Global Macro Perspectives
The Economist: Buttonwood – South Sea QE.
An early attempt to buy government bonds by creating money.
The Wall Street Journal: Open Letter to Ben Bernanke.
We believe the Federal Reserve’s large-scale asset purchase plan (so-called “quantitative easing”) should be reconsidered and discontinued….
Empire State Manufacturing Survey for November came out at -11.14 vs. 14.0 consensus and 15.73 prior reading.
Big ugly miss. Downward path resumed…
U.S. retail sales rose 1.2% in October. The consensus was at 0.7%, September reading (revised up 0.1%) was at +0.7%. On year level retail sales are up 7.1%. Gains concentrated in auto sales; not reassuring report…
Baltic dry index fell 5.7% last week; Capesize Index was down 7.9%; Panamax Index rose 6.3%; Supramax Index was down 7.4%; Handysize Index was down 3.1%.
Apparently China has slowed down the rate of purchases here also. Despite falling stockpiles Chinese buying is weak which means rates are falling.
Baltic Dirty Tanker Index rose 3.5%; Baltic Clean Tanker Index rose 3.2%.
Despite popular belief that China is driving crude oil demand the data for October shows that China imported just 16.4 million tons of crude oil. This is the lowest level since April 2009 and it is 30% bellow September imports. In the U.S., despite the recent draw stockpiles are still high and the demand probably will not change much…
U.S economic data & earnings calendar…