Interest rates continued to fall Wednesday Sept. 2, 2009.  Six month Treasury bills gave up one basis point to close at 0.22% yesterday.  One year Treasuries fell two basis points from 0.43% down to 0.41%.  The ten year Treasury fell a surprising eight basis points, pushing the yield down to 3.29%.  The move into Treasuries appears to be vote on a lasting economic downturn, not a recovery. 

These yields continue to fall even after the Fed, at its August meeting, announced that it would gradually slow the pace of its program to buy $300 billion worth of Treasury securities and close the program in one more month at the end of October.  

Same store retail sales figures came out this morning and beat expectations.     Long pause.      First comment, CBS Marketwatch stated this morning that sales have missed analyst’s estimates and CNBC stated they beat estimates.  Thomson Reuters analysts expected a decline of 3.8% from last years figures.  Forget the analysts; this is the 12th month for declines in same store sales.  Read that again.  12th straight month of dropping same store sales from the previous year.  Consumer expenditures account for approximately 70% of GDP.  Recovery, maybe but sure doesn’t look good based on these numbers.

On August 25, 2009 Global Finance released their report on the “Worlds 50 Safest Banks 2009”.  Global Finance prepares this list based on analysis of the long term credit ratings and total assets of the 500 largest banks around the world.  U.S. bank highlights from the list include the Bank of New York Mellon at #32, J.P. Morgan Chase Bank at #39, Wells Fargo Bank at #42, U.S. Bancorp at #47 and Northern Trust at #49.

Wells Fargo had also been recognized on the list of the “Best Internet Banks in North America 2009”.  Wells Fargo took the title under the sub category for the “Best Consumer Internet Bank”. 

HSBC is ranked 18th on the international list and also was awarded the “Best Integrated Consumer Bank Site”.  HSBC continues to promote some fairly attractive CD interest rates. 

Select HSBC CD rates:

6 month CD rate is 1.25%
1 year CD rate is 2.00%
The HSBC online savings account rate is 1.45%.

Global Finance website www.gfmag.com
HSBC website www.us.hsbc.com

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