Precious metals news

The U.S. Treasury is boosting the amount of debt it plans to issue in the coming quarterly refunding auctions to a record $96 billion to provide government funding as the economy heads into a recession caused by the coronavirus.

For years, the Federal Reserve warned that too many highly risky companies were engaging in fuzzy accounting that bumped up their earnings -- making it easier for them to obtain loans. The practice was driving up corporate debt to excessive and worrisome levels, regulators chastised.

Stephen Roach: Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email [email protected] to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/5f4ef4f6-8ad6-11ea-a109-483c62d17528 History suggests that inflation may be the only way out. After the second world war, the US escaped from its public debts by reflation. Public debt fell by 0.9 percentage points a year from 1947 to 1957, while nominal gross domestic product, helped by accelerating inflation, rose 7 per cent annually. The ratio of debt to GDP soon plunged to 47 per cent. Today, a comparable debt shrinkage would occur if inflation moved back to 5 per cent.

(Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said policy makers need to mitigate the ongoing risks from the coronavirus in the second half of the year and gradually reopen the U.S. economy to avoid deeper harm. “The shutdown can’t go on forever because if it does, deep into the second half, then I think you risk getting into a financial crisis or even a depression scenario,”

The COVID-19 pandemic looks likely to cause the biggest surge in bankruptcies that the United States' court system has ever experienced. Without an immediate increase in judicial capacity to manage the coming flood of cases, an even larger economic disaster awaits.

After the virus, financial markets will never be quite the same again.Public officials have raced to put a floor under the stricken world economy in an intervention so far-reaching it’ll transform the very core of capitalism itself for years to come.

U.S. airlines are collectively burning more than $10 billion in cash a month and averaging fewer than two dozen passengers per domestic flight because of the coronavirus pandemic, industry trade group Airlines for America said in prepared testimony seen by Reuters ahead of a U.S. Senate hearing on Wednesday.

“There’s going to be a day of reckoning,” Zandi said. “We are going to as a nation have to address these deficits and debts. We’re going to have to raise taxes. We’re going to have to restrain spending.”

"the current challenge for Treasury is to increase issuance to finance the policy response while avoiding a decline in market functioning "

Even as they hope for a speedy recovery, companies plan for a slow one.

China may move to reduce its vast holdings of US Treasury securities in the coming months in response to a resurgence in trade tensions and a war of words between the world’s two largest economies over the origins and handling of the coronavirus outbreak

On Friday the BLS will issue the jobs report for April. It will be miserable, but how miserable? Let's explore a couple of Tweets with possible answers.

Here are a few of the many consequential differences between all previous recessions and the current situation:

Inflation in the wealthiest countries has collapsed at the fastest pace since the financial crisis, as the coronavirus outbreak sinks the world into the deepest recession for almost a century.

The euro zone economy will contract by a record 7.7% this year because of the Covid-19 pandemic and inflation will almost disappear while public debt and budget deficits will balloon, the European Commission has forecast.

After a rollercoaster ride for bond markets in April, massive central bank intervention has restored a measure of order. Daniel Morris, senior investment strategist and Dominick DeAlto, chief investment officer fixed income, discuss the outlook and focus particularly on prospects for inflation.

Central banks globally added another net 46.1 tons of gold to their reserves in March with the usual suspects making big purchases, according to the latest data released by the World Gold Council.
The pace of central bank purchases seems to be increasing, although a few banks are doing the bulk of the buying. Globally, central banks upped purchases in March by about 10 tons over February's total, which was 33% higher than January's buying.

'We have established a good routine and have been able to ensure that product from our mining clients is shipped to us and that refined product makes its way to bullion banks and end user customers,' the CEO said.

Tuesday’s ruling by Germany’s constitutional court may have been aimed squarely at the European Central Bank's bond-buying economic stimulus plans. But it also has the potential to shake the very foundations of the European Union itself.

Celsius Network, founder and CEO Alex Mashinsky calls the bond market, "the biggest bubble that hasn't burst yet." And when the massive bond bubble pops, that's when the real earthquake begins.
The US Treasury Department is pumping out bonds like there's no tomorrow. It announced this week that it plans to borrow $2.99 trillion in this quarter alone. The projected borrowing for fiscal 2020 comes in at a staggering $4.48 trillion.