Ecb joins central bank chorus hinting at faster tightening

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Bitcoin bank Custodia today sued the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City charging they have “unlawfully” delayed for 19 months acting on its application for a master account with the Federal Reserve. The bank, chartered in Wyoming under a crypto-friendly statute passed in 2019 allowing for “special purpose depository institutions,’’ says the master account would reduce its costs and is “vital” to its core mission of providing a bridge between digital assets and the U.S. dollar system. According to the suit, the Federal Reserve has a legal obligation to act within a year and states on its own paperwork that it ordinarily takes just five to seven days to act on a master account application. Custodia’s suit alleges the Kansas City Fed’s processing of its application was moving along until the Spring of 2021, when the main Federal Reserve got involved. The suit seeks to force the … [Read more...] about Bitcoin Bank Custodia Sues Federal Reserve, Demanding Decision On Master Account

(Representative image: Reuters) Dear Reader, A whiff of change wafted through the markets this week. The focus shifted from worrying over inflation to concerns about growth. The advance Purchasing Managers Indices (PMIs) for the current month for the US and the Eurozone showed slowing growth, but while they indicated inflation was cooling in the US, it continued to rise relentlessly in the Eurozone. They also reflected stalling demand and falling business confidence. The New York Fed’s economic model predicted an 80 percent chance of a hard landing for the US. UK consumer confidence hit a record low. In China, housing starts and property transactions reached extreme lows. The worries over an imminent recession in the US, the UK and the Eurozone sent commodity prices sharply lower. Copper prices have moved down dramatically. My colleague Ravi Ananthanarayanan wrote about the dark clouds hovering over steel . Crude oil prices too fell. That dissipated some of the … [Read more...] about MC Pro Weekender | A new narrative

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Stocks continued their descent last week, with the S&P 500 now well into bear market territory at -23% from the high. While most define bear markets as a decline of 20% from the high, some pullbacks just kiss that level or don’t result in widespread carnage across all sectors. What we saw last week certainly qualifies the current situation as a “real” bear market. First, the S&P 500 was down almost 11% during the previous two weeks. Secondly, all sectors participated in the sell-off. Whether it is “profit-taking” or “selling what you can rather than what you want to,” this indiscriminate liquidation is the hallmark of a bear market. For example, energy stocks, which had been almost impervious to the market weakness this year, declined 17% last week! That still leaves energy up 31% and the only sector in the green year-to-date. Utilities, which were only slightly lower before last week, underperformed the market over … [Read more...] about Welcome To The Real Bear Market

Ukrainian service members walk in the industrial area of the city of Sievierodonetsk, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, Ukraine June 20, 2022. (REUTERS/Oleksandr Ratushniak/File Photo) KYIV/POKROVSK, Ukraine — Russian forces have fully occupied Sievierodonetsk, the mayor of the eastern Ukrainian city said on Saturday, confirming Kyiv’s biggest battlefield setback for more than a month, after weeks of some of the war’s bloodiest fighting. Ukraine called its retreat from the city a “tactical withdrawal” to fight from higher ground in Lysychansk on the opposite bank of the Siverskyi Donets river. Pro-Russian separatists said Moscow’s forces were now attacking Lysychansk. The fall of Sievierodonetsk — once home to more than 100,000 people, now a wasteland — was Russia’s biggest victory since capturing the port of Mariupol last month. It transforms the battlefield in the east after weeks in which Moscow’s huge advantage in firepower had yielded only slow gains. Russia will … [Read more...] about Ukrainian city falls to Russia in one of war’s bloodiest fights