Media – Blog
February 8, 2018
When Jerome Powell emerged as the front-runner to succeed Janet Yellen as Federal Reserve Chair, he was quickly pegged as a moderate “continuity candidate.” A low-profile, but hard-working, member of the Federal Open Market Committee since 2011, he had supported Yellin’s course of slow-but-steady interest-rate increases as the economy gradually
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January 18, 2018
The great paradox of 2017 was the relative calm in short-term debt markets in the face of unprecedented turbulence in the daily news cycle. Our new President’s unconventional communication style did not lead to the financial market volatility many had predicted. And despite ongoing partisan political turmoil, multiple terror incidents,
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December 14, 2017
In the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis, asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) programs were among the many investments tainted by the subprime mortgage meltdown. The crash precipitated a steady outflow from a total of $1.2 trillion in ABCP investments at their peak in late 2007 to $238 billion in October
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October 24, 2017
Financing projects and growth through debt has long been a staple of modern corporate economics. However, debt for companies with little credit history, a relative lack of fungible assets, negative cash flow and little to no revenue for the foreseeable future have historically presented an untenable risk for many traditional
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October 13, 2017
When Republican leaders unveiled their long-awaited tax-reform proposal late last month, politicians and pundits jumped on the nine-page document to determine potential winners and losers. The “long-on-promises, short-on-details” nature of the so-called “Trump tax plan” raised more questions than it answered, rendering many predictions little more than conjectures and educated
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September 18, 2017
Who would have ever thought the debt ceiling limit would become a dinner-table topic? In the past, Congress routinely voted to approve higher limits on debt covering the spending it had already authorized, and hardly anyone noticed. But in 2011, the debt-ceiling vote became a political football, with authorization tied
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August 11, 2017
Banks have traditionally been a little slow to follow interest rate hikes by the Fed with comparable rate increases on their own deposit accounts. But this time around they seem to be moving more slowly than ever. Our August research report―Higher Deposit Rates-Where Art Thou?―looks back at the past two
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July 13, 2017
Rising interest rates may offer new opportunities for higher yields, but they also present institutional cash investors with fresh challenges. Ultra-conservative investment strategies no longer meet expectations for higher returns, so managers know they may need to move beyond a safe mix of Treasuries and FDIC-insured cash accounts. In an
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July 5, 2017
Amongst the numerous debates happening up on Capitol Hill, one that’s slipped under the radar is related to financial regulatory reform. On June 8th, with the whole of the country’s attention fixated on former FBI Director James Comey, the House of Representative passed the Financial CHOICE Act along party lines.
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June 14, 2017
When the Federal Reserve began amassing Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities to fight deflation in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, no one knew for sure how much debt it would add to the nation’s balance sheet, or how long the unprecedented “quantitative easing” program would last. While the answers
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