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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Consulting firms Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey both launched indicators measuring the internet-intensity of developed economies. In a "Freakonomics"-kind of spirit, we squared the result with a key element for the networked economy : trust. The OECD has developed statistics to measure the level of trust that people have in ...
"I would never join a club that would allow a person like me to become a member", dixit Woody Allen (Groucho Marx). Concerning EMU, unfortunately Greece did and unfortunately European politics allowed it. Was there a case for refusal and should we have known better, a posteriori or a priori ? Let the data speak. When Maastricht was ...
Central banks, Ministers of Finance, Regulators, CEO's from banks, and everybody working in the financial industry should watch "Air Crash Investigation" on National Geographic Channel. They show how the financial industry should learn and deal with every accident, even the smallest ones.Watching television is not really my ...
Too often I hear that growth is the solution to the economic and financial crisis. Sound economic growth is certainly a major constituent, but not the single most important factor of a rebalancing and improvement of the global economy. First and foremost, we should acknowledge that imbalanced, unhealthy and unsustainable growth has ...
The IMF and OECD remain quite confident that the world economy is just undergoing a soft patch. (Bank) economists have been issuing buy-recommendations on equities, corporate and high yield bonds, Greek debt and the new Coldplay-CD. The latter is a good reference point, because just like some recent Coldplay-songs, we have a ...
The problems with Greece are not an isolated case. Solving the Greek crisis without a reflection on a long chain of monetary and economic errors would be a complete waste of money. Our political leaders should look far beyond the Greek problems and evaluate their economic and financial policies over a period as long as ...
De voorzitter van de Europese centrale bank (ECB), Jean-Claude Trichet, heeft gezegd dat het licht op rood staat: "On a personal basis I would say it is red," Trichet told reporters when asked what color the European Systemic Risk Board's traffic light warning system was displaying in relation to the debt turmoil.Trichet had net de ...
For some months now, the Basel Committee is pondering on how to tackle the issues of systemic risk. It seems the outcome might well be something along the lines of "agreed it's moral hazard but it's OK".End of April, Reuters leaked a Bundesbank initiative to set up a so-called SIFI list (Systemically Important Financial ...
Yesterday's narrow confidence vote is a first step for Greece to let the austerity plan approve by the Greek Parliament. In our view, Greece and Europe were faced with a catastrophy: a Greek default in the midst of the Summer, and worse the midst of the Greek touristic season. Such a disaster can still happen. The EU needed however ...
Are we at the beginning of a China Credit Crunch ? We have been posting on the issue on other occasions in a different spotlight, namely the fact that official monetary policy so far had no significant impact on the Chinese financial sector in terms of curbing credit growth (see copper financing tool). Over the past couple of days, ...
"Reprofiling", "structured default", "volontary re-investment of proceeds" , we lately have been avalanched by numerous euphimisms on something very straightforward : Greece and Europe are in dire straits, a very precarious situation to say the least. On the Greek restructuring and how to organize it, the battle over semantics is ...
The next article appeared in De Standaard and expresses the views of Geert Noels & Econopolis on the euro-zone sovereign debt crisis : De banken: risktakers moeten mee betalen. 'Tot voor zes maanden was de aanpak van het Grieks probleem: steeds meer geld op tafel leggen. Maar langzaam maar zeker evolueert het in een andere ...
Bill Gross is in a tight corner. Having announced his big short position on US Treasuries a couple of weeks ago and being accused of being a "bond vigilante", it seems Mr Market is turning his back on him and making him loose a considerable amount of money for Pimco. So lately we spot some laughs on various blogs, just for the ...
In an interesting speech addressing the London School of Economics (13/06), JC Trichet elaborates on the pros and cons of monetary and economic policy in EMU, this in comparison with the US. Some slides of his presentation, and in particular 1, tells a lot. The picture below just depicts to what extend convergence on ...
On Wednesday, UK banks were in the spotlight for two main reasons. First of all, the preliminary disappointing results of operation "Merlin", a deal between the UK government and the large banks on bank lending targets. Second, the large private banks' reaction to the ring-fencing initiatives of the Independent Commission on ...
"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled, was convincing the world he didn't exist" (Verbal Kint, "The Usual Suspects"). A same line of reasoning applies to the current inflation/deflation debate, the official approach by policy makers and what we are supposed to believe.When it comes to inflation and remarks on the subject, some ...
About a year ago, the following joke circulated in financial markets worldwide when the sovereign debt crisis broke out : Rather than work hard, live within his means and save for the future, a dissolute student decided to invent a system for beating the bank at roulette. After months of experimentation with betting ...
The following story is not new and only a few blogs considered it to be important enough to focus on. It nevertheless merits attention because it blows your mind in various ways. And I needed some time to digest the story before commenting it, simply because it is so unreal.Last Thursday, Bloomberg reported on the special open ...
This week, we saw some strong intervention from rating agency Moody's on 2 fronts : Australia and Denmark. In both cases, it concerned the state of the financial sector and in both cases, the motivation of the move should be scrutinized.In the case of Australia, the country's four largest banks were cut by one notch from Aa1 to ...
Following the successful launch of Microsoft bonds late last year, Google has ensured itself a long term funding at benign market conditions. Too good to be true or are there other market forces at work ?Let's first recapitulate the operations Microsoft (AAA) executed in autumn 2010. In September, it issued corporate bonds for a ...
Last Thursday we witnessed some fireworks on financial markets : Volatility once again going global. And this time, no major economic forecast triggered the mass selling mode. Starting point of this little story goes back to the “famous inaugural” press conference from the FED last week. To briefly summarize ...
Uit Knack:U twitterde: ‘Beseffen ze bij de ECB dat het een fout signaal is om Mario Draghi te benoemen tot directeur?’ Waarom? Noels: "Mario Draghi is zo kort na de financiële crisis niet de figuur die breekt met het verleden. Hij had een vooraanstaande functie bij investeringsbank Goldman Sachs in de periode toen de crisis ...
1. Is een Griekse schuldherschikking onvermijdelijk ? 'Een of andere aanpassing van de terugbetalingsmodaliteiten van de Griekse schuld is niet te vermijden. Voorbeelden daarvan zijn een verlenging van de looptijd, het overslaan of kapitaliseren van een rentebetaling, het nemen van een 'haircut' (bijvoorbeeld aanvaarden ...
A lot of comments these days focus on the fact that we don´t understand the so-called strength of the EURO - in view of the reflaring of the sovereign debt crisis - and the fact that the USD is way too weak. Some nuances need to be made.
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
