Professional Documents
Culture Documents
• Washington slow on stimulus spending – while a good portion of the stimulus package has been
spent already (transfer payments and tax breaks), the infrastructure component (~$230B) has been
slower to see disbursements (just $66B has been paid out already) – WSJ
• China GDP surpasses Japan – China surpassed Japan as the world’s second‐largest economy last
quarter, capping the nation’s three‐decade rise from Communist isolation to emerging superpower. ‐
Mr. O’neill of Goldman Sachs (the man who coined the term BRICs) forecasts china will surpass US GDP in
2023, on July 10 at 10:23 am.
• US Eco Growth – Eco growth concerns returning to US economy after being centered on Europe
for the past few months. A sharp widening in the U.S. trade deficit has forced economists to revise down
Q2 GDP estimates. Reuters
• Treasuries – some indications the recent buying has been forced or mechanical, related to
mortgage‐related hedging; PIMCO recently disclosed that it cut its US gov’t holdings in its flagship Total
Return fund in Jul from 63% to 54% ‐ Barron’s (recall last week that the FT reported how HFs have
become much more active participants in the TSY market)
• Average US credit score has surged to 704 in Jul, a level it hasn’t been at since ’98; consumers
continue to shun debt of all kinds as the savings rate rises and balance sheets are repaired – CNBC
• Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan spoke on Bloomberg Television’s
“Conversations With Judy Woodruff” in an interview airing today. Some excerpts: “An ever‐increasing
part of the American economy in the last year or so has moved under the aegis of government. And
because it is very difficult to forecast what the actions of government is going to be, that creates an
attitude on the part of the business community, which is retrenchment, and you can see it
everywhere.”“Banks are not lending freely, and the reason they are not lending freely is they do not
believe they are going to get their money back.
• On Friday, serial dissenter Tom Hoenig of the Kansas City Fed expanded on his objections to
near‐zero interest rates, but he failed to acknowledge the slowdown in economic growth since April. It’s
hard to argue with the logic of gradually returning the fed funds rate to normal levels as the economy
reaccelerates in the expansion, but the rest of the Fed apparently wants to wait until the economy is
actually reaccelerating. – FTN Financial
• Gen. David H. Petraeus says the U.S. strategy to win the nearly nine‐year‐old war in Afghanistan
is “fundamentally sound.” In a wide‐ranging, hour‐long interview with The Washington Post, he said he
sees incipient signs of progress in parts of the volatile south, in new initiatives to create community
defense forces and in nascent steps to reintegrate low‐level insurgents who want to stop fighting. ‐ WP
• Nearly one year after Edward M. Kennedy’s death, prominent Democrats in Washington and
Massachusetts are promoting his widow as the party’s best shot at winning back the Senate seat he held
for nearly five decades. But the prospect of Vicki Kennedy's candidacy ‐‐ an idea she has seemed to bat
down ‐‐ is fast becoming a source of family tension. – WP