The Reserve Bank of Australia was among the earliest central banks to begin raising interest rates, which made sense since the Australian economy managed to avoid a downturn during the Great World Recession.  Rate hikes of 25 basis points each in October, November and December 2009 were followed by similarly-sized increases in March, April, May [...]

The National Bank of Romania as anticipated left its key interest rate at 6.25%, the level since May 2010.  The last rate change, a cut of 25 basis points, was undertaken a year ago in May 2010 and culminated a series of nine reductions implemented from February 2009 and adding up to 400 basis points [...]

The Reserve Bank of India raised its repo rate by 50 basis points to 7.25%.  There have been nine increases since the first one in March 2010, three by 50 basis points including today’s and six by 25 basis points including the previous three moves in March, January, and November.  Monetary policy makers left reserve [...]

Three factors are weighing on investors’ appetite for risk: the possibility of Al Qaeda reprisals, an unexpectedly sharp drop in Britain’s purchasing managers index, and a greater-than-anticipated interest rate hike in India. The yen rose 0.5% against the dollar and is again stronger than 81.0.  The dollar otherwise advanced by 1.0% against sterling, 0.7% relative [...]

Since September 2001, U.S. consumer prices have climbed 25.5% or 2.4% per annum.  Core inflation has risen 20.3% or 2.0% annualized.  These are marginally above what central bankers widely define as price stability and by U.S. standards of the three previous decades quite exemplary.  Monetary hawks would argue that price stability is a critical pre-condition [...]

The U.S. minus Euroland PMI spread narrowed to +2.4 points in April from 3.7 points in March.  The spread’s width has lately been pretty trendless, although oscillating to a fair degree.  Its  width changed direction in each of the past six months.  It also was +2.4 points in February and averaged +2.7 from October through [...]