we are unwinding a financial euphoria episode that Charlie Munger called the biggest of his career, “because of the totality of it.”
You provide a lot of value to your clients. Save them from making even a single catastrophic financial mistake and your fees will forever be a moot point.
The simplest thing that can be said about current financial market and banking conditions is this: the unwinding of this Fed-induced, yield-seeking speculative bubble is proceeding as one would expect, and it’s not over by a longshot.
Central banks endlessly fascinate me.
The strongest force standing in the way of nuclear energy is the antiquated, irrational fear of it.
For years I’ve used a sandpile metaphor to describe complex systems like banking. Keep dropping grains of sand long enough and you will eventually trigger an avalanche.
Just over a year before Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse threatened a generation of technology startups and their backers, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco appointed a more senior team of examiners to assess the firm. They started calling out problem after problem.
Jamie Dimon and Janet Yellen were on a call Tuesday, when she floated an idea: What if the nation’s largest lenders deposited billions of dollars into First Republic Bank, the latest firm getting nudged toward the brink by a depositor panic
Is upheaval in the banking sector the prelude to a financial crisis, or just the biggest bump yet on the road to restoring order to the economy? Stock investors clinging to hopes this too shall pass are having their tolerance for pain severely tested.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Congress on Thursday that the US banking system remains sound, seeking to reassure lawmakers, depositors and investors amid concerns about how the sector is regulated.
The events that began with Thursday’s tumult in financial stocks and precipitated the FDIC takeover of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank were swift.
Investors are zeroing in on key parts of the market for short-term dollar borrowing to determine if and how signs of systemic stress might be emerging after the biggest US bank collapse in over a decade.
Some of the world’s top money managers are sitting on a windfall after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank spurred the biggest rally in US Treasuries since the early 1980s.
The high-profile collapse of Silicon Valley Bank last week is a story about bad debt, just not in the way most people think.
Here is some research on why our clients built a sizable portfolio while others had high income but little savings. I’ll address specifics on how to get savers to enjoy their money.
US authorities took extraordinary measures to shore up confidence in the financial system after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, introducing a new backstop for banks that Federal Reserve officials said was big enough to protect the entire nation’s deposits.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, this will be the “longest” letter I’ve sent you in a while, as there are quite a few pictures. It may also be the most wide-ranging.
Greg Becker sat in a red armchair at an invite-only conference in Los Angeles last week, legs crossed, one hand cutting through air.
U.S. equities are modestly higher in pre-market action following the February labor report that was only modestly above estimates.
Some money secrets within a couples are matters of privacy or convenience, while others cross a line into financial infidelity.