Tuesday, February 8, 2011

China raises interest rates. Markets yawn. Why?

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- China's central bank raised interest rates Tuesday morning. And the market responded with a collective yawn. At first, stocks barely budged. Ditto for bond yields, oil and the dollar.

As the day progressed, stocks actually marched even higher.

So much for fears of global inflation running amok and worries about how emerging markets would be forced to tighten monetary policy.

Yes, I'm being a bit glib. Investors would be unwise to ignore what's going on in China. The fact that the People's Bank of China raised rates by a quarter of a percentage point to just over 6% is of course interesting.

It is the third such move in four months and comes at a time where Ben Bernanke's Federal Reserve is still keeping its benchmark rate near zero and the European Central Bank is leaving rates at 1%.


China is experiencing inflation in its currency, so China responded by increasing the interest rates to curb the spending and increase savings in an effort to reduce the inflation. People say that China is not being aggressive in fighting the inflation; on the other hand, China wants to take a slow gradual to increasing the interest rates because being aggressive may result in slowing the lending and economic growth.

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