Saturday, July 08, 2017

Today's Headlines

Posted by Gary .....at 7:29 PM
Bloomberg:
  • ECB Officials Disagree on How Much Is Too Much for Stimulus Plan. European Central Bank policy makers continued to air their differences over when to rein in stimulus, sending conflicting signals on whether pumping cash into the economy for much longer will help the euro area or hurt it. “Underlying inflationary pressure remains subdued” and “we still need a long period of accommodative policy,” Executive Board member Peter Praet, the ECB’s chief economist, told Belgian newspaper De Standaard in an interview published on Saturday. Governing Council member Klaas Knot, speaking on Dutch television on Friday night, warned that the central bank is “very close to the point” of keeping quantitative easing for too long.
  • ECB's Villeroy Sees Autumn as the Season to Adapt Stimulus Plan. (video) The European Central Bank is likely to decide on the next change in its stimulus settings in the fall, when it will continue the process of tweaking its measures to reflect the euro area’s upturn, according to Governing Council member Francois Villeroy de Galhau. “What we have to do, and what we started to do, is to adapt the intensity of this accommodative monetary policy to the progress toward our inflation target and toward economic recovery,” he said in a Bloomberg Television interview on Saturday. “In the future, and this will be our decision next fall, we will go on adapting the intensity of this monetary policy.” The French central-bank governor’s remarks may be the most definitive yet on when the ECB will take action on its 2.3 trillion-euro ($2.6 trillion) asset-purchase program, which is currently scheduled to run until the end of the year. While he is just one of 25 Governing Council members who decide monetary policy for the currency bloc, concerns are rising among some of his colleagues that time is running out if they are to avoid undesirable market volatility.
  • U.S. Squeezes Steel Concessions From G-20 Amid Tariff Threat. Group of 20 leaders agreed to address growing overcapacity and rock-bottom prices in global steel markets, bowing to pressure from the Trump administration after it threatened to impose punitive tariffs on its allies. In talks that stretched into the early hours of Saturday, U.S. officials managed to get language inserted into the communique that sets deadlines for G-20 members to address excess steel production, according to a leaked copy of the text. Countries like China will also have to be more transparent about how they subsidize domestic producers. In return, the U.S. agreed to boilerplate language reiterating the G-20’s commitment to fight protectionism.
  • Iraq Says Forces Are 'Tens of Meters' From Retaking Mosul. Iraqi commanders said Saturday their forces are "tens of meters" away from defeating the Islamic State group in Mosul, a day after a major counterattack by the militants. The Joint Operations Command "our units are still continuing to advance... Not much is left before our forces reach the river."
  • Motion Sickness Grips Stocks on Eve of a Healthy Earnings Season. Once again, the U.S. stock market is beset with angst as an earnings season approaches. Curing it has been simple in the past. Getting the medicine to go down this time may prove harder. It’s not that it will be a bad quarter. Barring an unlikely disaster, companies will say profits rose for the fourth straight time, with analysts calling for a 7.4 percent increase over a year earlier. Whether the patient has become resistant to treatment is the real question.
Wall Street Journal:
Barron's:
  • Had bullish commentary on (USO), (ALXN), (EA), (ADSK), (SLAB), (COH) and (APA).
Zero Hedge:
Business Insider:

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