Friday, October 31, 2008

Quick Overview

  • U.S. employment cost index rose 0.7% in the third quarter.

  • YoY the core rate of personal consumption expenditures rose 2.4% in September.

  • The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index rose to 57.6 from 57.5

  • Canada’s GDP fell 0.3% in August rose 0.6% YoY.

  • Unemployment rate in the Euro area remained at 7.5% in September.

  • Japan reduced its interest rate from 0.50% to 0.30%
    Japan’s consumer prices rose 2.1% YoY.
    Japan’s unemployment rate improved from 4.2% to 4.0%.

  • F.O. Licht estimates world sugar consumption up 1.8% in 2008-2009 outpacing production by 472,300 tons.

  • Fortis Bank estimates world coco production to exceed consumption by 52,000 tons in 2008-2009.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Quick Overview

  • U.S. GDP shrank 0.3% in the third quarter.

  • U.S. jobless claims were unchanged last week.

  • China lowered interest rates from 6.93% to 6.66%.

  • Canada's industrial prices fell 1.2% in September, but rose 8.0% YoY.

  • Japan proposed a new stimulus package by giving $600 to every family household.

  • Unemployment in Germany fell under the 3m, the lowest in 16 years.

  • (Reuters) - U.S. state leaders, trade groups and economists descended on the House of Representatives on Wednesday to help work out a second economic stimulus bill that one influential Congressional member said would be introduced on November 17.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008


World will struggle to meet oil demand Without extra investment to raise production, the natural annual rate of output decline is 9.1 per cent, the International Energy Agency says in its annual report, the World Energy Outlook, a draft of which has been obtained by the Financial Times.

Quick Overview

  • U.S. durable goods orders rose 0.8% in September. Excluding transportation orders fell 1.1%.



  • The U.S. Department of Energy said:
    Supplies of crude oil rose 500,000 barrels
    Supplies of gasoline fell 1.5 million barrels
    Supplies of heating oil rose 400,000 barrels.
    Refinery use increased last week from 84.8% to 85.3% of capacity.
    Gasoline demand fell 3.4%YoY
    Distillate demand fell 5.2% YoY.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Quick Overview

  • The U.S. Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index of home prices in 20 cities fell 1.0% in August and 16.6% YoY. YoY prices fell more than 30% in Las Vegas and Phoenix. Prices in Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego all fell more than 25%.

  • The Conference Board's index of consumer confidence fell from 61.4 to a record low 38.0 in October.

  • Iceland’s raised interest rates to 18% to prop up its frozen currency and markets.

  • Because of a computer error the USDA issued new supply and demand estimates for 2008-2009 corn and soybeans.
    Corn was reduced from 1.154 to 1.088 billion bushels.
    Soybeans were reduced from 220 to 205 million bushels.


  • Canada had 12.8 million hogs in inventory on October 1st, down 10.9% YoY.

  • (Reuters) - Iraq's government denounced on Tuesday a U.S. air strike on a Syrian border village in an unexpected rebuke of Washington.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Sales of ships for scrap being 'suffocated'
"All the issues that will help the recovery are probably coming faster than people expect," Mr Soanes said.

IMF may need to "print money" as crisis spreads
"The IMF can in theory create liquidity like a central bank," said an informed source. "There are a lot of ideas kicking around."

Forecasters Race to Call the Bottom to the Market Even in normal times, forecasters have a strong incentive to make extreme predictions, which is why those “Dow 1,000!” reports persist. “It’s eye-popping. It’s relevant. It seems exciting,” Mr. Lamont said. Such predictions attract publicity, name recognition and a bigger client base in a business where investors pay thousands, if not millions, for stock advice and investment guidance.

Quick Overview

  • U.S. new home sales were at an annual rate of 464,000 in September, up 2.7% MoM and down 36% YoY.

  • Australia intervened on Friday and bought Australian dollars.

  • Japan's retail sales fell 0.4% YoY

  • The Group of Seven expressed concern about the soaring Japanese yen – are they next to intervene?
Farm-Credit Squeeze May Cut Crops, Spur Food Crisis (Update1)
(Bloomberg) -- The credit crunch is compounding a profit squeeze for farmers that may curb global harvests and worsen a food crisis for developing countries.

Sunday, October 26, 2008


Europe on the brink of currency crisis meltdown
Experts fear the mayhem may soon trigger a chain reaction within the eurozone itself. The risk is a surge in capital flight from Austria – the country, as it happens, that set off the global banking collapse of May 1931 when Credit-Anstalt went down – and from a string of Club Med countries that rely on foreign funding to cover huge current account deficits.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Quick Overview

  • The National Association of Realtors said existing home sales were at an annual rate of 5.18 million units, up 5.5% in September.

  • U.K.'s GDP fell 0.5% in the third quarter.

  • YoY Canada’s consumer prices rose 3.4%.

  • OPEC wants to cut oil production by 1.5 million barrels a day

  • The port of Rotterdam announced that throughput during the first nine months of the year rose by 6.1% YoY. Most types of cargo showed a positive trend, with agribulk up 26% YoY, liquid bulk up 16%, ores and scrap up 11%, coal up 9%, crude oil up 7%, containers up 6%.

  • The IMF is aiding Iceland with about $2.1bn.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Tough to believe Greenspan's disbelief .."those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder's equity (myself especially) are in a state of shocked disbelief."
Cue up Casablanca, and the "I'm shocked, shocked, to find gambling here," line from the Captain Renault character.
The truth is that the executives at financial institutions had very little interest in protecting shareholder's equity.

GLG's Roman, NYU's Roubini Predict Hedge Fund Failures, Panic
Nouriel Roubini, the New York University Professor who spoke at the same conference, said hundreds of hedge funds will fail as the crisis forces investors to dump assets. ``We've reached a situation of sheer panic,'' said Roubini, who predicted the financial crisis in 2006. ``Don't be surprised if policy makers need to close down markets for a week or two in coming days.''

Quick Overview

  • U.S. jobless claims were up 15,000 last week to 478,000, more than expected.

  • Sweden cut its interest rate from 4.25% to 3.75%

  • U.K.'s retail sales volume fell 0.4% in September.

  • Industrial new orders in the Euro area fell 1.2% in August

  • RealtyTrac said 765,558 foreclosure filings were made on U.S. properties in the third quarter of this year - up 3% from the second quarter and 71% YoY.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008


Greenspan Urges Tighter Regulation After `Breakdown' (Update1)
(Bloomberg) -- Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan called for tighter regulation of financial companies, distancing himself from the free-market culture that he helped to create.

Credit-Rating Companies `Sold Our Soul' for Pay, Employees Said
(Bloomberg) -- Employees at Moody's Investors Service told executives that issuing dubious creditworthy ratings to mortgage-backed securities made it appear they were incompetent or ``sold our soul to the devil for revenue,'' according to e-mails obtained by U.S. House investigators.

Quick Overview

  • Canada’s retail sales fell 0.3%. Excluding autos, retail sales rose 0.4%
    Canada’s index of leading indicators fell 0.2% in September

  • New Zealand's central bank cut its benchmark interest rate by a record 1% to 6.5%

  • The U.S. Department of Energy said:
    Supplies of crude oil rose 3.2 million barrels to 311.4 million barrels
    Supplies of gasoline rose 2.7 million barrels
    Supplies of heating oil rose 800,000 barrels.
    Refinery use increased from 82.2% to 84.8% of capacity
    Gasoline demand fell 4.3% YoY
    Distillate demand fell 5.8% YoY

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Don't make a drama out of this financial crisis
The scale of what has happened is breath-taking. The oil price has halved since July. Wheat prices have halved since spring. Rice prices are down by a third. Remember that early this year there were riots in many developing countries – not over the antics of Wall Street investment bankers but over the price of food. And in many countries, until recently anyway, the forces pushing towards recession have been more about the squeeze on real incomes than about the credit crunch. What will happen now is that, thanks to the fall in commodity prices, the squeeze will go into reverse, thereby handing purchasing power back to the consumers.

Spreading the wealth
And there is a lot of spreading potential: income distribution in America is the widest of the 30 countries of the OECD. The top 10% (or decile) of earners have an average $87,257 of disposable income, while those in the bottom decile have $5,819, among the very lowest of any country.