Insights

With quarterly net Treasury issuance reaching the mid-$500 billion mark — about 3 times as much as the average net issuance from 2002 to 2007 —one could say we are leaning aggressively on our high credit quality and reputation in the marketplace.

When I first arrived in Silicon Valley in 1986, my division at DSC Communications employed 1,300 people. Of those, roughly 1,000 were in manufacturing. We built everything from printed circuit boards to full communications systems. We also bought circuit boards from a number of outside sources, all located locally.

It’s been interesting to watch the markets set up for alternating scenarios through this downturn. Several times during the last 22 months since Lehman went under, fears of inflation have swept in like waves on the beach. Just as quickly the water receded from the shore.

On June 19, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) vowed to increase the Chinese CNY's flexibility and abandoned a 23-month-old peg to the USD. Chinese authorities had prevented the currency from strengthening, with the CNY essentially pegged to the USD since July 2008 to help exporters cope with sliding demand triggered by the global financial crisis.

Watching the global economy can be rather perplexing these days.

It seems you need to be up to speed on everything from Chinese wages to Greek pensions in order to understand where the global economy is headed. And for those of us over 40 (Yes, given the extreme changes in technology over the last 10 years, 40 can easily put you over the hill these days.) keeping up with a 24-hour news cycle is exhausting.

The Federal Open Market Committee has once again reiterated the proverbial “extended” remark, regarding leaving the target interest rate unchanged in the range of zero to 0.25 percent. It is becoming more likely that the first rate increase is about a year away. Here's why.

This week I want to cover most of the different things that are destabilizing markets, what trends they are creating and what to look out for as far as their potential to affect different currencies.