Precious metals news

S&P CoreLogic (Case-Shiller) home price index unexpectedly rose (0.06% MoM) in February (the latest data released today), which slowed the annual 20-City Composite price index growth to just 0.36% YoY...

There’s now an increasing awareness of a move to ‘de-dollarization’, something that Mike Maloney has been warning about for more than a decade.

I’ve consistently said that the greatest threat to the dollar comes not from abroad but from the U.S. Treasury because they take confidence in the dollar for granted. We’re doing this to ourselves. Yellen is proving my point.

"Thus the oldest and most traditional of assets, gold, is now a vehicle of central bank revolt against the dollar," Ruchir Sharma wrote... demand is coming from central banks reducing their dollar holdings, not the "usual suspects" made up of large and small investors, the chair of Rockefeller International wrote in The Financial Times on Sunday.

"I think we can put the crisis behind us. I don't think we can put the issue behind us," Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters told CNBC.

First Republic Bank’s quarterly results — including a worse-than-expected drop in deposits — reignited investor concerns about prospects for its business, breaking with more than a week of industry earnings reports that had broadly reassured the market.

First Republic Bank (FRC.N) shares sank more than 20% after the closing bell on Monday as it said deposits plunged by more than $100 billion in the first quarter and it was exploring options such as restructuring its balance sheet.

Congress will need to raise the U.S. debt ceiling or risk a catastrophic debt default, with analysts predicting the Treasury is most likely to run out of funds in July or August. "You're seeing this demand for the very front-end … and then the three- to four-month part of the bill curve is quite cheap because of these debt ceiling concerns,"...

Deloitte's job cuts come just four days after Ernst & Young, another Big Four consulting giant, announced a similar measure, while citing "overcapacity" for laying off about 3,000 employees in the United States.

The workforce reductions are in addition to the 2,500 manufacturing jobs the company said it would eliminate in January.

UBS said on Tuesday it had set aside more money to draw a line under its involvement in toxic U.S. mortgages, halving its first-quarter profit as the bank girds itself for the "hard" task of swallowing fallen rival Credit Suisse. Sergio Ermotti, brought back as UBS chief executive to steer the takeover, said it aims to close the deal with fellow Zurich-based bank Credit Suisse by May but warned that it could take four years for a full integration. Meanwhile, the Herculean task of absorbing Credit Suisse includes dealing with a backlash against the deal at home, where thousands of jobs cuts are feared.

The European Central Bank will almost certainly add 25 basis points to its deposit rate on May 4 and then take it to 3.50% or higher in June as core inflation remains persistently high, according to economists polled by Reuters. Euro zone headline inflation moderated further last month but remained over three times the ECB's 2% target and despite core readings rising to a record high...

In a sign fears about the global financial system have eased for now, major central banks are scaling back their offer of emergency dollar loans to banks, a crisis step launched after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in the U.S. fed fears about wider troubles. The European Central Bank said Tuesday that it and other central banks found that pressure on banks' cash...

The world's top central banks will reduce the frequency of their dollar operations with the U.S. Federal Reserve from May 1 after volatility in financial markets receded, the banks said in a joint statement on Tuesday. The European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of England and the Swiss National Bank have been conducting daily dollar swaps with the Fed for the past...

In March, UK inflation continued to hover in the double-digit range as households grappled with the persistently high cost of living. Among the various expenses challenging British consumers' wallets, the price of an English breakfast has notably soared.

British grocery inflation edged lower in April but remained near record highs, industry data showed on Tuesday, providing little relief for consumers being hammered by a cost-of-living crisis.

Hungary will probably take a first step in dismantling its emergency monetary regime that has shored up the currency but has so far failed to make a major dent in the European Union’s highest inflation.

A selloff in Chinese equities is deepening as a barrage of economic and geopolitical risks stack up, with global funds accelerating their exodus.

The Federal Reserve and global counterparts will revert to fewer auctions for dollar funding after financial-market tensions in the wake of US bank failures subsided.

The rebound in European equities since mid-March has failed to win over strategists, who predict that the sustained campaign of central-bank interest rate hikes will stall the rally.