Business

The decision to approve a 2016 budget guidelines bill that targets a 0.5% primary surplus as opposed to a 0.7% surplus may have been the last straw for (former) Brazilian FinMin Joaquim Levy.

Speculation had been swirling for months that Levy’s exit was imminent as Brazil’s intractable political crisis made pushing unpopular austerity measures through Congress all but impossible for the University of Chicago-trained economist.

Via Dana Lyons' Tumblr,

At this moment, an index that tracks the average stock move is testing the uptrend since 2009.

While it took the equity markets over 24 hours to wake up to the realization that the first Fed tightening in 9 years is actually just that, and that not only monetary conditions will progressively get more constrictive especially if the Fed is intent on 4 more hikes in 2016, but that P/E multiples will contract by at least 3% according to a still optimistic Goldman Sachs, something far more interesting happened in repo markets, where the consensus expectation was that the Fed's rate would be accompanied by a major liquidity drain via reverse repos.

5 Key Charts Show Rising Interest Rates Good For Gold Bullion

Gold fell to the lowest level in dollar terms since 2009 yesterday after the Fed’s “historic” 25 basis point interest rate rise on Wednesday. The rate hike has been heralded as the “end of cheap money.” This may or may not be the case but what is more important for precious metal buyers is the impact of potential rising rates on gold prices.

Central Bankers are flummoxed.

Having cut interest rates over 600 times since 2009 (and printed over $15 trillion), they’ve yet to generate the expected economic growth.