Earlier today, we noted that Citi can’t believe how enticing CLO mezz tranches have become.
“Can CLO mezz get any more attractive?” the bank’s structured credit team asked. You’d be forgiven for being a bit incredulous. After all, CLO 2.0 mezz hasn’t exactly been somewhere you want to be. As Morgan Stanley noted last week, “the median total return for US CLO 2.0 (2014-15 vintage) BBs is -9.2%, and for single-Bs is -20.9%.”
In the last month, we’ve had two major confessions from Central Bankers.
We’ve already detailed the first, which came from the Head of the Bank of Japan, Haruhiko Kuroda here.
The second major confession from a Central Banker came from ECB President Mario Draghi. A few days ago, Draghi gave a speech in which he said:
Back in August 2012, when negative interest rates were still merely viewed as sheer monetary lunacy instead of pervasive global monetary reality that has pushed over $6 trillion in global bonds into negative yield territory, the NY Fed mused hypothetically about negative rates and wrote "Be Careful What You Wish For" saying that "if rates go negative, the U.S.
Brave Vladimir Putin is pushing for a gold-backed currency, ditching fractional reserve banking, and delivering a defiant rebuke to the Western world’s move towards a digital-only cashless society, according to a report circulating in the Kremlin on Friday. President Putin swears he will NEVER stop the circulation of cold hard cash because he considers digital-only cashless currency to be a New World Order tactic to gain control over the public.
Via KesslerCompanies.com,
Counter-intuitively, the recent increases in core inflation are normal in the sequence of how a recession evolves. The typical business-cycle sequence is that the manufacturing sector weakens first, then employment and consumer spending, and lastly, inflation. In fact, it is often not until the recession is over that inflation begins to come down.
Inflation is the longest lagging indicator.