NEW YORK (Reuters) – A new exhibition, the first major show in New York of works by Edouard Vuillard for more than 20 years, reveals the life of the French artist and reappraises the significance of his 20th century work.

“Edouard Vuillard, A Painter and his Muses, 1890-1940,” which opens at The Jewish Museum on May 4 and runs through September 23, includes 50 key paintings, as well as prints, photographs and documents.

A quarter of the paintings have never been exhibited publicly in America before.

Vuillard’s artistic career began in La Belle Epoque from 1890 to the end of World War One, and ended with the German occupation of France. His focus was the acute observation of society.

“This is one of those shows that has points of interest for a wide audience. One really can’t understand France in the first half of the 20th century without having some knowledge of Vuillard’s portraiture,” said Stephen Brown, assistant curator at The Jewish Museum.

Brown said there was also tremendous interest in Vuillard as part of a more inclusive reappraisal of how people think about the 20th century and art.

Vuillard is best known for the paintings and prints he did in the last decade of the 1800s when he was part of an avant-garde group of artists known as the Nabis, which means prophets in Hebrew or the enlightened in Arabic.

NEW YORK, April 26 (Reuters) – U.S. seasonally adjusted commercial paper outstanding fell $6.7 billion in the week ended April 25, but non-seasonally adjusted commercial paper outstanding rose $9.9 billion in the week, Fed data released on Thursday showed.

Ray Stone, managing director and economist at Stone & McCarthy Research Associates in Princeton, New Jersey, noted the “significant decline” in seasonally adjusted commercial paper outstanding in the latest week and said it was “the biggest in a while,” driven by a drop in domestic financial commercial paper.

But Stone said that ironically, the data that is not seasonally adjusted could give a truer, less-volatile view of what is going on.

He said the contraction in commercial paper in the fourth quarter of 2008 – when Lehman Bros collapsed – was so sharp and sudden that it appears to have “played havoc” with the seasonal adjustment factors in the ensuing weekly data. So contrary to what one would expect, the seasonal adjustments make the data look more, rather than less, volatile.

“It’s interesting to note that there’s less volatility in the non-seasonally adjusted series than there is on a seasonally adjusted basis; and it’s supposed to be the opposite,” he said.

“On a not-seasonally adjusted basis, total commercial paper issuance rose $9.9 billion and total financial commercial paper outstanding rose $7.8 billion in the week ended April 25.

“The takeaway is we shouldn’t put too much emphasis on the week-to-week wiggles in the seasonally adjusted commercial paper data,” Stone said.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Treasuries prices slid on Friday, with traders taking profits after a recent rally and cautiously squaring positions before key policy gatherings this weekend, the first round of a French election on Sunday, and a Federal Reserve meeting next week.

Finance ministers and central bankers from around the globe gather in Washington this week for the semiannual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Benchmark 10-year Treasury notes were down 5/32, their yields rising to 1.99 percent from 1.97 percent on Thursday.

“Investors came in today and took some profits to lighten positions over the weekend,” said Thomas Simons, vice president and money market economist at Jefferies & Co. in New York.

Besides the IMF and World Bank meetings this weekend, the Federal Reserve holds a policy meeting on April 24-25.

“With the FOMC coming up on Wednesday, investors want to reduce their risk,” Simons said.

At the March FOMC meeting, “the FOMC made the tiniest little upgrade to the economic assessment and the market got crushed,” Simons said.

NEW YORK, April 19 (Reuters) – U.S. Treasuries prices rose on Thursday after higher than forecast new U.S. jobless claims appeared to increase prospects for accommodative monetary policy in the months and years ahead.

The benchmark 10-year note rose 5/32 on the news, its yield easing to 1.96 percent from 1.98 percent late on Wednesday.

New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits fell last week, but from an upwardly revised number a week earlier, the government said, leaving new claims at 386,000, above Reuters consensus forecast of 370,000.

Economists said the figures could hurt hopes of a pick-up in job creation in April after March’s slowdown. The four-week moving average for new claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends, rose 5,500 to 374,750 and support talk of more monetary easing, a bullish development for bonds.

“The prospects for easing are on the table and are always going to be on the table, but the likelihood is slowing moving its way north again,” said Sean Incremona, economist at 4CAST LTD in New York. “Euro zone worries, U.S. economy worries — it doesn’t look like it’s going to be a risk-on day.”

U.S. Treasuries were already holding steady when the initial jobless claims data came out following closely watched auctions of French and Spanish debt overseas, said Thomas Simons, vice president and money market economist at Jefferies & Co. in New York.

France and Spain sold all the bonds they wanted at auction on Thursday, albeit for Spain at the cost of rising yields, indicating growing concerns the government will not be able to tame its deficit.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Treasuries prices retreated on Tuesday as stock market gains and a better-than-expected bid for a Spanish short-term debt auction curbed the bid for safe-haven government debt.

Treasuries prices rose on Monday when the euro zone crisis seemed to heat up after the yield on Spain’s key 10-year debt rose to a five month high above 6 percent, a level seen as unsustainable.

But on Tuesday, a good reception for a Spanish debt auction spelled relief. Spain sold a more-than-planned 3.2 billion euros ($4.2 billion) of 12- and 18-month bills, drawing good demand from domestic banks. Yields rose sharply as expected.

The result knocked safe-haven German Bunds off their highs and sent debt prices lower.

The better auction results encouraged a risk on trade and stocks advanced, aided by corporate earnings results.

But losses in the Treasury market were modest. Nervousness remains ahead of a longer-term Spanish bond auction on Thursday since Spain is seen as the potential new source of contagion in the euro zone debt crisis.

“We have a 10-year note auction on Thursday in Spain and that will be very important,” said Wilmer Stith, a portfolio manager of Wilmington Trust Broad Market Bond Fund, part of Wilmington Trust Investment Advisors with about $15 billion in assets under management. “Spanish yields are below 6 percent which is somewhat encouraging going into Thursday’s auction.”

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve’s outstanding central bank liquidity swaps program has shrunk to its lowest level since early December, but if conditions in European unsecured bank funding markets deteriorate, demand for those swaps could rise.

According to the Fed’s latest balance sheet update, outstanding dollar liquidity swaps fell to $32 billion in the week ended Wednesday.

But money market players are preparing for a new round of financial stress as concern over euro zone banks’ exposure to Spanish and Italian government debt grows and borrowing costs for the two countries rise.

If conditions in European unsecured bank funding markets deteriorate as a result, demand for the Fed’s dollar liquidity swaps may rise, said Barclays Capital market analyst Joseph Abate.

Data released Friday showed Spanish banks borrowed a record 316.3 billion euros from the European Central Bank in March because market funding was more expensive.

Italian banks also borrowed 270.1 billion euros, earlier data showed.

The Fed has coordinated with the European Central Bank to provide swap lines to offer dollar liquidity to European banks at times of stress in money markets.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Lili Chookasian, a renowned contralto who sang at the Metropolitan Opera for more than two decades and taught at the Yale School of Music, has died at her home in Connecticut. She was 90.

Chookasian, who died on Tuesday, enjoyed a long career that included 290 performances with The Metropolitan Opera from 1962 through 1986, and she appeared with many of the world’s major conductors, symphony orchestras, opera and recording companies.

Her debut with the Met in 1962′s “La Gioconda” earned a strong review in Musical America by John Ardoin who called her voice “as beautiful as it is big” and her musical intelligence “just as impressive.”

Writing in Opera News after the singer’s death, Brian Kellow noted Chookasian was a woman of small stature. “But the sound that emerged from that body was enormous – dark, with a power and cut that were exhilarating and, when she sang Menotti’s ‘The Medium’ or Ulrica in ‘Un Ballo in Maschera,’ quite terrifying.”

She specialized in the concert contralto repertoire: Mahler’s Second Symphony, Das Lied von der Erde and Kindertotenlieder; Verdi’s Requiem; Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky.

After retiring from the stage in 1986, Chookasian joined the voice faculty of the Yale School of Music in 1985. In 2002, she was awarded the Sanford Medal, the school’s highest honor. She was named Professor Emerita in 2010.

“Lili was a source of joy and inspiration to all of us and to countless generations of students,” Robert Blocker, Dean of the Yale School of Music, said in a posting on the school’s website. “Her life exemplified extraordinary gifts of love, compassion, and grace for her family, friends and colleagues. We were enlarged by her presence, and we celebrate the gifts she freely gave to each of us and to our School.”

NEW YORK, April 9 (Reuters) – Disappointing U.S. job growth reported last Friday favored safe-haven assets and supported short-term rates futures contracts on Monday as another round of large-scale bond purchases to support the U.S. economy looked more likely.

On Friday, government data showed U.S. payrolls grew by 120,000 jobs last month, fewer than the 203,000 new jobs predicted by economists. The jobless rate fell to a three-year low of 8.2 percent, largely because discouraged workers stopped looking for jobs.

The sluggish pace of job creation since the end of the worst recession in 70 years has remained a top concern for the Fed and has fueled speculation whether the U.S. central bank would undertake a third round of quantitative easing, nicknamed QE3, to prevent the economic recovery from fading.

The Dec 2014 Eurodollar contract traded unchanged at 98.835. On Friday it recorded its biggest one-day rise since Jan 25 when it rose 17.5 basis points.

This implied traders see the unsecured funding cost for three-month dollars for banks and Wall Street at the end of 2014 at 1.165 percent.

The U.S. Treasury sold $31 billion three-month bills at a high rate of 0.085 percent, awarding 51.12 percent of the bids at the high.

“Recent auctions had been aggressively bid, but with the larger-than-expected announcement of 4-week bills, buyers took a small step back and the 4.2 ratio of bids received over those accepted was the weakest since August 8,” said Thomas Simons, money market economist at Jefferies & Co. in New York.

NEW YORK, April 4 (Reuters) – U.S. Treasuries rallied on Wednesday as stock market losses and the largest bond selloff in three weeks in the prior session drew buyers for safe-haven U.S. government debt.

Treasuries prices fell on Tuesday when minutes from the Federal Reserve’s last meeting showed policymakers less eager to add more monetary stimulus as the U.S. economy improves.

That sense of restraint was evident in Europe on Wednesday as central bankers resisted German pressure to signal an exit from recent accommodation, but effected no new stimulus despite downside risks to the economic outlook.

But jitters about a potential flare-up in the euro zone debt crisis after a weak Spanish debt auction caused spreads to widen between the debt of Spain and Italy and safe-haven German bunds – and also enhanced the bid for safe-haven Treasuries.

“The central banks didn’t provide any help and the European story is looking a little bit worse, hence the selloff in stocks and the rally in bonds,” said Rob Robis, head of fixed income macro strategies at ING Investment Management US, with $160-billion in assets under management.

The bond rally was also “just a little bit of a payback for yesterday’s move down which was quite abrupt,” he said.

With major Wall Street stock indexes down more than 1 percent, a safe-haven bid helped drive benchmark 10-year Treasury notes up 16/32, letting their yields ease to 2.25 percent from 2.31 percent on Tuesday.