Here's my summary of the key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9 am, including news the Eurozone is creeping ever closer to deflation.
But first, Federal Reserve boss Janet Yellen gave a strong defense of the central bank's easy-money policies overnight, saying its "extraordinary" commitment to boosting the economy, especially the still struggling jobs market, will be needed for some time yet.
Top banks have benefited from an implicit taxpayer subsidy of about US$70 billion in the US and up to US$300 billion in the eurozone in 2012 due to state support which makes them "too important to fail," the IMF said in a report out overnight.
Euro-area inflation slowed in March by more than economists forecast to the lowest level in over four years, keeping pressure on the ECB to take action to prevent a slip into deflation. The ECB next meets on Friday.
In Japan, factory output unexpectedly fell in February at the fastest pace in eight months, leaving their economy in a difficult position as today's sales tax hike threatens to undermine the government's revival plan. Not everyone is negative about the prospects, however.
In Australia, their Reserve Bank meets today and is widely tipped to sit on the sidelines for another month as it tries to balance the impact of their recent housing market boom, the surge in the Australian dollar and the rise in inflation.
In New York, stocks are higher in mid-day trade, UST 10 year bond yields are at 2.74% which is slightly higher, and gold is down even further, at US$1,285/oz continuing its long 2014 decline.
The NZ Dollar starts today at 86.7 USc, the Aussie is at 93.6 AUc, and the TWI remains at 80.9 its all-time high.
If you want to catch up with all the changes yesterday, we have an update here.
The easiest place to stay up with today's event risk is by following our Economic Calendar here »
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5 Comments
A lot of discussion in the Tech/Finance crossover area about the new book on High Frequency Trading
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/magazine/flash-boys-michael-lewis.htm…
The big takehome is how HFTs can see bids arriving at one exchange, then use there higher speed links and better class of access to the exchange to beat that bid to other exchanges.
works even better with electronic currencies. eg bitcoin. also used to be a problem with digitial payment in early days. drop carrier or session after the sale was acknowledged (and thus released) and before the purchase transaction could be validated. depending on the roll back/roll forward, it would either drop the transaction for the phreaker, or repeat charge (for quick cash for the seller, which usually but not always got refunded..but weeks later)
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