Acidifying oceans add urgency to CO2 cuts PhysOrg. We’ve posted about this before, and are encouraged that this issue is getting more attention. Laptop Losses Total 12,000 Per Week at US Airports Dark Reading Cost-hit British Airways flies with quarter of seats empty Times Online Inexperience May Feed the Bubbles Floyd Norris, New York Times […]
Read more...It’s gratifying when someone takes on a topic I had wanted to address and does a better job than I could have. Various readers have explained how prices are formed in oil markets, most importantly, how for the vast majority of oil sold, prices are specified in long-term supply contracts and the benchmark is not […]
Read more...Readers no doubt recall that the Federal Reserve loaned $30 billion to JP Morgan against certain Bear Stearns assets to, ahem, induce the bank to go forward with the deal. The arrangement got reworked on the fly, and in the end, the Fed loan was reduced to roughly $29 billion as JP Morgan agreed to […]
Read more...Readers may recall that this humble blog, thanks to the information provided by a former senior person at Lehman, reported that some of the investment bank’s wondrous deleveraging (it was well distributed across products, geographies, and credit quality) was due to asset sales to newly formed hedge funds, R3 Capital Partner and One Williams Street, […]
Read more...Readers have taken to throwing brickbats when I post material that suggests that raising interest rates (at least in advanced economies) might not be a good move right now. We’ve said before that the reason the Fed kept rates too low too long was it looked at inflation as strictly a domestic phenomenon and ignored […]
Read more...Roger Ehrenberg has a great post today, “Straight-talk on FAS 157: Blackstone and their Banker Buddies Have it Wrong,” which I suggest you all read. Although I was taken with the entire discussion, the last paragraph caught my attention: So why do risk managers and bank managements’ so consistently make bad decisions? Probably because there […]
Read more...We’ve mentioned we are going to go to Alaska to watch the ice melt. That means no Internet from August 3 to August 10, inclusive, save maybe a visit to an Internet cafe to check e-mail. Those who might want to try their hand at guest blogging (or have an established blog and would cross […]
Read more...Keep your pets cool this summer MarketWatch Hot future shock: Heat wave temperatures to soar PhysOrg Voodoo Banking Satyajit Das Prudent Bear (hat tip reader Scott) Standard of living to fall for at least a year Telegraph. How come officials (in this case, the deputy governor of the Bank of England) in Britain can say […]
Read more...When the question of guaranteed investment contracts and their implications for monolines first came up on this blog, a reader jumped all over us when we ventured that the fallout from GICs might affect claims paying ability. We were told that making a fuss over GICs was tantamount to focusing on a withdrawal by a […]
Read more...We’ve believed that China would have to hit a speed bump, or worse, at some point. To resort to cliche, trees do not grow to the sky and rapid GDP increases often wind up seeding their own undoing. There are already signs of trouble. Exports are a big driver of Chinese growth (the other is […]
Read more...Yet more signs of consumer stress. From Bloomberg: Consumers fell behind on loans secured by their homes at the fastest pace in two decades in the first quarter, signaling deeper distress in the U.S. economy, the American Bankers Association reported. Home-equity lines of credit at least 30 days past due rose 14 basis points to […]
Read more...Oil prices continue their seemingly relentless march upwards, breaching the $143 a barrel level Tuesday. Even the headlines are selling the bull’s case. Note that a Bloomberg’s story was titled, “Crude Oil Rises a Second Day as IEA Predicts `Tight’ Supplies Through 2013.” Yet what did the text say? The IEA said in a report […]
Read more...Why is it that in finance, nothing succeeds like failure? Witness LTCM’s John Meriwether’s ability to raise a new hedge fund after the biggest financial blow-up in history, or Geoff Boisi and Vikram Pandit’s ability to sell not-hugely-successful funds to banks, then perform unspectacularly in management roles (although in fairness, Boisi had been a leader […]
Read more...Nelson Mandela taken off US terror list BBC Hi-Ho, Steroids, Away! David Engber, Slate. Key quote: But in this case, the lawmakers and industry officials happened to use the wrong arguments to reach the right conclusion. In fact, horse racing is the only major sport that should ban steroids from competition. US leads world in […]
Read more...Free Exchange, in Guts or PhD?, contends that that having a PhD in economics is crucial for modern central bankers: When Paul Volcker, Stan Fischer, Jacob Frenkel and Jean-Pierre Roth discussed what central bankers and academics learn from each other at a conference last month, the line that stayed with me was Mr Fischer’s comment […]
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