WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama on Thursday issued a fresh call to China to embrace a “market oriented” exchange rate for the yuan, saying such a move would help rebalance the global economy.
Obama made his latest foray into the delicate US-China relationship in a major speech on trade, saying the world needed to rebalance the [...]

China, dollar, forex, spending, US Hide

WASHINGTON: The US government registered a record budget deficit in February despite rising revenues, setting a record 17th consecutive month in the red, the Treasury said on Wednesday.
The February budget shortfall was 220.909 billion dollars, a 14 percent rise from a year ago and the biggest monthly gap on record.
The reading, however, was slightly better [...]

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The political consensus may be that President Barack Obama’s handling of the economy has been weak. The judgment of money in all its forms has been overwhelmingly positive, and that may be the more lasting appraisal.
One year after U.S stocks hit their post-financial-crisis low on March 9, 2009, the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 Index has risen [...]

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WASHINGTON: The US Federal Reserve is expected to hike benchmark interest rates within six months as the economy recovers from one of the most brutal recessions, a poll among economists showed Monday.
When asked what monetary policy posture they would prefer in the next six months, 63 per cent of 203 economists of the National Association [...]

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President Barack Obama needs to grasp Southeast Asia’s economic potential and help boost U.S. investment when he travels to Indonesia three weeks from now, economic ministers from the region said.
“There’s still a lack of awareness in the U.S., a misperception that we have to address,” Indonesian Trade Minister Mari Pangestu said in an interview in Putrajaya, Malaysia, [...]

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A bipartisan group of 15 U.S. senators Thursday insisted China’s currency practices are effectively a subsidy and urged Commerce Secretary Gary Locke to consider action against Chinese imports.
“There can be no doubt that China’s policy of large-scale intervention in the exchange markets and the significant undervaluation of its currency acts as a subsidy to Chinese [...]

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NEW YORK – Wall Street stocks rallied Thursday as sentiment was lifted by an EU pledge to help Greece stave off a debt crisis and better-than-expected US labour market data.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average overcame a weak start and climbed 105.81 points (1.05 percent) to close at 10,144.19, rebounding from modest losses Wednesday.
The Nasdaq composite [...]

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Worries about Greece, its problems far from solved, have temporarily been put to the side, as traders shift focus to the more mundane January retail sales report Friday.
January sales are expected to come in with a slight gain of 0.3 percent, compared to December’s 0.3 percent decline. Economists forecast that if autos are excluded, sales [...]

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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke Wednesday detailed how the U.S. central bank will begin to wean the economy off its extraordinary stimulus, even as he stressed it was not yet time to do so.

Bernanke said the Fed would likely begin tightening monetary policy by removing cash from the financial system before it turns to raise [...]

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Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) — Since its inception, the derivatives market has echoed the fairground hawkers’ call to “scream if you want to go faster.” Among the new derivatives, collateralized-debt obligations (CDOs) were particularly hot.
To make a CDO, bankers bundle together a package of other kinds of securities, such as corporate bonds, asset-backed securities (ABSs) or [...]

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