Submitted by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,
Lenders to the oil and gas industry have been extraordinarily lenient amid the worst downturn in decades, allowing indebted companies to survive a little while longer in hopes of a rebound in oil prices. But the screws are set to tighten just a bit more as the periodic credit redetermination period finishes up.
The Fed failed to hike interest rates in March despite the “data” hitting levels at which the Fed said it would hike. Indeed, the Fed even lowered its expected number of rate hikes for this year from four to two!
This confirms for us that the Fed does indeed want inflation.
In the last few weeks, several Fed officials, most notably Fed Vice-Chair Stanley Fischer stated not only that inflation was appearing in the US but that this is something the Fed “would like to happen.”
In the latest revelation of just how far China, and its central bank, are willing to go to prop up its ailing local stock market, on Thursday the official Shanghai Securities News reported that China's foreign exchange regulator has bought mainland stocks worth over 27 billion yuan ($4.18 billion) via three low-profile investment firms it controls.
Just one week ago, when the US dollar was surging when one after another Fed president were making hawkish statements (who can forget Bullard's forecast that a rate hike may occur as soon as April), one of the speeches which surprised the market the most, was that by Chicago Fed's permadove Chuck Evans, who on March 22 said that the Federal Reserve is on track for "gentle, gradual" rate hikes unless economic data comes in a lot stronger than expected or inflation picks up faster than anticipated, a top Fed official said on Tuesday.
Following its demise into contraction in February, Chicago PMI jumped back to 53.6 (expansion) in March which is better than expected but remains below January's 55.5 highs. The last 12 months have seen quite unprecedented noise in this economic barometer and MNI reports respondents saying the recovery is "slow and steady... fuelled by warmer weather."