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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"When you put all the pieces together, my guess is that the next in line will be Australia", Econoshock 16/04/13 Beggar thy neighbor in full swing. Well, it took about a month to materialize what common sense was prescribing : The BOJ exporting its problems all around the globe and its main trade partners not being ...
“The risk is we stay in this climate too long and that the carpet bombing of liquidity spurs inflation. Though there are no current signs of consumer price inflation, there is inflation, perhaps a bubble, in some asset classes. Segments of property markets across the globe, for example London, also display symptoms of this. ...
Unbelievable but now the FED has managed to arrive at the point where they exactly wanted to be, it seems that a growing part of voting members within the FOMC does no longer agree: “Prices of assets such as bonds, agricultural land, and high-yield and leveraged loans are at historically high levels,” George said in a speech ...
This Wednesday, we welcome Bart Van Der Smissen in our "little" Italian caffé commenting on the goldrush. Or rather, on the recent German doubts over the physical presence of their gold stock somewhere on this globe. The floor is yours Bart. ...
...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
Well we had quite a colorful US morning session yesterday. In the first half hour after the opening bell, an algo trading program went bananas affecting some 148 stocks amongst which some very big names. For more info on this we refer to
Some weeks ago we mentioned the current pressure on some safe havens in keeping their currency peg. In the case of the European periphery, the game is focused on Switzerland and Denmark, having all the trouble in the world to stop appreciating following the declining faith in the single currency (or at least in some of its ...
It's the silly season and as far as financial markets are concerned, we have to conclude à la Monty Python : "Stop this sketch, it's becoming too silly". In the current era of financial repression, we have witnessed mind blowing levels of interest rates. The following table gives you a short overview of the current government bond ...
We are now some 5 years into this crisis and we have witnessed some non-text book interventions in terms of substantial large amounts. Having a look at how balance sheets of central banks have exploded, it's really "de jamais vue", in some cases interventions in between 25% and 30% of GDP. It started out with the FED's Tarp ...
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 ...
Outspoken as he is, Wolfgang Munchau in his latest FT comments described the current problems in the Euro-zone as follows : "...Besides stimulus policy in surplus countries, you need to harmonize many aspects of structural policy to ensure that imbalances do not become entrenched. But there is no appetite for any of ...
Earlier this week, we mentioned the rally on high yield European short term government bonds in anticipation of Wednesday's ECB LTRO auctioning (Long Term Refinancing Operation). Markets had expected something in the range of 300-400 bio EUR. The final result was 489 bio EUR spread over 523 bidders, on average almost 1 bio EUR per ...
"Half a trillion USD and you don't know ?" This extract comes from a congress hearing in 2009 (cfr infra youtube link) when Ben Bernanke was questioned about the constitutional functioning of the FED and the emergency operations occurring in 2008. It was revealed back then that the FED during Q4 2008 made some 538 bio USD - and ...
On the international blogosphere, economists and market watchers are trying to give an answer as to why the US (along with the central banks of Great Britain, Japan, and Switzerland) is providing dollars to European banks that have lost their ability to access dollar capital markets? John Mauldin has the following answer and ...
So the ECB gave in once again in exchange for a tiny quid pro quo. It reactivated its bond purchasing program today and the effects are visible on Italian and Spanish government bonds. The price Italy had to pay was to accelerate structural reforms and cement a balanced budget into constitutional law. For now, the silver bullet the ...
James Dean will always be remembered for 1 famous scene in "Rebel without a cause". The scene depicts two teenage opponents competing for the favours of a sixteen year old girl, played by Natalie Wood. Both young turks drive a car at full speed towards a cliff. He who jumps as the first from his car is called the ...
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 ...
Splits de euro op in een harde en een zachte munt, voor de kernlanden en de Club Med-landen. De namen zijn wat ongelukkig, maar het idee is niet onzinnig. Het werd in de weekendeditie van NRC-Handelsblad besproken. Het idee komt van prof.dr Alfred Kleinknecht van de TU Delft. Sommigen, zoals Age Bakker, ...
Centrale banken waren vroeger vrij afwezige, relatief onbekende instellingen. De namen van de voorzitters ervan waren vóór de jaren tachtig bij het brede publiek niet gekend, een uitzondering niet te na gesproken. Dat ze in de afgelopen dertig jaar zo belangrijk zijn geworden, is een belangrijk aspect van de huidige crisis. De ...
Ik was uiteraard benieuwd naar de speech van Ben Bernanke, de gouverneur van de Amerikaanse centrale bank, die vandaag de markten mee in vuur en vlam zette. Zijn redevoering vandaag in Jackson Hole ging over de lessen na een jaar van crisis. Het geeft een inzicht in de punten die Bernanke onthoudt na de ergste ...
