Word: banking
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...Australia's central bank, inflation and asset bubbles in an environment of easy money evidently now trump worries of a second-dip recession. Its October and November decisions, which raised interest rates from 3% to 3.5%, are meant to keep inflation between 2% to 3% in 2010. The country's consumer price index as of September actually rose just 1.3%, but the fear is that the resurgent economy and government's $38 billion in cash handouts and infrastructure spending will push inflation above...
...Other central banks are making similar calculations, although they are not moving as aggressively - yet. The Bank of Japan will terminate its purchases of corporate debt this December. The Bank of England is cutting back on a program to buy government bonds and commercial paper with newly created money. The European Central Bank is mulling an end to its 12-month loans to banks next year. "Not all our liquidity measures will be needed to the same extent as in the past," says ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet...
...weak dollar is helping America's exports. But it is also spooking holders of U.S. debt, whose continued purchases of U.S. Treasury bills allow Washington to fund its deficit spending. Last week, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced that the Reserve Bank of India had bought 200 tons of IMF gold reserves, the biggest single purchase by a central bank in 30 years. That pushed the price of gold past $1,100 an ounce, the latest record breaker in a string of new highs, as the market anticipated gold buying by other central banks to hedge against a falling dollar...
...often by the seat of their pants, how events would unfold. In Too Big to Fail, Sorkin, a New York Times reporter, takes us inside the cozy world of Wall Street chieftains and their Washington alter egos. Why did the U.S. Treasury Department ask Congress for $700 billion in bank-bailout funds? Because $500 billion felt too small and $1 trillion politically impossible; one staffer, charged with justifying the figure, laughed "at the absurdity of it all." Sorkin's meeting-by-meeting account reveals just how close we came to any number of alternate realities: Morgan Stanley going bankrupt...
With Goldman Sachs employees on track for their best bonus year ever, the investment bank's executives have been making the case that their bounty is good for all of us. "We contribute to growth," CEO Lloyd Blankfein said at a breakfast put on by FORTUNE. "Once the economy starts to turn, we get very involved." In a discussion about morality and markets at St. Paul's Cathedral in London, Goldman Sachs International vice chairman Brian Griffiths, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, described giant paychecks for bankers as an economic necessity. "We have to tolerate the inequality...