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Recent stories in Financial Markets
A note on trade "butterfly" effects
Last Friday, I went to a Central Europe event organized by KBC. Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary presented themselves in terms of business cycle & public finance outlook. The session was highly interesting because some unusual features came up which made me look a little bit further. But first the main lessons to be ...
Market Update - Global banks, CDS and Fx
QE3 and the morning after, what's the score ? Well, considering it was pretty well wired, market reactions so far are not that exuberant in terms of volatility. Ben's message was simple : Nevermind the greenshoots appearing, we are going "all in", no matter. Until unemployment does not dive under the FED's 6,5% target, we will be ...
Note on the Volcker Rule
Former FED governor Paul Volcker was appointed in 2009 by the Obama administration to chair the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Volcker has ever since been focusing on systemic risk in the financial sector, more specifically the trading positions commercial banks take on. It's basically an extension or implementation ...
Bubble complacency revisited
Complacency is usually a recipe for disaster and financial markets are no exception. Most common bubbles we have experienced throughout history mainly focus on overpricing risk and risk assets, usually stocks or high yield bonds. But when it comes to bonds these days, we have been going into bubble territory deeper and deeper by ...
All right listen up everybody, this is the plan...
...and it's all about plan B, AKA "The Great Escape". There has been some speculation going on lately on how our monetary policy makers intend to normalize the unusual situation where we are in right now. Some - and probably helicopter Ben included - argue that it can become even more unusual in view of the fact that things are not ...
Market update : Not a single gun shot fired...
"Never underestimate the power of denial" - Ricky Fitts, American Beauty . It has been a while we reported on the European sovereign debt crisis so we thought it being appropriate to give a quick update. Greece finally has secured a new deal with the Troika but no new haircuts are involved. So no new debt relief. We ...
Gold, banks & The Grand Bazaar
Yesterday we picked the following story on the net under the frame work of "creative bank funding". It concerns Turkey and how to activate dead assets in a productive way. Before going into this story, a quick look on Turkey. It's a country with a chronic balance of payment problem and hence the currency is erratic, monetary policy ...
The Chicago Plan & the Magic Wand
An IMF Working Paper released in August of this year is staging a comeback in the press and blog sphere. It is titled "The Chicago Plan Revisited". It basically tackles 2 issues here : 1, a complete sovereign control over the money supply and hence an attack on private fractional reserve banking. 2, a swift solution of the debt ...
Sunday's reflection on Black Monday
We almost forgot but last Friday was the 25th anniversary of 19 October 1987, ie "Black Monday" or the day the Dow Jones took a 22.68% plunge losing 508 index points. But here the story of that specific event did not end. Because when we people made a reality check at the end of that desastrous equity month in 1987, the damage ...
Morton's Fork revisited
Last year in October, we gave you a preview on the Belgian budget annex government formation by referring to Cardinal Morton and a style figure coming out of bridge play : http://www.econoshock.be/morton-s-fork-crisis-intermezzo The term Morton's fork stems from the days Archbishop Morton was Chancellor of the ...
















