In negotiations, understanding where you have leverage relative to your counterpart is key. Ireland appears to be engaged in a quiet staredown with the EU, evidently with the objective of securing a rescue of its banks rather than its government. In case you managed to miss it, Ireland is in the midst of a long […]
Read more...Following up on my last, John Dizard takes a different line from Ambrose. What Dizard wants is a sovereign default system, and he wants it now, not in 2013. The starting point is last week’s Eurobungle: Last week’s crisis in “peripheral” euro area bond markets was the consequence of a series of own goals by […]
Read more...Various Eurosceptics are piping up this morning, and no wonder. Unfortunately some of the interesting stuff is behind the FT’s magnificently unstable subscription firewall, which, in an attack of paranoia, or megalomania, has decided today, as it occasionally does, to deny access to everything, even the free bits, subscriber or not. It is like something […]
Read more...As far too diffidently implied in this post on Friday, looking out for an Irish bailout over the weekend turned out to be a mug’s game. There was a splendid swirl of authoritative reports about bailout talks and rebuttals by various Irish spokesmen, sampled here. But here we are: no bailout, with the Irish government […]
Read more...As an article in today’s New York Times makes clear, Robert Shiller has joined a group of behavioral economists that is advocating the use of propaganda and the sublter forms of manipulation of the public that Walter Lippmann famously called “the manufacture of consent.” In one sense, this ugly development is coming full circle. Lippmann […]
Read more...Dunno if you guys in the US are up to speed on the Twitter joke trial, a classic collision of new technology, post 9/11 paranoia, witless judges, and a hapless victim. Here’s one of our leading comedy scriptwriters on the warpath back in May. The conviction was upheld on appeal! Here’s a geek carefully setting […]
Read more...A cross-post courtesy of market veteran (and occasional robust NC commenter) Bruce Krasting I wish I could get a penny for every dollar that is going to be paid to lobbyist to fight the various recommendations of the Fiscal Commission. As advertised, they basically took no prisoners save a small portion of the older population […]
Read more...Yesterday evening the yield on the Irish 10-year was up near 9%; Merkel reaffirmed her tough line on bond haircuts: Speaking in Seoul, where she is attending the G20 summit, Dr Merkel acknowledged her demands have upset the markets but insisted it was unfair for taxpayers to be saddled alone with the cost of sovereign […]
Read more...Back in July, Rebel Economist noted how the Greek bailout actions had compromised the ECB: The first concession made by the ECB was in the collateral requirements for its lending to eurosystem banks. These were set in terms of agency credit ratings, no doubt to distance the ECB from the task of differentiating between the […]
Read more...The domestic politics of Ireland are still on a tightrope. Their coalition government, which had has been studiously ignoring three empty parliamentary seats, has now been told by the Supreme Court to get on with it and hold by-elections for one of them, which has been unoccupied for a scandalous 18 months. The by-election is […]
Read more...Your humble blogger is quoted at some length in this Playboy article (yes, article, remember the classic male wink and nod about buying Playboy for its articles) along with Bill Black. This piece was heralded in the New York Times. An excerpt: On the night of March 10, 2010 an otherwise anonymous American financial writer […]
Read more...By Jim Quinn, who writes at The Burning Platform As I listen to pundits, politicians and populists expound on the jobs situation in our country day after day, as if they knew what they were talking about, I’m reminded of the Seinfeld episode where George quits his job as a real estate agent. He sits […]
Read more...Yves here. If nothing else, be sure to read the section on the Money Honey book. By Satyajit Das, a risk consultant and author of Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives – Revised Edition (2010, FT-Prentice Hall). Michael Hirsh (2010) Capital Offense: How Washington’s Wise Men Turned America’s […]
Read more...By Satyajit Das, a risk consultant and author of Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives – Revised Edition (2010, FT-Prentice Hall). Detox Cures In the first half of 2010, angst about European sovereign debt receded and market volatility eased. In the second half of 2010, concerns about Greece, […]
Read more...A brief recap of a couple of useful sighting on the “rising anxieties in Europe” front. Edward Hugh has a very thorough update (bond spread trends, underlying drivers, an astute discussion of politics) leavened by a great deal of wry humor (“So, like former US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson before them, Europe’s leaders, having armed […]
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