January 26, 2015
QE [quantative easing], European Central Bank style, passed the markets test but will have a harder time doing as well for the euro zone economy or the currency union project. Mario Draghi’s plan to buy €60 billion [$67.5 billion] a …
September 26, 2014
Jack Ma and Warren Buffett embody two great and contrasting businesses in finance. One sells lottery tickets and the other sells insurance. Ma pulled off the largest-ever IPO last week when he floated Alibaba in what might be called the …
February 14, 2013
Acknowledging that sometimes banks chisel clients and bank employees chisel banks may sound obvious to you, but for the Federal Reserve this is a pretty big step forward. Jeremy Stein, a member of the Board of Governors of the Fed, …
December 27, 2012
As well as too-big-to-fail it looks as if we must think of our largest banks as too-big-to-punish as well. After comments from top U.S. Justice Department officials in the wake of the $1.5 billion settlement with UBS over interest-rate manipulation, …
December 13, 2012
To say taxpayers made money from their investment in AIG is to libel the very concept of profit. Come to think of it, it may well be a gross insult to the idea of investment too. The Treasury Department announced …
September 27, 2012
Just when Spain, and the euro zone, needed it least, along comes the Catalan secession drama to remind us exactly how many parties, peoples and factions have the potential to undermine the single currency’s salvation. Not that Catalonia is likely …
July 11, 2012
It may be better to think of the outbreak of negative interest rates as simply another weapon in an ongoing and global low-grade currency war. It’s not that negative interest rates – under which investors pay for the privilege of …
May 2, 2012
Europe looks to be entering a credit crunch, with loans harder to get and those that are made coming on tougher terms. Strikingly, banks are being tight despite falling demand for credit, pointing to a nasty interaction between the economy, …
July 26, 2011
A U.S. default or debt downgrade may set off market fireworks but the longer-term effects of the death of Treasury bonds as a universal benchmark of risk may ultimately be more significant. The U.S. appears to be slouching towards a …
December 15, 2010
You can lie to taxpayers or you can lie to creditors, European authorities are learning, but doing both at the same time is very hard. The proposed policy that current senior creditors to troubled states will not face losses on …