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 ...
Display
20
items per page, ordered by
newest
When the Roman Catholic Church meets Ferrari meets the "Left", what do you get ? Because that's in a nutshell what is currently happening in Italy, "progressive" forces seeking change and joining forces. At first sight, they truly make an odd couple trio. Mind you, the majority of Maranello based Ferrari employees ...
"Never underestimate the power of denial" - Ricky Fitts, American Beauty . It has been a while we reported on the European sovereign debt crisis so we thought it being appropriate to give a quick update. Greece finally has secured a new deal with the Troika but no new haircuts are involved. So no new debt relief. We ...
Today we have a suitable guest post coming from Kris Van der Plas. In view of Europe’s Nobel peace price, this couldn’t have come at a better time. The Anglo-Saxon world still views upon Europe as the “old continent”. To some extent they are absolutely right: we are an old continent with a history of glory and black pages. ...
Sunday's big easy and two stories for the weekly wrap up. First of all Sweden, being the first big European economy to engage on economic stimulus, afraid that the global slow-down will have a strong impact on the economy due to its international exposure (exports 36% of GDP). So as a head start, the government decided to boost ...
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 : ...
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 ...
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 ...
Late last week, some comments have boosted markets in anticipation of putting a floor under certain asset classes (beleaguered peripheral bonds and equity markets). Now some have already made the remark "we believe it when we see it", meaning that Nowotny's comments on the ESM banking license - and certainly Draghi's one on bond ...
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 ...
The headlines over the coming days will be in the style of "Belgian debt perceived as core reliable AAA". And most likely a lot of politicians will grasp the opportunity to say that our present government is doing a hell of a job, just have a look at those yields (all time low 10y < 2.5%). Now we can always be cheerful about ...
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 ...
Yesterday we had triple whammy : 28 Spanish banks dramatically downgraded & Moodys threatening to cut the Spanish sovereign to junk ; then came the news that Monte dei Paschi will be bailed by the Italian government through means of so-called Tremonti bonds. And finally the presentation of Herman Van Rompuy's 7 page road map ...
The most acute problems are on Europe's periphery, where many smaller economies are experiencing crises strongly reminiscent of past crises in Latam America and Asia : Latvia is the new Argentina. Paul Krugman, NYT 15/12/08 (slightly wonkish) Yesterday, we picked ...
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 ...
I have just returned from a short stay in Budapest. A magnificent town, reflecting its majestic history in architecture, impressive museums, 19th century open air bathing houses (Széchenyi !!) and probably the world's most beautiful library reading room (4th floor of Ervin Szabo Library !!). So we start with the good news and some ...
After November's hectic month on all sorts of government bonds, ranging from PIIGS over to Belgium over to credits globally, December has kicked off under a different Zodiac sign. In fact, the latest auctions on government bonds have staged various rallies on different countries.Now the question would be : Has the Belgian state ...
"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" ...
