Moments ago Caterpillar, the company which as we promptly report every month, has never seen a "greater depression"...
... "surprised" markets with yet another reality check when it announced early this morning that it is slashing its Q1 revenue and EPS guidance, as follows:
We’ve long said the Norges Bank would ease in March in the face of falling crude prices and the continuation of the negative rates regime at the ECB, the Riksbank, and the NationalBank.
Indeed by the time of today’s announcement, the market was pricing in a ~75% chance that Oystein Olsen would cut rates by 25 bps. And he didn’t disappoint, slashing the depo rate to 0.50%. Incidentally, we’d hate to be the 1 economist out of 20 surveyed by Bloomberg that managed to miss this one.
Yesterday when summarizing the Fed's action we said that in its latest dovish announcement which has sent the USD to a five month low, the Fed clearly sided with China which desperately want a stronger dollar to which it is pegged (reflected promptly in the Yuan's stronger fixing overnight) at the expense of Europe and Japan, both of which want the USD weaker.
ECB, BOJ don't want a weak dollar; China does not want a strong dollarFed sides with China for now
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 16, 2016
By EconMatters
The Head of the Central Bank in Brazil, Alexandre Tombini, has said that he may resign just days after millions of protestors took to the streets of Sao Paulo demanding that President Dilma Rousseff resigns. Rousseff faced an impeachment bid following allegations that she defrauded the fiscal books in 2014, but rather than step down she promoted former disgraced President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to a ministry position – angering millions of Brazilian citizens.