Macroeconomic sentiment
Over the past couple of years we have seen a huge surge in stock markets (Chart#1). The main reason for such moves is Quantitative Easing monetary policy provided by Federal Reserve System since late 2008. Purchases were halted on 29 October 2014 after accumulating $4.5 trillion in assets or 26% of GDP. The key outlook is tend to be consumer behavior, because households’ spending represents two thirds of GDP, which is broadest measure of economic activity. The job market is considerably stronger right now. Since June last year, payroll employments expanded by $2.2 million jobs (Chart#2), which represents 2.4 percent annual rate of increase. As a result, incomes are rising rapidly. For the same period real
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One more reason for such situation is recently surged value of the dollar.
Understanding the fact, that falling commodity prices and rising dollar cannot last indefinitely, and maybe even bottomed out for now, I see a lot of perspectives within these markets in one year period. Moreover, a lot of forecasters expect inflation to move toward two percent goal during this year, which will result in substantial rise in commodity prices. Although, it is a controversial issue according to the FED projections for the current and the next year, which have been lowered from previous numbers (Table#1).
In this case, Fed is unlikely to tight money supply by increasing federal funds rate, which is currently zero and is a frequently debatable topic. Such policy has a positive impact on a stock market.
Securities-specific news
3D Systems Corporation (NYSE:DDD) represents one of the most innovative industry in recent years and since its highs in 2014 has fallen more than fifty percent. Anyway, the company shows steadily growing revenues as well as high liquidity ratios. Moreover, the five-year earnings per share growth is at 21.67 percent, which gives investors benefits than other competitors can provide. The company has manufacturing facilities in the United States, Germany, the Asia-Pacific, and other European countries. DDD declared the buyout completion of Cimatron ltd., which is one of the leading CAD/CAM software solutions providers and gives DDD a lot of
The Federal Reserve has three tools to help maintain and make changes within money supply and policies. The first tool and most popular tool is open market operations. The Reserve uses this instrument to regulate the rate of federal funds within the system, which is merely the rate in which banks borrow reserves from other banks. With this tool, they can alter the interest rates and amount of money on the open market. Therefore, the Reserve can essentially control the total money stream, whether that is expanding and contracting it.
It is clear that the economic policy in general and the monetary policy in particular should be concerned with the overall economic well-being. In this paper we propose to discuss this core topic. We will provide an overall picture of the functioning mechanism. In this regard, the discussion will develop around the governmental policies and of FED, and their scope on the free market. The argumentation will refer to the notion of common good and will try to establish if the measures applied by FED have fulfilled their intended purpose given the recent international financial crises of 2007.
When there are problems in the United States economy, whom do the people turn to? The most obvious answer is the government. The federal government is given the responsibility of maintaining a stable economy. When the economy is not stable, like during a recession, the American people turn the government and demand that they fix whatever problem is occurring. The government can handle the economy in a recessionary period in one of two ways: expansionary fiscal policy or expansionary monetary policy. The sector of the government that handles the economy using these policies in a recession is the Federal Reserve. The best course of action to get the United States out of a recession is to use expansionary monetary policy.
United States Federal Reserve system, also known as Federal Reserve or simply “Fed” is the United States central banking system. The Federal Reserve took inception in 1913, after the adoption of the Federal Reserve Act. The United States Congress has mandated three macroeconomic objectives to the Federal Reserve. These are minimum levels of unemployment, prices stability and keeping in check the rates of interests. Over the years, the role of Federal Reserve has expanded. It now formulates the country’s monetary policies, conducts supervision and regulation of the banking institutions, maintenance of the financial
BHP Billiton is the world’s top producers of major commodities. China, as BHP Billiton’s largest export market, demand strongly influences the BHP Billiton’s operation (Western Australian Iron Ore Industry Profile 2015). According to the annual report of BHP Billiton (2015), China brought about 36.6% revenue in the amount of total export revenue for BHP Billiton, among the largest product is Iron Ore, which was 66% in 2015. Meanwhile, the forecast of iron ore will continue to increase production. However, Chinese steel consumption may growth slow next few years (shows in figure 1) because the real estate industry decline (Mark 2015). Therefore, oversupply and weaker demand may create the fluctuations in commodity prices which related to commodity risk.
The article by Justin Wolfers describes how the Federal Reserve System (Fed), also known as the central bank of the United States, can alter monetary policy to help the economy recover during downtimes and recessions. Although the Federal Reserve System is not technically a political institution, such as that of the Bank of Canada, after it was nationalized in 1938, with its overall responsibilities lying with a board of directors. In other words, the Fed does not stack the deck to assist either the Democrats or Republicans; their decisions can still be influenced by congress and presidential elections due to the fact that a lot of the principles in money and banking are political. For example, changes in fiscal policy can also help an economy recover, which is defined as policy that involves decisions about government spending and taxation. Additionally, if the Fed were to turn to unconventional measures leading up to an election, political outrage, especially from Congress, would be likely. Therefore, these policy-makers at the Federal Reserve System are often left inadequately prepared to respond to an economic downturn or recession.
Monetary policy focuses on keeping interest rates at a modest level, keeping prices steady, and keeping unemployment low. The Federal Open Market Committee is responsible for making the necessary monetary policy changes. These changes influence both the markets within the United States and the markets internationally. Currently, there is a lot of volatility within the markets, and there is a lot of speculation about if and when the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates. There is also speculation about whether a negative interest rate would work to get the economy back on target. Also, many worry about whether the current government debt level will continue, and with the number of people entering retirement increasing, whether there will be enough money coming in to cover the costs of the social programs, such as Social Security and Medicare.
The terms medium of exchange. store of value (purchasing power jumping time segments), and unit of account (quoting prices) were the terminology utilized on page 190 of chapter ten. After this terminology, the section commodity and fiat monies was written. The functional weight from Principles of Macroeconomics is that commodity monies are tangibly traded with the use in in realization and fiat monies “{are} items designated as money that are intrinsically worthless” (p. 191). After the section on commodity and fiat monies concluded with a summation regarding currency debasement, Case, Fair, and Oster listed two equations for transaction money and broad money. The transaction money equation was M1 = currency held outside banks + demand deposits + travelers’ checks +
The health of the current U.S. economy appears to be growing gradually. The second quarter real GDP growth was 3.7% and the unemployment rate declined to 5.3%. The U.S Federal Reserve (Fed) is expected to raise interest rates in the near future when it sees clear signs of strong economic growth and improvements in the job market.
The United States is the leading economy across the globe and experienced several tribulations in the recent past following the 2008 global recession. Despite these recent challenges, there are expectations among policymakers and financial experts that the country will experience solid economic growth. Actually, financial analysts have stated that the U.S. economy will be characterized by increased consumer spending, increased investments by businesses, reduced rate of unemployment, and reduction in government cut. Some analysts have also stated that the country’s economy will strengthen in 2014 with an average of 2.7 percent or more. However, these predictions can only be understood through an analysis of the current macroeconomic
Further, the report will discuss commodity price in the industry and arguments for and against supply, demand and price shifts. Future forecasts and sustainability of the product will be discussed by use of graphs and tables. Finally, recommendations and a conclusion based on the above analysis will be made about the commodity.
Overall economic conditions are expected to improve over the next two quarters. As part of the monetary policy (quantitative easing part 3), Federal Reserve continues to buy bonds to influence low interest rates in order to increase investments. A decrease in unemployment and an increase in private consumption will drive the economic growth for the next two years.
In 2016, the crude oil price movement prices were unpredictable. The OPEC reference basket dropped 10 percent to $43.22 per pound. The ICE Brent and NYMEX WTI both went down by 8.4 percent with ICE Brent at $47.08 per pound and NYMEX WTI at $45.76 per pound. This showed that there were uncertainties in the petroleum market. The future prices were predicted for 2017 that it would move higher. The World’s economic growth predictions was the same at 2.9% for 2016 but increased to 3.1% for 2017. Because of the 3rd quarter of 2016 in Japan and US, the OCED growth went from 1.6% to 1.7%. The demand for oil growth in 2016 has been increasing slightly to 1.24 mb/d. In 2017, the demand will be predicted with a decrease to 1.15 mb/d. OECD will
Several authors including Bade and Park (1982), Alesina (1988,1989), and Grilli, Masciandaro and Tabellini (1991) found that more central banks are independent it would result in lower level of inflation. As Rogoff (1985) notes, dynamic inconsistency theories of inflation of the type developed in Kydland and Prescott (1977) and Barro and Gordon (1983) make it reasonable that more independent central banks will reduce the rate of inflation as delegating monetary policy to an agent whose preferences are more inflation averse than the societies preferences would serve as a commitment that allows sustaining a lower level of inflation. Insulating monetary policy from the political process helps enforce the low inflation equilibrium. Without
Monetary policy rules are a fundamental part of the central bank models and are often refined to maximize economic welfare, specific to that country. Monetary policy rules are a methodical response of monetary policy events in the economy. Essentially, it can be thought of as a numeric equation, which determines the appropriate level for the central bank’s policy instrument to be a function of one or more economic variables that describe the state of the economy. It is imperative that economies model the reaction of their monetary authorities to changes in their respective economic conditions; this equation is essentially a “reaction function.” A reaction function utilizes its instruments to stabilize inflation and output fluctuations in response to demand or supply shocks. In a macroeconomic environment, the policy rules a Central bank develops is essential and thus numerous monetary policy rules have been discussed throughout economic literature.