Federal Government

Ahead of this week's main central bank event, in which Wall Street consensus broadly expects the Fed to officially announce balance sheet shrinkage in this week's FOMC meeting, with the actual process set to begin in October, here is a less than bullish preview of what may happen from Bloomberg commentator Garfield Reynolds, who covers FX, bonds and commodities.

Fed’s Pruning Will Send Yields Higher for Longer: Macro View

 

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

Late yesterday afternoon the federal government of the United States announced that the national debt had finally breached the inevitable $20 trillion mark.

This was a long time coming. It should have happened back in March, except that a new debt ceiling was put in place, freezing the national debt.

For the last six months it was essentially illegal for the government to increase the debt.

S&P futures are flat, still spooked by the WSJ's report that Gary Cohn will not be the next Fed chair, while both European stocks and Asian shares gain in a overnight session on edge in which everyone is looking forward to today's main risk event: the ECB meeting and Draghi press conference due in under two hours. The dollar continued to weaken against most G-10 peers as tensions over North Korea, concerns over Stan Fischer's resignation and the increasingly cloudy Fed outlook outweighed positive sentiment from the US debt ceiling extension.

Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

Texans affected by Hurricane Harvey, including my family and me, appreciate the outpouring of support from across the country. President Donald Trump has even pledged to donate one million dollars to relief efforts. These private donations will be much more valuable than the as much as 100 billion dollars the federal government is expected to spend on relief and recovery.

With the US markets closed today, market events this week will be dominated by G10 central bank meetings, among which the ECB stands out, but also notable will be the RBA, BoC and Riksbank. Consensus does not expect policy changes yet. There is also a busy calendar for the UK (PMIs, housing, IP and trade balance) along with GDP/IP releases elsewhere. In EMs, there will be monetary policy meetings in Brazil, Poland and Malaysia. Brazil BCB is expected to cut rates by 100bp.

Central bank preview: