Economics

Sterling has slumped two cents in the wake of the Bank of England's announcement.  It cut the base rate 25 bp and announced a resumption of its asset purchase program.  It will buy GBP60 bln of Gilts and added corporate...

The focus is squarely on the US employment data today, ahead of which the capital markets are mostly consolidating yesterday's Bank of England inspired moved. The Australian and New Zealand dollars, alongside sterling, which is up about half a cent...

The Bank of England owns today, though tomorrow will be about the US jobs report. The BOE disappointed the market last month by not immediately responding to the UK referendum.  It had laid out a somber economic and financial scenario...

A recent release of confidential documents from WikiLeaks has finally relieved the silence surrounding the negotiations of an important but fairly obscure multilateral trade agreement. Australia, the US and the European Union have been quietly negotiating the Trade in Services Agreement...

The US dollar is consolidating yesterday's losses.  The greenback's upticks have thus far been shallow and unimpressive, except perhaps against the New Zealand dollar, which is off 0.8% ahead of next week's RBNZ meeting.  Softer than expected labor cost increase...

This Great Graphic is deceptively simple.  It is chart from the Bureau of Economic Analysis based on the price indices from components of personal consumption expenditure. The rust line is service prices.  They are steadily increasing.  No deflation or disinflation...

Over the last few years, negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) have provoked waves of criticism and suspicion in the Asia Pacific. Today, the kinds of criticism that burdened the TPP — that the negotiations were slow and tedious, and...

Almost 30 years to the day that a young, Harvard-trained American lawyer won a famous judgment at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against the United States, Paul S Reichler pulled off another momentous victory at The Hague. This time...

Clearing the haze of speculation, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) handed down its ruling on the maritime dispute between China and the Philippines on 12 July. The Philippines filed the case under Annex VII of the United Nations Convention...

August has begun off with clear price action.  The US dollar is stronger against nearly all the major currencies.  Bond yields are higher.  Equities and commodities are mostly lower.  However, outside of the purchasing managers July manufacturing prints, these do...

The US dollar is trading with a small upside bias in narrow trading ranges.  The main news has consisted of PMI reports, while investors continue to digest last week's developments.  In particular, the BOJ's underwhelming response to poor economic data...

Four events this week will command the attention of global investors.  1. The Reserve of Bank of Australia is first.  It is a close call, though the median in the Bloomberg survey favors a cut, including most of the banks...

The US dollar advance was stopped in its tracks by the disappointingly weak Q2 GDP figures.  The 1.2% annualized growth rate was roughly half of the pace expected.  The FOMC statement earlier in the week did not leave the impression...

The European Union and ASEAN have very different models of economic integration. Yet ASEAN and its members worry about what Britain’s exit from the European Union may mean for the future of ASEAN. Brexit provides a powerful motivation to get...

On 31 July, just over 11 million voters in Tokyo will be asked to return to the ballot boxes to vote for a new governor. This will happen just three weeks after the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government under...