David joined the FT in 2011 as a Marjorie Deane fellow. He covered emerging markets, equities and currencies before making the jump over to FT Alphaville in May 2012.
As we noted before, the higher than expected repayments by banks of the Long Term Refinancing Operations to the ECB might also push up the amount of paper in circulation as collateral which was tied up in carry trades is returned to banks. That would put pressure on markets which benefitted from the LTRO cash.
What we didn’t think of was Belgium. Poor thing. Read more
Joseph joined FT Alphaville way back in March 2010. He likes all the politically and legally fiddly bits of finance. He also likes credit, rates, global macro, tail risk, and all that stuff. (You should email him story ideas. He’ll take anything.)
Here’s a table from a fresh IMF paper pondering the country’s Lewis Turning Point, the moment when people streaming into cities from farms will be fully absorbed, industrial wages will take off, and — an estimated 350m jobs later after it began — the era of cheap Chinese labour will end. Click to enlarge. Read more
Izabella Kaminska joined FT Alphaville in October 2008. Before that she worked as a producer at CNBC, a natural gas reporter at Platts and an associate editor of BP's internal magazine.
FT Alphaville has just returned from the Danish Institute for International Studies’ conference on central banking in Copenhagen.
The theme was “central banks at a crossroads” — which we thought was particularly apt — and discussions ranged from collateral-backed finance and shadow banking to central bank independence. Indeed, many thanks to the DIIS for having us.
But one presentation, we would have to say, stood out more than most; that of Anat Admati, George G.C. Parker professor of finance and economics at Stanford Graduate School of Business, who’s out with a new book this month entitled “The Bankers’ New Clothes“. Read more
David joined the FT in 2011 as a Marjorie Deane fellow. He covered emerging markets, equities and currencies before making the jump over to FT Alphaville in May 2012.
Masa joined the FT in 2009 and has worked on a number of desks across the paper, including Companies, Markets and Comment. She spent much of 2010 in New York covering the US equity markets. But earlier this year she finally saw the light and moved to Alphaville.
She started her career in the investment banking division at Lehman Brothers in the summer of 2007, timing it perfectly with the beginning of the credit crunch.
She studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University.
China’s growing demographic challenges have been well documented and their economic impact much discussed. So how about urbanisation being touted as the solution?
After all, more people working in cities generally means more productive workers, hard to argue with that. But Beijing’s traditional policy of encouraging urbanisation through greater infrastructure investment is getting ever diminishing returns. If the government really wants more people to move to the cities, argues Wei Yao at Société Générale, it must start treating its new urbanites better. Read more
Joseph joined FT Alphaville way back in March 2010. He likes all the politically and legally fiddly bits of finance. He also likes credit, rates, global macro, tail risk, and all that stuff. (You should email him story ideas. He’ll take anything.)
Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company.
In our last post, we covered up-to-date figures on some of the major components of the headline Spanish deposits number. Here we discuss a new component that will come into play over the next few months. In fact, it might have already been a factor in November’s number.
It’s the €40bn of previously undeclared assets of Spanish residents! The finance minister announced last week that this was simply hiding in a sofa (or possibly multiple sofas), and it wasn’t all that hard to find once they went to the trouble of removing all the cushions. Or, something like that…
OK, actually it’s the amount that came to light through the government’s tax amnesty that closed on November 30th, 2012. But hey, that would have been a hell of a couch, eh? Read more
Masa joined the FT in 2009 and has worked on a number of desks across the paper, including Companies, Markets and Comment. She spent much of 2010 in New York covering the US equity markets. But earlier this year she finally saw the light and moved to Alphaville.
She started her career in the investment banking division at Lehman Brothers in the summer of 2007, timing it perfectly with the beginning of the credit crunch.
She studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University.
Costs drag Deutsche Bank to €2.2bn loss || FSA targets banks on interest rate swaps || Chinese hackers target New York Times || US economy slips into reverse || Chinese steel mills face tax pressure || Russia concerned over Israeli air strike || Markets update: a pretty meek finish to a very strong month for stocks Read more
Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company.
Now, there are stories of deposits and capital returning… and we need to add further driving factors to the headlines. What with the tax amnesty that unearthed some €40bn of previously undeclared assets of Spanish residents, as announced by the finance minister last week, and all. Read more
Izabella Kaminska joined FT Alphaville in October 2008. Before that she worked as a producer at CNBC, a natural gas reporter at Platts and an associate editor of BP's internal magazine.
Kate is FT AV’s Asia Correspondent. She joined FT Alphaville in mid-2011 after carrying out various roles in the FT’s London office since 2005: interactive editor, companies reporter, and founding editor of the FT’s Energy Source blog.
Asian markets fall on US GDP and Japan’s industrial production || FSA to investigate annuities market || Rio says Mongolian mine on track after halt report || MPs criticise Barclays’ bonus culture || Split over blame for West Coast fiasco || Governments can’t blame companies for tax evasion Read more
Joseph joined FT Alphaville way back in March 2010. He likes all the politically and legally fiddly bits of finance. He also likes credit, rates, global macro, tail risk, and all that stuff. (You should email him story ideas. He’ll take anything.)
Fed-falling: the S&P 500 fell 0.4 per cent to close at 1,501.96, while the Russell 2000 lost sight of Tuesday’s record high, dropping 1.2 per cent (Bloomberg). Read more
Joseph joined FT Alphaville way back in March 2010. He likes all the politically and legally fiddly bits of finance. He also likes credit, rates, global macro, tail risk, and all that stuff. (You should email him story ideas. He’ll take anything.)
And a dissent from Esther George. Full statement from the Fed’s open market committee:
Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in December suggests that growth in economic activity paused in recent months, in large part because of weather-related disruptions and other transitory factors. Employment has continued to expand at a moderate pace but the unemployment rate remains elevated. Household spending and business fixed investment advanced, and the housing sector has shown further improvement. Inflation has been running somewhat below the Committee’s longer-run objective, apart from temporary variations that largely reflect fluctuations in energy prices. Longer-term inflation expectations have remained stable. Read more
“Alicia Keys has come to BlackBerry because she believes in the product and technology, and subscribes to our overriding philosophy to “Keep Moving”: to empower people through mobile computing and communications,” said BlackBerry President and CEO Thorsten Heins…
David joined the FT in 2011 as a Marjorie Deane fellow. He covered emerging markets, equities and currencies before making the jump over to FT Alphaville in May 2012.
That’s a very small €3.7bn take up by banks participating in the European Central Bank’s three-month Long Term Refinancing Operation on Wednesday. We’d expected more. Read more
Joseph joined FT Alphaville way back in March 2010. He likes all the politically and legally fiddly bits of finance. He also likes credit, rates, global macro, tail risk, and all that stuff. (You should email him story ideas. He’ll take anything.)
The "trial of the century" in sovereign debt restructuring, in our humble opinion. The story of Argentina, its holdout creditors, the grande finale (or is it?) of their battle in US courts.
At times, pursuing a defaulted sovereign debtor for full payment can almost (almost) come across as a facetious exercise. As when NML’s latest brief in the Argentine pari passu case quotes Casablanca. Read more
RNS, the newswire used by most U.K. companies to distribute time-sensitive press releases, will require anyone wishing to receive announcements in real-time must register before Feb. 1, 2013. Anyone who fails to register will receive the press announcements after a 60-minute delay. There is no cost at this time to register.
Cardiff writes mostly about US macroeconomic issues, with daily excursions into other topics about which he claim no expertise. Before Alphaville, Cardiff spent a little more than two years as a reporter at Dow Jones Financial News covering investment banking, asset management, and private equity. Along the way he has written freelance pieces on a variety of other topics from behavioural psychology to Muay Thai, the latter also being a personal interest that involves frequently getting kicked in the shins (and torso, and head).
Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — decreased at an annual rate of 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 (that is, from the third quarter to the fourth quarter), according to the “advance” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the third quarter, real GDP increased 3.1 percent. Read more
Cardiff writes mostly about US macroeconomic issues, with daily excursions into other topics about which he claim no expertise. Before Alphaville, Cardiff spent a little more than two years as a reporter at Dow Jones Financial News covering investment banking, asset management, and private equity. Along the way he has written freelance pieces on a variety of other topics from behavioural psychology to Muay Thai, the latter also being a personal interest that involves frequently getting kicked in the shins (and torso, and head).
We had a lot of fun making this short video, which is based on a topic that’s been discussed energetically in the blogosphere and elsewhere for a few months, and which has captured Izabella’s fascination for nearly a year.Read more
Kate is FT AV’s Asia Correspondent. She joined FT Alphaville in mid-2011 after carrying out various roles in the FT’s London office since 2005: interactive editor, companies reporter, and founding editor of the FT’s Energy Source blog.
How much of the oil and gas sector’s asset valuations could be at risk from climate mitigation policy?
The International Energy Agency’s latest annual World Energy Outlook, released in November, followed the popular practice in long-term forecasts of using several scenarios. One involves global policymakers moving to limit atmospheric CO2 concentration to 450 parts per million, in order to limit to 50 per cent the probability of average temperatures rising 2 degrees or more.
The problem for fossil fuel companies is that could limit their ability to utilise all their reserves. Read more
David joined the FT in 2011 as a Marjorie Deane fellow. He covered emerging markets, equities and currencies before making the jump over to FT Alphaville in May 2012.
The Bank of Italy has provided a robust defence of its regulation of Monte dei Paschi di Siena || Monte Paschi ignored warnings over risk, documents show || RBS is winding down its M&A business || Wider euro ‘Tobin tax’ will net €35bn || Chesapeake’s controversial CEO, Aubrey McClendon, is resigning || Individual investors helping drive US stockmarket surge || Swiss banks lose old taste for gold || Brussels soften line on bank ringfences || Euro zone economic sentiment rises more than expected || Euro carry reversal inflicts global pain || Amazon’s profits fell 45% in Q4 || India’s finance minister sees end to Vodafone dispute || Apple failed to get its $1.05bn damages award against Samsung increased || China anger at EU telecoms demands || Toyota to recall 752,000 Corollas in U.S. for airbag problems || European Cloud Over Ford || Markets roundup || Germany won’t stand in Cyprus’ way, apparently || Backloading the carbon markets || FOMC preview Read more
Kate is FT AV’s Asia Correspondent. She joined FT Alphaville in mid-2011 after carrying out various roles in the FT’s London office since 2005: interactive editor, companies reporter, and founding editor of the FT’s Energy Source blog.
Cyprus, the small economy with the relatively massive bank recapitalisation problem, may have some kind of good news in its quest for a bailout: Germany might not be so wedded to blocking or delaying said bailout after all.
Kate is FT AV’s Asia Correspondent. She joined FT Alphaville in mid-2011 after carrying out various roles in the FT’s London office since 2005: interactive editor, companies reporter, and founding editor of the FT’s Energy Source blog.
The EU carbon market has been miserable for most of the past few years, with prices staggering downwards from their c.€30 levels on the scheme’s launch in 2005. But it’s become very gloomy in the past couple of weeks, with mid single digits prices falling as much as 40 per cent to a record low of €2.81 last Thursday. Read more
Kate is FT AV’s Asia Correspondent. She joined FT Alphaville in mid-2011 after carrying out various roles in the FT’s London office since 2005: interactive editor, companies reporter, and founding editor of the FT’s Energy Source blog.
RBS winds down M&A business || Asian stocks rise || Brussels may soften line on ringfencing || Chesapeake’s McClendon to retire || Bank of Italy defends MPS supervision || Apple fails to get Samsung penalty raised || Italy’s foreign tax crackdown Read more
FT markets round-up:“Global stocks rose and challenged new cyclical highs, supported by better than expected corporate earnings and improving economic data. The FTSE All-World equity index rose 0.6 per cent to 234.76 as the FTSE Eurofirst 300 rose 0.4 per cent and after the Asia-Pacific region added 0.9 per cent. In New York, the S&P 500 climbed 7 points to 1,507 and closing at a five-year peak. Solid house price data from S&P/Case-Shiller was partly counteracted by news that US consumer confidence is now at its lowest in more than a year. Still, Wall Street’s mood was buoyed by the latest in a batch of mostly sentiment-supportive corporate results. Indeed, with about a third of the S&P 500 constituents having reported this earnings season, 75 per cent of them have delivered profits above analysts’ expectations, according to Bloomberg. Other growth-focused products were firm, with copper up 0.2 per cent to $3.66 a pound and Brent crude closing above the $114 a barrel mark. The dollar index fell 0.2 per cent as the euro rose 0.3 per cent to $1.3491 and gold advanced by $9 to $1,663 an ounce.” (Financial Times) Read more
Cardiff writes mostly about US macroeconomic issues, with daily excursions into other topics about which he claim no expertise. Before Alphaville, Cardiff spent a little more than two years as a reporter at Dow Jones Financial News covering investment banking, asset management, and private equity. Along the way he has written freelance pieces on a variety of other topics from behavioural psychology to Muay Thai, the latter also being a personal interest that involves frequently getting kicked in the shins (and torso, and head).
Some of this meeting’s thunder was stolen by the last meeting, when the Fed moved to the Evans Rule sooner than had been expected.
So nobody is expecting any major policy changes or innovations in the FOMC statement that will be released Wednesday. (There’s no presser until the March meeting.) But in addition to any changes in the economic outlook, a couple of items will be worth watching. Read more
Cardiff writes mostly about US macroeconomic issues, with daily excursions into other topics about which he claim no expertise. Before Alphaville, Cardiff spent a little more than two years as a reporter at Dow Jones Financial News covering investment banking, asset management, and private equity. Along the way he has written freelance pieces on a variety of other topics from behavioural psychology to Muay Thai, the latter also being a personal interest that involves frequently getting kicked in the shins (and torso, and head).
GC repo rates and term (3-month and 6-month) GC futures have fallen in recent weeks. The only mystery is why it took so long.
A decline was largely expected as a result of TAG expiring and the end of Operation Twist. The former had given large risk-averse investors a safe place to stash their money, and the latter had allowed flooded dealer inventories with safe collateral against which slightly less risk-averse investors and MMFs could reverse repo and get a tad extra yield. Read more
1FTAV video: the robot employment threat
2A Grilli grilling
3Germany won't stand in Cyprus' way, apparently
4Value-at-risk for oil and gas reserves?
5The surprisingly long path to US monetary union
Show more6The Fed holds
7Doubting the bull market in Treasuries is over...
8The perpetualisation of debt
9Advance reading of US Q4 GDP: -0.1% annual rate
10Backloading the carbon markets
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