Eric Rosengrun of the Boston Fed urges a restrained approach to tapering:
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston President Eric Rosengren, who cast the lone dissent last month against a Fed decision to taper bond buying, said policy makers shouldn’t rush to cut stimulus with inflation below 2 percent.
“With the inflation rate below target and the unemployment rate significantly above target, we believe strongly that monetary policy makers have the opportunity to be patient in removing accommodation,” Rosengren said today on a panel discussion at the American Economic Association’s annual meeting in Philadelphia. “This was one of the motivations for my dissenting vote.”
Consumer prices rose 0.9 percent in November from a year earlier, according to an inflation measure watched by the Fed. The central bank aims for inflation of about 2 percent.
That should get him into the good books of the new chairman!
Yellen, 67, was confirmed today by a 56-26 vote, with 11 Republicans supporting her. She’ll replace Ben S. Bernanke, whose second term as chairman expires Jan. 31, as the Fed trims monthly bond purchases in a first step toward lessening the unprecedented stimulus.
Spend-Every-Penny commented directly on interest rates, rather than getting his puppet to do it:
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says Canada will be under pressure to raise interest rates in 2014, something Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz has signaled won’t happen soon.
In an interview with CTV aired Sunday, Mr. Flaherty said clawed-back stimulus spending by United States’ Federal Reserve will, along with calls by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and International Monetary Fund (IMF), leave Canada under pressure to raise its rates.
“I think the pressure will be there, because the Fed in the U.S. should stop printing money, and taper off as they say. And that should help,” he said, referring to the dialing back of U.S. bond-buying, or quantitative easing. “The OECD and the IMF have both said to Canada we ought to let our interest rates go up a bit. So there’ll be some pressure there for that to happen.”
There’s some interesting commentary on tenure on Bloomberg:
The proximate cause of the most recent explosion is a letter that University of California at Riverside sent to applicants for tenure-track positions in the English department, informing them that five days hence, they would have the opportunity to interview at the annual meeting of the Modern Languages Association. Rebecca Schulman reasonably, if somewhat intemperately, pointed out that for people living on the paltry wages of a grad student, a last-minute plane ticket is a pretty expensive entry fee for a slim chance of a tenure-track job.
Karen at The Professor Is In blog followed up with a long, angry post about the blind eye that tenured faculty turn to the travails of adjuncts and grad students. The title, “How the Tenured are to the Job Market as White People are to Racism” drew more than a little anger, understandably. But her broader point is sound: academia is now one of the most exploitative labor markets in the world. It’s not quite up there with Hollywood and Broadway in taking kids with a dream and encouraging them to waste the formative decade(s) of their work life chasing after a brass ring that they’re vanishingly unlikely to get, then dumping them on the job market with fewer employment prospects than they had at 22. But it certainly seems to be trying to catch up.
…
Professional sports also runs on the tournament model, but with one key difference: athletes find out pretty early that they’re not going to make it — early enough to still have a basically normal life doing something else. As the time it takes to get a PhD has stretched out, academia is looking less and less like athletics, and more and more like the theater. The students would be much better off if they were weeded out earlier, in the application process for PhD programs. A substantial fraction — maybe the majority — of PhD programs really shouldn’t exist.
One thing that’s interesting is the assertion that job prospects for the losers of the tenure competition are worse than they would have been had they not done a PhD. That does not speak well for the concept of a liberal arts education, if true. But all in all, my worry is research standards: there’s a lot of dumb research done and a certain amount of it is fabricated.
It was another good day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts winning 17bp, FixedResets gaining 5bp and DeemedRetractibles up 14bp. A good-sized Performance Highlights table is heavily skewed towards winning Straight Perpetuals. Volume was low.
There was a new issue announced today, so the dime I bet on Friday is safe. Now let’s look for #2!
| HIMIPref™ Preferred Indices These values reflect the December 2008 revision of the HIMIPref™ Indices Values are provisional and are finalized monthly |
|||||||
| Index | Mean Current Yield (at bid) |
Median YTW |
Median Average Trading Value |
Median Mod Dur (YTW) |
Issues | Day’s Perf. | Index Value |
| Ratchet | 0.00 % | 0.00 % | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | -0.4445 % | 2,551.0 |
| FixedFloater | 4.47 % | 3.76 % | 33,511 | 17.76 | 1 | 0.1886 % | 3,754.6 |
| Floater | 2.93 % | 2.95 % | 61,958 | 19.89 | 3 | -0.4445 % | 2,754.4 |
| OpRet | 4.63 % | 2.15 % | 77,723 | 0.39 | 3 | 0.1288 % | 2,665.3 |
| SplitShare | 4.86 % | 4.87 % | 69,987 | 4.45 | 5 | -0.1844 % | 3,016.9 |
| Interest-Bearing | 0.00 % | 0.00 % | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | 0.1288 % | 2,437.2 |
| Perpetual-Premium | 5.63 % | 5.26 % | 130,626 | 4.14 | 13 | 0.0628 % | 2,314.7 |
| Perpetual-Discount | 5.62 % | 5.68 % | 175,114 | 14.38 | 25 | 0.1717 % | 2,353.1 |
| FixedReset | 4.97 % | 3.51 % | 212,812 | 3.40 | 82 | 0.0544 % | 2,477.2 |
| Deemed-Retractible | 5.13 % | 4.38 % | 174,783 | 2.02 | 42 | 0.1398 % | 2,411.2 |
| FloatingReset | 2.60 % | 2.33 % | 242,649 | 4.35 | 5 | -0.0409 % | 2,468.4 |
| Performance Highlights | |||
| Issue | Index | Change | Notes |
| CU.PR.F | Perpetual-Discount | -1.45 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2044-01-06 Maturity Price : 21.14 Evaluated at bid price : 21.14 Bid-YTW : 5.39 % |
| ELF.PR.H | Perpetual-Discount | 1.06 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2044-01-06 Maturity Price : 23.49 Evaluated at bid price : 23.85 Bid-YTW : 5.78 % |
| BAM.PR.N | Perpetual-Discount | 1.17 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2044-01-06 Maturity Price : 19.07 Evaluated at bid price : 19.07 Bid-YTW : 6.28 % |
| CIU.PR.A | Perpetual-Discount | 1.23 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2044-01-06 Maturity Price : 21.39 Evaluated at bid price : 21.39 Bid-YTW : 5.45 % |
| ENB.PR.H | FixedReset | 1.24 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2044-01-06 Maturity Price : 22.21 Evaluated at bid price : 22.85 Bid-YTW : 4.43 % |
| MFC.PR.C | Deemed-Retractible | 1.29 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2025-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 21.15 Bid-YTW : 6.54 % |
| SLF.PR.A | Deemed-Retractible | 1.50 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2025-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 22.36 Bid-YTW : 6.12 % |
| BAM.PF.D | Perpetual-Discount | 1.52 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2044-01-06 Maturity Price : 20.09 Evaluated at bid price : 20.09 Bid-YTW : 6.15 % |
| GWO.PR.N | FixedReset | 1.87 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2025-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 21.80 Bid-YTW : 4.86 % |
| Volume Highlights | |||
| Issue | Index | Shares Traded |
Notes |
| TRP.PR.D | FixedReset | 122,725 | RBC crossed blocks of 49,400 and 49,700, both at 25.20. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2019-04-30 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 25.17 Bid-YTW : 3.82 % |
| IGM.PR.B | Perpetual-Premium | 105,839 | Desjardins crossed 100,000 at 25.35. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2018-12-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 25.30 Bid-YTW : 5.57 % |
| CU.PR.C | FixedReset | 80,780 | RBC crossed 74,600 at 25.65. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2017-06-01 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 25.59 Bid-YTW : 3.40 % |
| BNS.PR.Z | FixedReset | 76,387 | RBC crossed blocks of 25,000 and 34,900, both at 24.00. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2022-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 24.08 Bid-YTW : 3.91 % |
| BNS.PR.R | FixedReset | 62,980 | Will reset at 3.83%. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2014-02-25 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 25.16 Bid-YTW : -2.25 % |
| BAM.PF.D | Perpetual-Discount | 30,268 | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2044-01-06 Maturity Price : 20.09 Evaluated at bid price : 20.09 Bid-YTW : 6.15 % |
| There were 19 other index-included issues trading in excess of 10,000 shares. | |||
| Wide Spread Highlights | ||
| Issue | Index | Quote Data and Yield Notes |
| CIU.PR.C | FixedReset | Quote: 19.86 – 20.64 Spot Rate : 0.7800 Average : 0.5991 YTW SCENARIO |
| TD.PR.G | FixedReset | Quote: 25.23 – 25.69 Spot Rate : 0.4600 Average : 0.3114 YTW SCENARIO |
| CU.PR.F | Perpetual-Discount | Quote: 21.14 – 21.53 Spot Rate : 0.3900 Average : 0.2608 YTW SCENARIO |
| RY.PR.B | Deemed-Retractible | Quote: 25.35 – 25.64 Spot Rate : 0.2900 Average : 0.1764 YTW SCENARIO |
| BNS.PR.O | Deemed-Retractible | Quote: 25.85 – 26.17 Spot Rate : 0.3200 Average : 0.2133 YTW SCENARIO |
| TD.PR.Q | Deemed-Retractible | Quote: 25.91 – 26.19 Spot Rate : 0.2800 Average : 0.1879 YTW SCENARIO |