Archive - Jan 4, 2010

Bernanke gave us an insight into his thinking this weekend. If you think he is going to get tough this year with monetary policy you can forget it. The Carry Trade is alive and well folks....

"For interest rate exposure, or duration, we are currently cutting back in the U.S. and U.K. because, as mentioned before, supply and demand dynamics are likely to be negatively affected as borrowing rises and central bank buying declines...With corporate bonds, we are becoming a bit more cautious than we have been. In the third and fourth quarters of 2009, we believed the massive narrowing of spreads we saw in the second quarter wouldn’t go much further. We weren’t necessarily selling credit on any scale, but we’d reduced buying....In agency MBS, we are underweight, having reduced our exposure as the Fed’s buying programs have dramatically tightened spreads...we are underweight TIPS versus the benchmark, reflecting our view that risks are currently weighted toward a disinflationary environment." Paul McCulley

Ben Bernanke delivered a speech yesterday that could mark a turning point in the Fed's views on and handling of potential asset bubbles. Despite Helicopter Ben's usual attempts to blame everyone else but the Fed for the housing bubble, at the very end of the talk Bernanke actually suggested that the Fed would consider using monetary policy to combat asset bubbles. What a start to 2010.

Could be ...