Today, we have reserved a guest post for Jan De Blonde who is very actively engaged in sustainable farmland investment abroad. Jan is ...
My friend the equity racehorse sent me me the following interesting link which appeared on Dutch television and which basically ...
Vorige zondag (6 mei 2012) verscheen het volgend interview in De Zondag:
Elk jaar omtrent deze tijd publiceert BP zijn Statistical Review of World Energy. Bijna 50 pagina’s grotendeels gevuld met tabellen ...
Door een abrupt beëindigde skivakantie (nauwelijks 50 meter op de latten gestaan) bracht ik de rest van de week haast immobiel en al ...
Well, it's not exactly Moody's but more precisely Fitch, sending out messages which are "surprising" to say the least. Remember ...
Davos, setting of the Thomas Mann novel "Der Zauberberg" and sheltering famous people throughout history such as ...
Following our adventures in today's every changing moods in the world of finance, it's not a bad thing to assess volatility as a ...
You may remember I wrote a piece on Asia Pacific Breweries (APB) , Heineken and Fraser & Neave (F&N) when I was in Singapore earlier ...
My dear friend Sideshow Bob sent me a short note which I think deserves some attention. It opens up the discussion on one of the most ...
Geen kat die deze stelling zal betwisten, maar de impact ervan op de Chinese economie wordt vermoedelijk zwaar onderschat. We hebben ...
De kogel is door de kerk, iedereen van ons kan straks aandeelhouder van Facebook worden. Intekenen op een IPO is echter niet altijd ...
Apple kwam de afgelopen week met de langverwachte medeling over hun spaarpot van 100 miljard $. Een mogelijke overname is nog niet in ...
On March 14th, the Media Innovation Center was launched (under the wings of the IBBT) and baptized 'Mix'. Its goal is to support and ...
Yesterday Fitch released a report with some arithmetics and outlook on the ageing population and how the developed west so far has ...
According to the World Economic Forum, Canadian banks have been ranked as the soundest and most safe banks world-wide, this for 5 ...
Gemini, the immortal twins Castor and Pollux, in this case Dublin and Cork. We picked up an interesting story from out of Bloomberg ...
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Wie naar de beursgrafieken kijkt en overschouwt wat er de laatste maanden gebeurde, zou zich misschien vertwijfeld in de haren kunnen krabben en denken dat de aandelen zonder hem of haar vertrokken zijn. Op een rijdende trein proberen te springen is iets wat je soms ziet in oude Westerns, maar in de praktijk loopt dat niet zelden ...
In the ongoing saga on Greece and the Troika, again a meeting is deferred on whether or not extra money will be granted towards Athens. And the language becomes more harsh by the : "Wealthier countries are playing with fire by toying with the idea Greece should be expelled from the EMU-17 area". "There are plenty who don't want us ...
Before turning to our little soccer game - which the Swiss supervisors apparently seem to be losing - we like to turn one more time to what is happening over in Frankfurt. After the successful LTRO of last December (489 bio EUR cash injection into banks), a new round of auctioning is heating up for 29/02. And it seems we are gonna ...
The answer is "yes", that is if you read today's main article on Bloomberg. The main story line being : "The criticism about the FED being inflationary is not fact-based. Unemployment is slightly improving but far from inflationary levels. And though several republican presidential candidates are claiming Mr Bernanke is the most ...
Dit oude sprookje kennen we haast allemaal, we herinneren ons vast en zeker het idyllische plaatje uit onze kindertijd. Een hard werkende mier die de ganse dag eten versjouwt en opbergt in haar ondergrondse verblijfplaats, terwijl de krekel in de zon ligt te fluiten en te zingen dat het een plezier is om te horen. Het laatste ...
The LTRO operation of late December by the ECB has relieved some tensions on money markets and bank funding cost in the short term. Indeed, libor spreads have come in considerably while certain government bonds have had a serious rally versus the core led by Bund. It doesn't stop quite there and the ECB is preparing another set of ...
For once we have some good news to report, a glimmer of hope. Last week, Ireland managed to come to the international bond market on which it made a partial buy-back of existing debt (2014) and managed to roll it over into 2015 @ 4,9%. And it was a success with an announcement of more buy-backs in the pipeline. The Irish drama and ...
May you live in interesting times", so goes the English translation of a Chinese curse/proverb. And indeed we live in interesting times because the FOMC yesterday decided to shift the outlook on a 0% short term rate from 2013 to at least 2014. And at the same time, the FED made some choices on explicit inflation ...
A funny string of recent events have captured my attention. And it involves the IMF and politics. May be far fetched but a warning as well towards various addressees, either politically, economically or both. And the IMF is balancing here on a thin line judging the noises we are recently hearing.First of all there was Christine ...
One of the many things not resolved yet but equally important going into 2012, is the the geo-political issue of Iran. End of late November, we reported on this story and it seems that some options have already materialized, such as the US and European embargo on Iranian oil. Or on any one doing business with Iran, in real goods or ...
When the going gets tough, the tough usually gets going. In the case of the sovereign debt crisis, we have the Greek discussions with private creditors coming to a halt and a March deadline coming up (will the IMF grant a new tranche of loans ?). In the US, we are getting prepared for a repetition of the debt ceiling debate of late ...
We in Europe - the old continent - have taken notice since late Friday that our credibility as a debtor has been put into question. We were warned earlier that something was waiting to happen. Now that it has materialized, I nevertheless have some questions running through my mind lately, based upon the following fundamentals ...
Iemand betalen om je geld gedurende lange tijd bij te houden, geen zinnig mens zou dat doen, en toch is het wat deze week opnieuw met meerdere miljarden gebeurde.Duitsland sleet voor bijna 4 miljard aan obligaties en doordat de uitgifte boven pari gebeurde zorgde een lage intrestvoet ervoor dat de crediteur op vervaldatum per saldo ...
With the recent change in FED "speak" strategy, more transparent communication and the new composition of voting members within the FOMC - kingdom of the doves and the last hawk having left the building - market speculation is rising that a new round of QE3 will be announced very soon. On the desirability of such a new program and ...
Onze vorige post over de nieuwe fiscale regels voor de Eurozone (het "Fiscal Compact") stelde dat de "nieuwe regels" (o.a. de beperking van begrotingstekorten tot 3% van het BNP) nauwelijks verschillen van de "oude regels" van het Groei- en Stabiliteitspact (GSP). Het GSP werd niet nageleefd en voorzag geen prikkels voor ...
A liquidity trap is a situation when people are hoarding cash, this out of various reasons. A standard definition would say because people are expecting an adverse event, such as deflation, insufficient aggregate demand or war. The classic debate between Keynesians and Austrians focus on the "why", not the fact that cash hoarding ...
"Involuntary lending is what happens when your teenager figures out how to charge stuff to your credit card. The kid promises to pay for the purchases but never gets around it, so your involuntary loan keeps getting bigger. At some point it dawns on you that you might never get your money back" ...
After issuing a public tender, the Flemish government has apparently made a decision on their new preferred home banker. ING came out as the winner. And already a lot of fuzz going on that it's a shame a non-Belgian, or non Flemish banker for that matter, has been elected. Dexia has announced it will take the decision into ...
A couple of days ago, our colleague Daan (presently studying at MIT) made a contribution on the desirability of installing a technocrat cabinet and whether it serves democracy. I think it deserves more attention, also in the light of what has been happening over the past couple of days in Italy with Giulio Tremonti presenting his ...
Mario Monti en Lucas Papademos zijn de kersverse premiers van Italië en Griekenland. Met doctoraatsdiploma’s economie van MIT en Yale op zak en topcarrières in de Europese Commissie en Europese Centrale Bank zijn het rasechte technocraten. Vormt de aanstelling van deze niet-verkozen leiders het einde van de democratie of het begin ...
