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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A lot has been said about the pros - and especially the cons - of QE or the expansionary monetary policy experiments going global this time. It's an ongoing debate between the hyperinflationistas and new Keynesians. Up until now, the points that I have been trying to make can be summed up as follows : 1) The drugs don't work ...
...much better. Or in this case : Tit for tat in the age of financial repression and currency wars. Since the FED announced QE @ infinitum last week, we have every one in Tokyo back to battle stations because of exchange rate issues, certainly when it comes to USD/JPY : Evolution USD/JPY 1997 -2012
Since unemployment and consumer confidence are not in line with its desired target, the FED decided...to buy houses. Again. QE1 apparently developed the appetite for a repetition. So we now have some 85 bio USD of asset buying on a monthly basis including the 40 bio USD extra MBS from now on (remainder re-investing of maturing MBS ...
Before taking on the most important latest novelty - the main dish - a short appetizer on 2 items which also to a great extend stress the dangers of systemic risk still present today : 1) Yesterday the central bank of New Zealand urged its most important financial players to speed up their capital adequacy requirements : ...
Apparently we have some translation problems at the press communication desk of the ECB, more specifically the department English/Spanish. When the ECB last week launched its so-called bazooka, the message was nevertheless quite clear in plain English : With respect to governments and unlimited buying of government bonds, ...
That were Mario Draghi's concluding remarks speaking before European Parliament in Brussels earlier this week. Again by times a clever effort following his Zeit open letter last week where some more psychological pressure was put onto the German people. Let's see what his main message was in order to know what we can expect next ...
...let's carry on then with the same treatment. This is usually a classic when you have tried everything to cure a patient with standard methods and everything fails. Or even more extreme in the House MD variation on this theme :"If it works, we were right, if he dies it was something else". But all in all, this was the ...
Some weeks ago, we referred to Switzerland, Norway and Denmark amongst others as safe havens and their problems in having their currencies not to appreciate too fast (eg fx reserves of central banks, especially Switzerland). And their "dynamite" features are reflected by short term negative interest rates they offer to the ...
Over the past couple weeks - in facts months - we have been blogging on the future of the euro-zone and on the economic and political rationale behind recent developments. And the response in the sequential blog debates was rich and interesting to say the least, looked upon from all various angles and for which I would like to ...
A lot of scenarios have circulated ever since the Greek debt crisis escalated and we got contagion into the Mediterranean periphery. And all these elements were related to bailouts, fiscal consequences of bailouts on core European countries (eg possible eurobonds etc), too big to bail (Spain/Italy) and rescue funds, whether or not ...
It seems that the announcement effect of EMU bond buying did not miss its purpose when looking at how the risk-on status of the market performed over the past 4 or 5 weeks. And it is of course not restricted to equity markets world-wide, the return numbers on various European sovereigns are very impressive indeed to say the ...
We continue our holiday journey across the globe in our currency series and decided to take a stop down under. Now this is an interesting stop for many reasons. The Australian economy has since 2009 being put forward as an example of a bullet proof economy when it comes to sailing through this global financial crisis. Impeccable ...
We have been searching a mighty long time but we finally found it : A piece of objective Anglo-Saxon coverage on the current sovereign debt crisis in the developed world. And it involves a respected UK blog comment criticizing a US some how "biased" view on the European and sovereign debt crisis in general. Now what is it all about ...
In our recent blog conversations, we were already alluding to this inevitable happening and I am afraid we have arrived at this point (already intra-day yesterday). The Spanish yield curve has inverted, meaning short term yields now being above the levels of of the longer part of the curve (7y+). Under normal conditions, this could ...
Just when you thought you were safe, a last minute move from our dear friends in the US are spoiling the party. Moody's lowered the outlook to"negative" for the AAA ratings of Germany, the Netherlands and Luxembourg (!). Yes,you read this well, even our friends over in Luxembourg - with only 3 government bond ...
Over the weekend, I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine on today's surrealism reigning on financial markets. Referring to a previous posting - "Dude, where is my yield" - we quickly altered to another issue with the 64,000$ question at the end : If interbank market rates are manipulated (rigged libor) and if ...
In our series of conspiracy theories during the silly season, we would like to turn our eyes towards the equity market after last week's adventures in Libor land. But before we do that, let's just first reconsider the following conversation which took place some years ago in a San Pedro Police station : Verbal Kint : Who is ...
In our trip around the world during the present holidays, we decided to take a small stop in Santa Fé De Bogota : Columbia es pasion ! Indeed, the tourist guide of Colombia will overwhelm you with the following nice features : mother nature's most beautiful spot in South America (true), amazing rich coffee, amazing soccer players, ...
The FOMC minutes are out and it seems the committee of US rate setters is no longer unanimous on the issues. An extension of Operation Twist was the compromise outcome and there is a reason for that. And in addition, they softened the language even more by the previous commitment of rates on hold to at least Spring 2014 changing ...
Today, the following manifesto appeared in the blog sphere : "In support of a European banking union, done properly - a manifesto by economists in Germany, Austria and Switzerland". For the link, I would like to refer to : http://www.voxeu.org/article/manifesto-banking-union-economists-germany-austria-and-switzerland The ...
