Precious metals news

The trend is both a sign of how fragile the US economy has become and a failure of the bankruptcy system, considered among the best in the world. Its focus on rehabilitating troubled companies rather than quickly winding them down saves thousands of jobs each year — but it assumes that pausing debt collection, tearing up costly contracts and forcing losses on creditors is more than just a way to delay inevitable liquidation.

A standoff in Washington over raising the U.S. debt ceiling overshadowed a meeting of Group of Seven (G7) finance leaders starting on Thursday, heightening U.S. recession fears as central banks seek a soft landing for the global economy.

While we at the SEC have no direct role in those discussions, the outcome is directly consequential to each part of our mission: protecting investors, facilitating capital formation, and maintaining fair, orderly, and efficient markets. We’ve already seen an effect in the pricing and liquidity of short-dated Treasury bills and continue to monitor for any additional tremors. If the U.S. Treasury as an issuer were actually to default, it would have very significant, hard to predict, and likely lasting effects on investors, issuers, and markets alike. In a word, it would make the Cyclone Roller Coaster at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair look like a kiddie ride.

The cost of insuring against a U.S. default rose to its highest since early 2009 on Thursday, in the latest sign of investor nerves over the debt ceiling standoff.

Inflation remains “stubbornly high” and is no longer making much progress toward the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, a top Fed official said Wednesday, hours after price data for April were released. In an interview, Tom Barkin, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, said he is also seeing some signs that banks in his region...

Group of Seven policymakers must recognize the urgent need to tackle debt problems in developing nations and should discuss ways to bring more transparency to the issue, World Bank President David Malpass said.

Inflation is easing but major central banks remain very much in rate hike mode, with the Bank of England delivering its 12th straight interest rate increase on Thursday. Financial markets nevertheless believe the most aggressive tightening cycle in decades may soon be over, a sense increased by recent banking sector turmoil that has added to global recession risks.

Interest rate hikes by key central banks around the world and tightening credit conditions will put pressure on U.S. regional banks’ capital, credit quality, and profitability. Globally systemically important banks (G-SIBs) are benefiting from the diversity of business lines they have, as well as from the various sources of funding they can access. However, many regional banks, by...

China’s government bonds extended a rally and bank shares advanced, after the nation asked commercial lenders to cap some deposit rates in a push to support a bumpy economic recovery.

China’s consumer prices barely grew in April, while borrowing slumped, providing further evidence the economy’s recovery is waning and fueling expectations of more central bank stimulus.

Japanese investors bought a record amount of Treasuries in the first three months of the year as concern over the US banking sector damped bets on Federal Reserve rate hikes.

Consumer expectations for euro-zone inflation rose “significantly” in March — bolstering the case of European Central Bank officials who say interest-rate increases may need to persist beyond the summer.

Real estate companies, already among Europe’s worst performers this year, look set for more pain as rising interest rates fuel a surge in financing costs while investors’ concerns about the outlook for commercial property developers grow.

This subject was focused on in two previous articles here on AdvancingTime. The first piece was titled "Mind The Gap." The second looked at how the policy of promoting the "Wealth Effect" has started to shift into reverse. It highlighted the fact that when people see their wealth decline or feel poor they tend to cut spending. Today we must add into the economic mix the toll inflation is taking on consumers. This is a difficult situation to correct.

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Blackstone Inc, the biggest manager of private equity and real estate assets, said on Thursday it was discussing partnerships with U.S. regional banks to help them with constraints in areas such as car loans and home improvement financing. "As regional banks experienced outflows of deposits, we are seeing real-time opportunities to partner with them...

Shares of PacWest were already down 40% this month and more than 70% for the year.

The idea of President Biden trying to unilaterally cancel the debt ceiling by invoking a Civil War-era law appears to be gaining traction.

Regional banking concerns continued to weigh on markets Thursday morning as PacWest (PACW) reported deposit outflows were reignited in May. PacWest stock slumped 20% in pre-market trading after the company disclosed in an SEC filing its deposits fell 9.5% in the first week of May.

The Federal Government ran a surplus last month, as it typically does in April due to the tax deadline. The surplus was $176B which was 43% lower than the surplus last April. As the chart below shows, this was driven entirely by collapsing revenues as expenses actually fell as well.

The CPI rose in March by 0.37%, which was much larger than last month’s 0.06%. As shown below, this was driven by the energy component flipping from negative to positive.
And there's even worse news. The math is about to turn on the CPI calculation.