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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...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 ...
...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 ...
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 ...
The most recent FOMC statement was again an exercise in walking on eggs. Bernanke told the world things were brightening up and at the same time being extremely frustrated about the slow recovery of the labor market. On the latter, he is right : of the more than 8 million jobs lost since this crisis struck, 2 mio have been picked ...
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 ...
New figures on US home foreclosures were recently released and for some, it might even induce some feeling of optimism. So the worst is behind us ? Not yet, and certainly not as far as the FED is concerned. But let's first take a look at some basic stats.
A turbulent day and a sigh of relief seems to be the conclusion following the Greek vote. Europe and the IMF are happy with the outcome, for Greece mega austerity and a giant wall of debt refunding are on the menu. Concerning the IMF position on this rescue mission and what was said on debt policy world-wide, there is plenty of ...
The FOMC dropped a bombshell...by doing nothing... and pledging to remain in zero-rate land for a long time. And there are several implications, some indirectly desired by Ben Bernanke, other more counter market productive and obscure. But apart from causing a last minute relief rally on stocks (600 point intra-day swing on DOW), ...
If we use the same logic over and over again, we will arrive at the same end result. The solutions that were used by Japan, and proposed by ia. Greenspan and Krugman failed. And yet, the same school is still in power, and implementing the same policy in the US. In Europe, this school is very powerful. In 2008 they pushed for higher ...
In a speech delivered last Thursday to the National Press Club, FED chairman Bernanke made a curious remark on inflation regarding emerging markets. The Bernanke logic goes as follows : increased global commodity inflation is a result of growing demand within emerging markets, and their failure to tackle the inflation problem by ...
Speaking on CNBC at a FDIC sponsored forum last week, FED chairman Bernanke was asked how quantittative easing could be called a success in view of rising interest rates and commodity price spikes. His answer revealed that the FED now officially admits having a third mandate : "Our policies have contributed to a stronger ...
In a rare appearance before national broadcast, Ben Bernanke yesterday on CBS gave comment on the state of the economy and his intentions further up the road. Apparently it took 1 bad number - November pay-rolls released last Friday - to ring the alarm bells inside the FED. Just 1 month after QE2 has been announced, it seems QE3 is ...
Financial markets were eagerly awaiting the ECB press conference for more supporting measures concerning beleaguered indebted countries. Concerning high expectations on a European version of Bernanke, ie printing money and speeding up purchases of sovereign bonds, markets did not really get what they were after. As far as the ECB ...
The Fed will buy 600Bn USD debt ... "...the Committee intends to purchase a further 600 billion of longer-term Treasury securities by the end of the second quarter of 2011, a pace of about $75 billion per month. The Committee will regularly review the pace of its securities purchases and the overall size of the ...
Ben Bernanke kept his promise and delivered. He didn't however gave as much as markets had hoped for. In golf terms, rather strike a couple of times with the new putter/wedge instead of using an iron 9 and hence completely miss the hole. Main question remains : a deliberate gradual strategy from now on, leaving the option for QE3 ...
At Econopolis, we like to take a long term view. The better you understand the past, the better you can assess the current situation, and form an idea about the future.The S&P has climbed by 50% since 1997. This seems impressive, but has to be compared with inflation and the performance of non-risk assets like bonds. In real ...
Apart from the Bernanke speech, there was a lot of debate over the weekend amongst central bankers on how to proceed with monetary policy towards the future. And from all the interesting comments, it seems that one main conclusion comes out : The post Greenspan- & Bernanke - era has to taccle issues from out of a different ...
Deze column is in Trends verschenen. Het paniekgevoel bij Ben Bernanke, baas van het federale hedgefonds van de Amerikaanse staat - vroeger bekend als de centrale bank - neemt toe. Hij vreest een double dip en wil daarom meer onconventionele wapens gebruiken in de strijd tegen deflatie. Daarmee kan hij de financiële crisis ...
De Amerikaanse centrale bank is wat pessimistischer geworden. In verhulde "Fed-taal" staat een boodschap verborgen : Financial conditions have become less supportive of economic growth on balance, largely reflecting developments abroad. Bank lending has continued to contract in recent months. Nonetheless, the ...
So Ben Helicopter Bernanke has been reappointed. The Princeton professor won the vote by the smallest margin since Volcker, but that's the only comparison we would like to make with the biggest central banker in history.The balance sheet of the Fed has been ruined by Bernanke, but his own personal balance sheet reads as ...
