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Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is to remain as head of the department, which she reportedly agreed to do at the request of President Joe Biden, according to a report from Bloomberg. White House officials familiar with the details told Bloomberg that Biden asked for her to stay in the role in mid-December, according to one official, as the president is preparing to have turnovers throughout his Cabinet. This comes as questions arose about how long Yellen would stay in the Biden administration and a potential fight is brewing in the Republican-controlled U.S. House over the looming debt ceiling and the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal government is on track to max out on its $31.4 trillion borrowing authority as soon as this month, starting the clock on an expected standoff between President Joe Biden and the new House Republican majority that will test both parties’ ability to navigate a divided Washington, with the fragile global economy at stake. Once the government bumps up against the cap — it could happen any time in the next few weeks or longer — the Treasury Department will be unable to issue new debt without congressional action. The department plans to deploy what are...

Lightning strikes! The 12-month-ahead probability of recession spiked in November across all of yield curve models. The deterioration in the outlook was most significant in the one that relies on the 3-month/18-month forward spread — Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s favored model — which now sees a 59% chance of recession next year, compared with almost 0% six months ago. Yield curve models see the strongest signal for recession starting around September 2023. We assess the probability of recession in the months ahead by looking at a suite of models: three yield curve models — which take as their sole input...

The start of a new week and the US Treasury 10-year yield is up 10 basis points, always a noteworthy change. And with it, the 30-year mortgage rate should climb. Meanwhile, the political elite party in Washington DC as the US National Debt hit $31.4 TRILLION and unfunded liabilities (the amount that the political elites promised Americans) hit $173 TRILLION for a grand total of … $204 TRILLION. Since Biden/Pelosi/Schumer are in a lame duck session with Republicans taking the House in January, let’s see if Republicans can halt the insanity in Washington DC. Be that as it may, Fed...

Do I hear Drums Along The Potomac or East River?? The hawkish drumbeat from central bankers is raising fears of a downturn, with global bonds joining US peers in signaling a recession, as a gauge measuring the worldwide yield curve inverted for the first time in at least two decades. The US Treasury 10Y-2Y yield curve, on the other hand, has been inverted for 107 straight months. And in Europe, 10-year sovereign yields are dropping like a paralyzed falcon. The world and US yield curves are pointing to trouble. And drums along the Potomac (DC) and East River (NYC).

The US economy is in “The Deep.” Deep into yield curve inversion, that is. The US Treasury 10Y-2Y yield curve swam deeper into inverse at -75 basis points. The deepest inversion since just before The Great Recession and housing market crash.

MARKET EXTRA The Federal Reserve on Friday confirmed what many investors were saying for some time: the $24 trillion Treasury market has been experiencing low levels of market liquidity in recent months. The central bank has been rapidly increasing interest rates since March as part of a fight to bring inflation down from a 40-year high. The hope has been that such steps can cool consumer demand enough to tame prices, without throwing the economy into a painful recession, or spark a financial crisis. But since May, cracks in liquidity in Treasurys, the biggest, deepest part of the U.S. bond...

Treasury-market liquidity is drying up and it’s going to get worse. The problem is bigger than it seems. Liquidity in the U.S. bond market, the world’s largest, has been deteriorating since the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates earlier this year. The end of massive monthly bond purchases followed by the start of quantitative tightening has worsened the problem as the Fed tries to extricate itself from Treasury and mortgage markets after buying a third of each. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently said she was “worried about a loss of adequate liquidity in the market,” as Treasury supply booms to...

While $1 billion of the military aide would go to Ukraine, the rest will be divided among Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. It comes after Ukraine's top military chief warned Wednesday that there could be a 'limited' nuclear war between Russia and the West.

A top House Republican investigator has accused the Treasury Department of hiding information that could be damaging to Hunter Biden and is investigating if it is being done to protect President Joe Biden. Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the ranking member on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, sent letters to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in May and June and argued that the Treasury Department’s new response continued to stonewall his efforts to get answers on Hunter Biden’s financial transactions linked to China, Russia, and elsewhere. “It’s unacceptable that the Treasury Department continues to run cover for the Biden family and...

The US Treasury Department has formally rejected a Republican lawmaker’s bid to examine “suspicious activity reports” on first son Hunter Biden - because the request wasn’t okayed by Democrats in Congress. “It’s unacceptable,” Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, wrote Saturday on the committee minority’s website. “The Treasury Department continues to run cover for the Biden family and possibly hide information about whether Joe Biden benefited financially from his family’s business transactions.” Comer has been trying for months to wrangle the reports, known as SARs - anti-money laundering reports generated by banks that flag suspiciously...

The Internal Revenue Service 'mistakenly' posted the names, contact data and financial information from about 120,000 taxpayers' retirement accounts. The US Treasury Department determined that a human coding error allowed the confidential information to be posted on the IRS' website before it was taken down, the Wall Street Journal reported. Among the information published were the names, contact information and finances of individuals who submitted 990-T forms regarding their IRA plans. On Friday, the Treasury assured Congress that Social Security numbers, full income information and other key pieces of financial data were not published and that those affected would be...

KABUL. July 27 (Interfax) - United States officials met with a delegation of the Taliban at an international conference on Afghanistan in Tashkent, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Thomas West said on social media. "Today, Rina Amiri (U.S. Special Envoy for Afghan Women, Girls & Human Rights) and I joined a range of Afghanistan envoys for a conference in Tashkent to discuss the way ahead at a difficult moment for millions of Afghans," West said. A senior U.S. inter-agency team will continue "pragmatic engagement" with the Taliban on Wednesday, he said. The U.S. Department of State said earlier that...

WASHINGTON—House Committee on Oversight and Reform Ranking Member James Comer (R-Ky.) today renewed his request to Department of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen for information regarding Hunter Biden and other Biden associates and family members’ suspicious foreign business transactions flagged by U.S. banks and called for all documents, communications, and records related to these transactions to be preserved. The Biden Administration has publicly asserted it provides suspicious activity reports (SARs) to Congress, but it is refusing to provide any reports generated for the Biden family and Biden associates to Ranking Member Comer. “The Biden Administration is restricting Congress’ access to SARs,...

A strange narrative of “defeated inflation” is circulating in the mainstream in the wake of the Federal Reserve’s recent 75bps interest rate hike, but we’ve seen this kind of false optimism from the Fed and the media before. Economists calling for a deflationary reaction might be holding their breath for a while as price inflation continues to climb for many months to come. This consequence is reinforced by the decline in foreign investment in US Treasury bonds. Higher interest rates and the promise of increasing yields have not been enough to lure outside investors into treasury markets, with treasuries now...

With Joe Biden's polling numbers in the tank and runaway inflation the number one issue on voters' minds, in steps Biden's Treasury Secretary, and former Chair of the Federal Reserve, to take one for the team.Washington (CNN) US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen admitted Tuesday that she failed to anticipate how long high inflation would continue to plague American consumers as the Biden administration works to contain a mounting political liability."I think I was wrong then about the path that inflation would take," Yellen told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room" when asked about her comments from 2021 that inflation...

Another 10 basis point jumps in Treasury yields, this time at the 2-year Treasury Note. The 10Y-2Y Treasury slope just flattened to +26 BPS. Another step in rising mortgage rates! Washington DC is anything but Harmony Hall.

If you’re eyeing ways to fight swelling prices, I bonds, an inflation-protected and nearly risk-free asset, may now be even more appealing.I bonds are paying a 9.62% annual rate through October 2022, the highest yield since being introduced in 1998, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced Monday.The hike is based on the March consumer price index data, with annual inflation growing by 8.5%, the U.S. Department of Labor reported.

Mortgage applications are going down as expectations of monetary tightening send mortgage rates soaring. Mortgage applications decreased 6.3 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending April 1, 2022. The Refinance Index decreased 10 percent from the previous week and was 62 percent lower than the same week one year ago. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 3 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index decreased 3 percent compared with the previous week and was 9 percent lower than the same week one year...

Wasting away again in Biden/Pelosiville, looking for my lost inexpensive gasoline and food. Some people say that Putin is to blame, but we know its Biden/Pelosi’s fault. The US Treasury 10Y-2Y yield curve just inverted, generally a precursor to a recession. Called it, nothing but net! Meanwhile, today’s jobs report shows that Bidenflation is crushing America’s wage growth. While average hourly earnings grew to 5.6% YoY, we are still seeing inflation growing at 7.9% YoY meaning that inflation is reeling hurting the middle class and lower-income households. The good news is that the U-3 unemployment rate fell to 3.6%, almost...