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Italy, Austria take bond market to a weird place

For the bond market’s “tale of two cities,” look at Rome and Vienna. Both Italy and Austria have come to the market recently with ultra-long duration debt sales. It’s remarkable that the latter managed to get a 98-year issue away with a 1.17 percent interest rate, but Italy’s 48-year offer this week at a near 3 percent yield is pretty ...

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Trump is defeating his own Nafta replacement

It’s getting harder and harder to imagine the new Nafta successfully ratified during this Congress. And Donald Trump has only himself to blame for that. For one thing, the White House strategy on getting the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement ratified is still incoherent at best. As Bloomberg’s Jenny Leonard reports, there are at least two factions, surrounding Vice President Mike Pence ...

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Conditions are ripe for Fed to spring a dove trap

Market participants will know soon enough whether the US Federal Reserve has led them into another “dove trap” and will need to reel in expectations for interest-rate cuts. The next 48 hours will be critical in markets, with Fed Chairman Jerome Powell appearing twice before Congress for his semi-annual testimony and the release of the minutes from the central bank’s ...

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