A week before the Federal Reserve’s most critical policy decision in years, Wall Street opinion makers can’t agree on anything.
Not only is there no consensus about whether the Fed will end its seven-year-old policy of zero interest rates, but views on the fallout from such a move are wildly disparate.
There are some, like hedge-fund titan Ray Dalio, who say a rate increase will prove an epic blunder in the face of a vulnerable global economy, prompting policy makers to abruptly reverse course and start printing money again. There are others, such as Citigroup Inc. economist William Lee, who say the expansion is healthy enough seven years after the financial crisis to withstand higher rates. Next week’s increase will be the first of several over the course of the next year, they argue.
Guy Haselmann, a Scotiabank strategist, says that in his nearly three decades on the Street he’s never seen such confusion. Much of that, he notes, is the result of the “mixed messages coming out of the Fed.” One day, a Fed member is expounding on the benefits to delaying a hike, and the next, another is calling for action now.
But the extreme nature of the discord among traders and analysts underscores a bigger, and more important, point: The stakes are high for Fed policy makers right now. Get this decision wrong, and it could deal a big blow to the economy and to their credibility.
Policy Error?
The Fed is slated to announce its decision on Sept. 17, at the conclusion of its two-day meeting. As of the close of trading on Thursday, futures traders assigned a 28 percent chance that the rate will be lifted a quarter-point to a range of 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent. Analysts are a bit more sure there’ll be a hike, with about half of the 81 surveyed by Bloomberg predicting one.
As divided as the market is on that decision, it’s the aftermath that stirs the real split. In the global-economy-is-too-weak camp, Dalio has plenty of company. Names like Krishna Memani, chief investment officer of OppenheimerFunds Inc., and Larry Summers, the former Treasury Secretary and Harvard University president. Memani, like Dalio, says the increase will prove so premature that policy makers will find themselves having to resort to another round of quantitative easing to resuscitate growth.
While the U.S. expansion has been stable, "that’s not looking at the full evidence,” Memani said. He pointed to the heavy debt burdens of developing economies like China that could weigh down growth.
‘Something Different’
On the other side, Citigroup’s Lee is joined by people like Haselmann and Peter Tchir of Brean Capital LLC. An increase next week, in their view, is warranted -- even necessary.
"Seven years at zero doesn’t seem to have fixed everything,” Tchir said.
“So let’s try something different.”
He puts an unusual twist on last month’s market volatility: It underscored the need for the Fed to start raising rates, rather than holding off longer. Historically accommodative monetary policy has supported too much risk-taking by investors, he said.
Somewhere between the two camps is a middle ground made up of people like Alex Roever, head of U.S. rates strategy at JPMorgan Chase & Co. There’s a risk that bond traders are underestimating the pace of rate increases, which could complicate the tightening process by jarring the market. Even if that’s the case, policy makers may not need to reverse right away, he says.
Roever’s team predicts two-year Treasury yields will approach 1.7 percent in a year, from 0.71 percent Friday.
This rate cycle may be tougher for investors to navigate because of challenges at home and abroad, according to the strategist.
"It’s more complicated monetary policy now," Roever said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/201...essage-on-rates

Fed Rate Hike? If You Believe in Magic
As central-bank watchers debate the likelihood of the Federal Reserve voting to raise interest rates this month, some of the smartest guys in the room are leaning in the other direction and speculating there will be more quantitative easing, not less. Last month, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and hedge-fund manager Ray Dalio both predicted the Fed might need to restart its bond-buying program to extinguish the threat of deflation. This week, Citigroup chief economist Willem Buiter went a step further, warning that the world risks toppling back into recession in the next two years if central banks don't accelerate their efforts to pump cash into the economy.

The End of QE?

It's worth revisiting Ben Bernanke's November 2002 speech on "Deflation: Making Sure `It' Doesn't Happen Here," as a way of highlighting just how bizarre the current economic situation is. Bernanke, then a Fed governor who went on to serve as chairman from 2006 to 2014, was riffing off the economist Milton Friedman's suggestion that central banks can resort to dropping money from helicopters as a way of stimulating growth:

The U.S. government has a technology called a printing press that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. A determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation. Sufficient injections of money will ultimately always reverse a deflation.

That's all well and good -- in theory. In practice, exorcising the demon of deflation turns out to be a lot harder than Bernanke envisaged. Even after the Fed expanded its balance sheet by more than $3.5 trillion from the start of QE in 2009 to its end in October 2014, disinflation persists. The average annual increase in U.S. consumer prices this year is just 0.1 percent; and it's been more than a year since inflation was at the Fed's 2 percent target.

Traders in the money markets have been scaling back their expectations for a Fed move at the Sept. 16-17 policy meeting. As of yesterday, prices in the futures and options market suggest there's a 30 percent chance of an increase, down from 32 percent a week ago and 48 percent a month ago:



Dalio, whose Bridgewater hedge-fund manages about $169 billion, told his investors last month that "it should now be apparent that the risks of deflationary contractions are increasing relative to the risks of inflationary expansion." That means the "next big Fed move will be to ease (via QE) rather than to tighten," he said. On Wednesday, Harvard professor Summers repeated his Aug. 23 call for the Fed to leave policy on hold, saying "the case against a rate increase has become somewhat more compelling."

Citigroup's Buiter, a former Bank of England policy maker, argues that a global recession is "a high and rapidly rising risk" and "may well now be the most likely outcome over the next few years." He advocates money-printing for China, the U.S., the U.K. and the euro region, with governments issuing bonds that their central banks then buy:

Even the belated application of helicopter money drops in the cyclically afflicted countries can ensure that the coming bout of cyclical stagnation does not worsen the problem of secular stagnation.

It isn't clear to me why more QE is the answer to the economy's failure thus far to respond to previous QE. But when some of the smartest people in finance are arguing for yet more monetary stimulus, it would be a pretty brave move for the Fed (or indeed the Bank of England) to start pushing up borrowing costs.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015...as-raining-cash

As expected, no change.

China may devalue thevyuan again?

gark

What's your take on Yen vs SGD since many here have Croesus and Saizen?

More on the SGD:JPY

Think Abe-NOmics is coming to a stand. If Japan's economy does not improve, my take is they will do worse compared with SG.

SG loan also high.

Is that national debt or consumer debt?

SG sound good then.

IDR............

Yuan..........China Reits

ASS cendas

Nolah......German IRIET

Japon?

Huh?

Yankee?

Which S Reits is USD income?

Hong kee Assets?

Which S Reits having HK Assets?

PPPfFFFfffffffffffff

Thank You ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

i only know Maple Tree GCC

Is this true?

If true, then might just wait after rights before buying again.

i am asking my stockbroker to confirm

Thanks..looks like we can't get those rights!