Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news
- Latest: Wall Street hits new record high
- Bitcoin hits $50,000 for first time
- Global markets continue strong run
- Survey: Investors extremely bullish
Earlier;
Back to bitcoin… and a senior US central banker has insisted that the cryptocurrency doesn’t present a serious threat to the US dollar’s position.
St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard told CNBC that the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency was safe:
“I just think for Fed policy, it’s going to be a dollar economy as far as the eye can see — a dollar global economy really as far as the eye can see — and whether the gold price goes up or down, or the bitcoin price goes up or down, doesn’t really affect that.
“You don’t want to go to a non-uniform currency where you’re walking into Starbucks and maybe you’ll pay with Ethereum, maybe you’ll pay with Ripple, maybe you’ll pay with bitcoin, maybe you’ll pay with a dollar. That isn’t how we do this. We have a uniform currency that came in at the Civil War time.”
Bitcoin poses no threat to the dollar as the world's currency leader, Fed's Bullard says https://t.co/vc0gwcXYd4
It’s also been an exciting day for Italian government bonds.
Rome sold debt at near record-low interest rates today, as investors flocked to the first bond auction since former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi became prime minister.
Rome is set to raise a total of €14bn ($17bn) from the sale of a 10-year nominal bond and a 30-year inflation-linked note, one of the banks managing the issue said, adding demand had totalled more than €82bn.
The final size of the order book is well below the record €134bn in demand the two bonds had initially attracted, with many investors dropping out after Italy cut the return on the issues.
Draghi sells! #Italy attracted >€110bn of investor bids for a new 10y bond it’s offering in a publicly-syndicated sale which is the first since Mario Draghi took over as PM. (via BBG) pic.twitter.com/j7s1YfM5oT
