cletus wrote:Bond yields fall through the ice. Not what you want to see if you're a bull.
David Rosenberg says that buying the 10 year notes is Bernanke's next move to get the banks off their asses.
"People need to be convinced that once they make the decision to finance a purchase that they won't run into a period of rising rates that could impede their debt-servicing capabilities. This is where the Fed can play a role in influencing expectations and it is critical (this is particularly true for borrowers who are up for variable-terms mortgages).
Look, we know that: (i) Bernanke is a disciple of Milton Friedman, and (ii) one of Friedman's classic pieces of economic research pertained to the 'permanent income hypothesis', which postulated that it is changes that are deemed to be permanent, not temporary, that induce a permanent change in economic behavior. This is why the "permanent" Bush income tax cuts in 2000 worked so much better than the temporary rebates unveiled in early 2008.
Therefore, at the margin, in order to do even more to solve the ongoing depression in the housing market, which continues to pose as a dead-weight drag on the entire economy, it may well behoove the Fed in its next round of stimulus, whenever that may occur ( it will, just not at 1,330 on the S&P 500), to signal to the public its intent to take down and hold down the most critical interest rate of all for the mortgage market — and that is the 10-year note."