Also, a heads-up...

[solarbird]

The Federal Reserve has warned banks "to guard against possible losses from an end to low interest rates." That's a "HEADS UP, GUYS, WE GOT NO CHOICE." I rather expected something like this after my credit union - a good, conservative, and sound credit union - sent out notices to everyone with Visa cards last week saying, 'guess what! You're on floating rate now!' It's engineered so that it can only go up from now, of course. Amusingly, my current rate actually dropped very slightly - I have very good credit - but that won't last. Accordingly, here's my action plan:

• Reject the change in terms, terminating that card but allowing me to continue paying off the old balance at the old rate;
• Get a new card under the new terms from the same credit union to have for new charges paid off 100% every month no matter what;
• Get a new Amtrak card to churn like crazy for travel points. Yay, free trains!

But I digress. This is coming; the banks have been warned; now you have been, too. Karl at Market Ticker is telling everyone to brace for impact. So's Bill Gross at PIMCO, for markets in the first half of the year, and everyone else in the second half.

In related news:

PIMCO is moving out of US and UK bonds and into German.

Iceland's president vetoed a bill that would've required Icelandic citizens to cover Icelandic bank losses to foreign depositors. It worked out to around US$41,000 per family, and there were significant protests. (Polling shows 70% of the population opposed the bill.) The UK is making threatening noises at Icelandic voters to pass the goddamn thing in a referendum which will apparently happen following the veto.

Rumour on the street says that a second stimulus package is going to be coming down the road in the US, and possibly soon. T-bills rates are all over the place; dollar's a little lower, but not enough to care; oil's slightly up. Major oil producers are shuttering refineries to "align" supply and demand; that'll translate into higher retail prices in a couple of months.

Please enjoy looking up the Kondratiev Wave model in economics.

Comments

[cow.livejournal.com]

YAY TRAINS

I approve of this Amtrak card. :3

[l33tminion]

We have never seen a crash and rebound in US stock market history like what we have just experienced, except once. That "once" was 1929/1930. What followed next was a grueling grind... in which the market lost more than 80% of it's value.

Well that's optimistic.

[darksumomo.livejournal.com]

Welcome to Kondratiev Winter.