Weekly Reports | Sep 16 2011
By Greg Peel
Tonight the finance ministers of European Union members will hold a scheduled regular meeting in Warsaw. While normally little more than vague commitments and motherhood statements come from these meetings, this particular meeting is unusual in that US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has been invited into the fold. Given Geithner was, in his role as then president of the New York Fed in 2008, instrumental in the development and implementation of the US TARP policy enacted to prevent financial market collapse in the wake of Lehman, there is growing anticipation some form of TARP-like policy may also be proposed for European banks.
It is unlikely, but not impossible, that Wall Street will learn more tonight. By Monday, however, the world may be able to breathe a sigh of interim relief. We can only now wait. For more discussion on a potential Euro-TARP see today's Overnight Report and our feature story What To Do About Europe?
Tonight in the US brings the latest fortnightly consumer sentiment index from Michigan Uni along with July's measure of international capital flows. It is also a “quadruple witching” expiry for stock futures and options which can often create its own volatility.
Next week US housing is back on the radar, with releases of housing start, existing home sale and FHFA house price data along with the NAHB housing market sentiment index. The Conference Board will also publish its leading index.
Notwithstanding what might transpire in Europe beforehand, Wednesday will see the Fed issue a new statement of monetary policy – call it the “QE3 statement”. While a month ago Wall Street may have been sure some form of QE3 would be announced next week, everything is up in the air given the European situation at present. In isolation, the US economy does not appear to be plunging into recession at this point, suggesting fresh Fed policy will likely be more about adjusting rather than expanding its balance sheet a la QE2.
The minutes of the September RBA meeting will be released next Tuesday which may provide more insight into why the central bank remains rather hawkish when all about are feeling very dovish.
New Zealand will release its June quarter GDP result on Thursday.
The Wallabies will embarrass Ireland on Saturday night.
For a more comprehensive preview of next week's events, please refer to "The Monday Report", published each Monday morning. For all economic data release dates, ex-div dates and times and other relevant information, please refer to the FNArena Calendar.
