EURO GOVT-Bund futures pare losses after ECB comments
Aug 20 (Reuters) – German Bund futures pared losses on Monday, drifting higher after the European Central Bank sought to quash speculation about what shape its planned bond-buying programme will take.
http://jlne.ws/Sdaok8

TREASURIES-Prices steady to higher after ECB remark on bond plan
By Chris Reese, Reuters
U.S. Treasury debt prices were steady to slightly higher on Monday with safe-haven support after the European Central Bank squashed speculation on a plan to contain the euro zone debt crisis.
http://jlne.ws/SdncXF

The Unrepentant and Unreformed Bankers
This article first appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle
Money laundering. Price fixing. Bid rigging. Securities fraud. Talking about the mob? No, unfortunately.
Wall Street. These days, the business sections of newspapers read like rap sheets. GE Capital, JPMorgan Chase, UBS, Wells Fargo and Bank of America tied to a bid-rigging scheme to bilk cities and towns out of interest earnings.
http://jlne.ws/SdaUhX

CME, With U.K. Exchange, Plans Push Into Europe
By JACOB BUNGE, WSJ.com
CME Group Inc. CME +0.37% will consider tackling the near-duopoly in Europe’s listed-derivatives sector, though a new London-based exchange will focus initially on a currency-futures market untapped by European rivals, its chief executive said Monday.
http://jlne.ws/Sd9TX3

Crude oil lower as ECB hopes dim
By Forexpros  
Forexpros – Crude oil futures turned lower on Monday, as market sentiment was hit after the European Central Bank dismissed reports that that it may set a cap on peripheral euro zone bond yields. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light sweet crude futures for delivery in September traded at USD95.69 a barrel during U.S. morning trade, down 0.36%.
http://jlne.ws/SdbV9U

Icap and LSE partner on repo benchmarks
Tom Osborn, Financial News
Icap, the world’s largest interdealer broker, is partnering with the London Stock Exchange to create a new series of indices that will track interbank borrowing costs. The move comes against a backdrop of calls for greater transparency in Europe’s interbank funding markets in the wake of the Libor-fixing scandal.
http://jlne.ws/SddoNg

UPDATE 3-Chile GDP growth quickens pace in Q2, rates seen held
Reuters
Chile’s seasonally adjusted
economic growth picked up in the second quarter from the first
quarter to 1.7 percent buoyed by domestic demand, the central
bank said on Monday, but the bank is still seen keeping interest
rates steady in the short term.
http://jlne.ws/SdgoJE

Indian Rate Cut Will Depend on Inflation Easing, Gokarn Says
By Kartik Goyal, Bloomberg
India can only consider cutting interest rates when inflation starts to show “very sustainable signs of moving down,” Reserve Bank of India Deputy Governor Subir Gokarn said.
“Our position on that is very clear,” Gokarn said in Goa yesterday. “It’s always balancing between inflation risks and growth risks” and price gains are currently the “dominant” threat, he said.
http://jlne.ws/SdgCjU

At NYSE, New CIO Leaps Into Action
WSJ.com blogs
Peter Leukert had to make important strategic decisions as soon as he started in his role as CIO of NYSE Euronext in April, assuming command of a number of initiatives in various stages of development, each of which were integral to major corporate objectives.
http://jlne.ws/SdihWH

Is the Federal Reserve Doing Enough?
By Tim Duy, Wall Street Pit
Joe Gagnon says no:
For more than two years, the Fed has dragged its feet and resisted the obvious need for more aggressive action…A large majority of the committee projects [pdf] that inflation will be below target over the next two and a half years. If they assign any weight to their employment objective, they should be willing to accept inflation at least modestly above target in order to get a better outcome on employment.
http://jlne.ws/SdlfdO

Junk Bonds: Wall Street’s Newest Bubble?
By Christopher Matthews, TIME
In an effort to nurse the long-ailing global economy, central banks around the world have maintained near-zero short-term interest rates for many years now. The Federal Reserve has even gone so far as to buy up billions of dollars worth of government and mortgage bonds and hold them on its on balance sheet, in order to hold down long term interest rates too.
http://jlne.ws/SdlHZB

Why Investors See Low Inflation for the Next 10 Years
By Chris Farrell, Bloomberg Businessweek
Where’s the inflation? Ever since the Federal Reserve Board embraced quantitative easing and other extraordinary measures, critics have charged that rapid inflation was just around the corner. The alarmist calls to worry seem reasonable. A generation of investors has been tutored by Wall Street research that the classic explanation of inflation is “too much money chasing too few goods.”
http://jlne.ws/SdmwRZ

Most Of US Labor Market Damage Triggered By Recession Is Reversible: NY Fed
By IBTimes Staff Reporter
The majority of the damage to the U.S. labor market triggered be the Great Recession is reversible, according a research compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
http://jlne.ws/Sdp9Di

Vice president candidate Ryan’s Fed policy views well outside mainstream
Business Recorder
Paul Ryan doesn’t quite want to end the Fed. But if Mitt Romney’s pick for vice president had his way, he might curb the central bank’s powers enough to make it harder for policymakers to respond aggressively to economic downturns.
http://jlne.ws/SdqzxC

Fannie Mae to sell $3 bln bills on Wednesday
Aug 20 (Reuters) – Fannie Mae, the largest U.S. home funding source, said on Monday it will sell $3 billion of benchmark bills on Wednesday, Aug. 22.
http://jlne.ws/Sdrz51

Treasury changes Fannie and Freddie bailout deal
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer
The government is changing the terms of its bailout agreement with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in a way that will shrink the holdings of the two mortgage giants more quickly and will require payment to the government of all quarterly profits the companies earn.
http://jlne.ws/Sds5zR