MoneyRates Blog
Bank Rate Watchers Should Keep An Eye On This Week’s Inflation Number
The Consumer Price Index for October will be released this Wednesday, and it could mark the beginning of the end for the spate of deflation the U.S. has experienced for much of the past year. For bank rate watchers, wondering when savings account interest rates and CD rates will start to rise, inflation remains a [...]
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Market Recipe Bad for Bank Rates — For Now
The mix of factors now prevailing in the financial markets is almost the perfect recipe to challenge anyone depending on CD rates, savings account rates, or money market rates. In other words, it may be the perfect poison for bank rates. Fortunately, markets eventually tend to find antidotes to their own ills.
First the poison, then [...]
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Raising Bank Rates May Depend on a Pick-Up in Lending Activity
As the economic recovery gets haltingly underway, one of the things depositors should keep an eager eye on is lending volume. It’s not that those depositors are necessarily looking to borrow money themselves, but a pick-up in the lending business may be a key in pushing bank rates higher.
You name it — CD rates, savings [...]
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Bank Rates At Risk When Stock Market Falters
It was more tricks than treats for the stock market as the month of October wound down, but if bank depositors think the stock market’s woes don’t concern them, they may also be in for an unpleasant surprise.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average had four days with losses of a hundred points or more in the [...]
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Do You Have a Plan for Your Savings Rate?
When a recent poll by MoneyRates.com and GetRichSlowly.org showed that 52% of respondents felt their retirement savings were not on track, it wasn’t a complete surprise. This has been a challenging environment. A weak job market has caused many household incomes to take a hit. The stock market has been little help to investors for [...]
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Bank Pay at Bailed-Out Banks Slashed by Half
Pay for top executives at bailed-out banks and financial institutions, including Bank of America, Citigroup, and GMAC, has been cut in half by the Treasury’s compensation regulator, Kenneth Feinberg.
Banks that have already paid back bail-out funds, including JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, will not be affected by the Treasury’s orders.
Headline Not the Whole Story Here
How to [...]
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Savers Appear to Be Getting a Little Bit Angry
Looking for the best rates on CDs, money market accounts, and savings accounts used to be pretty fun. Now, for many savers, it’s downright frustrating.
Bank rates on deposit accounts, that is, are frustratingly low. And now, with the specter of inflation rising, savers are starting to get a little bit angry.
Inflation Good for Debt
Who are savers [...]
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Will Bank Rates Have to Respond to Dollar Weakness?
Surges in the prices of oil and gold recently are symptomatic of a looming problem: the weakness of the U.S. dollar.
Oil and gold are both traded in dollar terms, so when their prices are rising, it may not be entirely a sign of demand for those commodities. Instead, it can be a function of a [...]
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Bank Earnings Hugely Dependent Upon Trading
Money-Rates banking expert Richard Barrington called yesterday for politicians to take another look at the Glass-Steagall Act, a longstanding financial regulation that separated banking from investment activities, and was repealed in 1999 with the Gramm-Leach-Biley Act.
While this advice to politicians certainly makes extensive sense and might lower the risk of individuals holding money in money market accounts, savings [...]
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The Bright Side of Savings Account Interest Rates
Treasury bond rates fell again last week, continuing a somewhat odd habit they’ve shown in recent months. This isn’t good news for anyone waiting for savings account interest rates to rise, but there is a bright side to the story.
First, about that odd habit. Last week was a bad one for the stock market, as jitters [...]
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Big Banks May Be Forced to Pay Extra Insurance
The so-called “G20″ nations will meet today and tomorrow in Pittsburgh. One particularly prominent issue is what to do about banks that are “too big to fail.”
If you have CDs, savings accounts, or money market accounts, the G20 meeting may actually amount to something more than bland platitudes this year.
Big Banks Backed by Government No Matter What
The repeated and [...]
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Three Reasons Why Inflation Won’t Kill Your Retirement Savings
So, Ben Bernanke says that this brutal recession has “very likely ended.” For Money-Rates readers who hold money in CDs or savings accounts, this silver lining may appear obscured by a dark cloud:
Worries over inflation. Already, CD rates are too slow to keep up with even a moderate rate of price growth.
However:
1. Foreign Goods Help [...]
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Think Bank Rates Are Low Now? Imagine Negative Interest Rates!
A generation of depositors is currently seeing the lowest bank rates of their lives onCDs, savings, and money market accounts. As those rates approach zero, the natural assumption is that things can’t get much worse. Or can’t it?
It may be a little mind-bending to think about negative interest rates, but the concept does exist. The [...]
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Bank Rates Likely to Get Better
Rates on bank deposits are set to go higher if the recent statements of leading economists and the Federal Reserve Chairman are to be believed. The economy is still mired in recession, but the pace of contraction has decreased. Any hints of economic growth, when combined with the enormous amount of money flooded into the [...]
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Obama and Interest Rates
President Obama reached his 100th day in office this week with huge questions lingering regarding the effectiveness of his policies and strategies. While it may take years or decades to objectively evaluate the Obama Administration’s response to the financial Pearl Harbor he has faced, at least for this milestone week Obama enthusiasts point to the positive. [...]
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Online Banking and Linking External Accounts
One of the best features of online banking is linking external bank accounts. The basic idea behind linking an external account to your existing bank account is the ability to transfer funds between the two accounts online. The transfer of funds online is much easier and faster than mailing a paper check from one bank to the other. It [...]
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Banks Slow to Twitter
You might think that the Twitter social networking tool would be an ideal way for banks to update the world about their banking deals, promotions, and offers, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Recent twitter user stats indicate that banks have been slow to attract followers to their company Twitter accounts. In fact, abysmally [...]
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Where are the Banks Offering Inflation-Linked Deposits?
If you do a search for banks offering rates which are indexed to the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, or yields on U.S. Treasuries you can find various money market and CD products. Missing from the list of variable-rate offerings is anything tied to inflation. There are inflation-linked securities available, but surprisingly there are [...]
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Gold Tops $1,000 an Ounce
Gold investors have bid up the price of gold to over $1,000 an ounce after country-after-country around the world have lowered their benchmark interest rates, passed sweeping stimulus packages, and nationalized banks in an orchestrated effort to combat the global economic recession. Gold, the fallback position for investors for centuries in times of turmoil, has [...]
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