Archive - Sep 8, 2011 - Story

As usual, egos get in the way of prudent monetary policy. EUR jumps a little on the news but promptly reverts to preannouncement levels. Waiting now for the conference in which Greenspan lite will mumble and lie about Europe's future from the perspective of a clueless Ph.D.

Aside from the ECB rate decision TBA imminently, the key economic data in this news heavy day will be Trade, jobless claims and the speech by Fed Chairman Bernanke, who received quite an earful by the GOP candidates yesterday.

While the BOE's decision came and went exactly as expected (rate unchanged at 0.50%, no new Quantitative Easing), leading to a slight jump in the GBP but nothing too notable, all eyes now turn to the ECB in 20 minutes and whether or not Jean Claude will admit defeat and announce the end of the bank's very ill-timed decision to start tightening from 6 months ago, which as much as it is overdue, will unfortunately not happen, egos and all. Here is a complete preview, but in a nutshell the consensus is for rates to remain unchanged at 1.50%, for an announcement that downside risks have intensified, and that both lower growth and lower inflation will be forecast.

It was only a matter of time. A few weeks after every money losing firm in the US and the kitchen sink disclosed it would sue Bank of America in an accelerating attempt to salvage something through litigation, the worst case scenario for Brian Moynhian just got real. As of minutes ago, Norway's Government Pension Fund, which is another name for its Sovereign Wealth Fund, has just announced it is suing Bank of America for mortgage fraud. Not only that but it is also going after Countrywide, obviously, but far more importantly, is also suing KPGM, the auditor on the Countrywide transaction, and, drumroll, ole' Agent Orange himself. If US bank analysts were busy quantifying the damages from every bank in the US suing BofA, just wait until the calculation is expanded to included every firm that bought mortgages from Bank of America... ever...in the entire world.