James Saft

James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Don’t count on the euro zone getting a leg up from the giants of the emerging markets.

The idea that Brazil, Russia, India and China will use some of their massive foreign reserves to buy up the bonds of weak euro zone countries has a certain symmetry, but it is unlikely to happen and even more unlikely to work if it does.

Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega on Tuesday confirmed that the so-called BRIC nations will discuss help for Europe when they meet next week in Washington in the run-up to the IMF meeting on Sept. 24.

The idea, which is internally consistent at least, is that the exporting BRICs can save themselves pain if they step in where private investors are unwilling to and help to stave off a monetary union and banking crisis.

While you can bet the BRICs will use this possibility as a bargaining chip, as well they should, this is a crisis of insufficient global demand and too much debt and this particular maneuver will do little to nothing to address those issues.

James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — It looks as if patriotism is the last refuge of bankers.

Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JP Morgan Chase, on Monday inveighed against new Basel III banking regulations which will impose higher minimum levels of capital adequacy on banks.

“I’m very close to thinking the United States shouldn’t be in Basel any more. I would not have agreed to rules that are blatantly anti-American,” Dimon told the Financial Times. “Our regulators should go there and say: ‘If it’s not in the interests of the United States, we’re not doing it’.”

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – It is clear we are living in a strange world when Switzerland, that most euro-skeptic of nations, has tied its fortunes to the success, in its current fragile form, of the euro zone common currency.

The Swiss National Bank on Tuesday shocked the markets when it announced it was imposing, unilaterally and with immediate effect, a cap on the value of its currency against the euro, seeking to shield its economic competitiveness from the massive flows seeking safe haven amid doubts over the euro zone.

This amounts to an extreme expression of confidence in the euro zone’s ability to sort itself out, because if it cannot this policy will fail expensively. It may even fail if the euro does not but if worries about it generate enough of a flow of cash that the SNB turns and flees.

James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — With European banks facing mounting funding problems, it is time once again for the tail to try to wag the dog.

Democracy or not, procedure or not, principles or not, a funding crisis could soon put euro zone policy makers in a position where they either take radical steps to resolve their debt crisis, or face having their decisions made for them by events which would overwhelm their banking systems.

That, at least, is the impression given by recent comments from leading bankers. I’d love to tell you they are bluffing, but I am not so sure.

James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — If you thought you’d found someplace that was insulated from the economic weakness coming from the U.S. and Europe, well, chances are you are wrong.

Around the world, manufacturing is taking a hit, and the rate of slowing and the suddenness of the move pose a threat not just to the economy, but to financial market valuations.

Take Canada, long held up as a model of economic and financial system management, and supposedly well positioned due to great demand from emerging markets for its natural resources.

James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala., Aug 30 – In an unintended irony for a continent with a great public transport infrastructure Europe’s debt rescue plans are turning into a train wreck. Consider that as Greek two-year interest rates stood at 45 percent on Monday, officials and interests in the euro zone descended into an unseemly mix of squabbling over assets, denying the undeniable and disagreeing about first principles. Even as weak as recent U.S. economic data has been, these fractures, which imply heightened risk of a bank-centered market crisis, are surely the main source of the recent extreme financial volatility.

Most interesting was the intervention by newly minted International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde on Saturday who warned “developments this summer have indicated we are in a dangerous new phase.”

Lagarde went on to say that Europe’s banks need “urgent recapitalization,” using public funds if necessary, and advised that one option would be to use the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF), or some other vehicle, to inject capital into banks directly.

James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

HUNTSVILLE — The best reason to sell risk assets is perhaps that the best reason to buy them in are hopes for what one man will say on Friday in a mountain resort.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s much anticipated speech at the Jackson Hole economics conference is the subject of fervent wish-casting by investors hoping for another dose of central bank adrenaline, either in the form of more asset purchases, a move to entice banks to lend, or possibly a change in the composition of the bonds the central bank already owns.

Relief measures may be offered, and a rally of risky assets will ensue, but even if they do, Bernanke faces one really powerful opposing force: a wall of money coming the other direction in the aftermath of the credit downgrade of the U.S.

James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

For Libyans the fall of Muammar Gaddafi comes about 40 years too late, but from the point of view of the global economy it is not a moment too soon.

The apparent end of the reign of Gaddafi, whose whereabouts were unknown on Monday after rebels took Tripoli, will take pressure off of the price of energy, especially in hard-hit parts of southern Europe, and thus ultimately may remove roadblocks to further easing by either the European Central Bank or Federal Reserve.

Brent crude futures, the key European measure, fell by as much as 3 percent on Monday following the taking of Tripoli by Libyan rebels before settling about 1 percent down, while the U.S. measure rose about a third of a percent.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala,  – We’ve grown accustomed to central banks swooping to the rescue when events overtake governments’ ability to address economic and market fractures.

There are good reasons to wonder if that era may be coming to an end.

In the past week both the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank have come under intense pressure to act; the Fed from a slowing economy and steep market sell-off and the ECB from a buyers strike on Italian and other euro zone bonds.

Both chose to intervene. The Fed moved to keep interest rates at virtually zero until 2013, while the ECB, in a change in its recent tactics, once again waded into bond markets to buy up and support peripheral euro zone government debt.

James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala – The U.S. economy is in trouble, and most of the ways it may get help will be bad for the dollar.

While a weak dollar may help to revive manufacturing and bring inflation to eat away at the mountain of U.S. debt, it will also kill returns for foreign investors and just might be the beginning of a self-reinforcing pattern of weakness and dollar selling.

With the odd exception, the run of economic data out of the United States has been very poor. Monday’s Empire State factory index, put out by the New York Federal Reserve, fell to a negative 7.7 reading, confounding analysts’ predictions that it would claw its way back up to zero and marking the third straight negative month. The survey has only been around since 2001, but successive negative months have since then only happened when the United States has been in recession.