It is exasperating to hear that US regulators and policy makers have decided to bail out the principals responsible for the gross uncertainty and risk that prevails in financial markets. Hundreds of billions of dollars will be spent on buying bad debts in order to reliquify financial markets. It doesn’t sound like a smart investment …
Continue reading Moral hazard, bailing out the rich and more trouble to come.
In the past decade there has certainly been a huge increase in awareness and care about sustaining nature in the face of overconsumption by humanity. Now, most people have heard the terms “sustainable”, “organic”, “eco”, “green” and associate positive initiatives with these terms. Sadly we also associate a cost with these terms, a cost we …
Continue reading We are still not prepared to pay for our planet.
EU austerity drive by country by BBC A succinct picture. In Ireland’s case, a good start would be to cut the interest rate on the loans. They must be soft or the numbers don’t work. But moral hazard must be expunged and transaction cots reduced.
I just had an interesting conversation with my brother. He is a senior compliance specialist who has worked with the biggest global commercial banks. He explained the extraordinary cost and consequences of poor administration of the legal framework of the finance and securities industry in the EU. I was amazed. His perspective from the City …
Continue reading Tick the box. Or think.
It wasn’t just bankers, we all played a part. But top of the list of immoral players are fiduciaries. The US Senate Subcommittee investigating the financial crash of 2007/8 highlighted emails by top investment bankers who were short selling the mortgage security market as it declined, while publicly obfuscating the hole in the financial system. …
Continue reading Bankers crashed the economy.
Are markets reaching bubble proportions? Regular readers of our world of money blog know how I feel. That’s not to say you can’t make money in a bubble. Or that valuations won’t be maintained. But I just can’t get comfortable with the massive hole in the financial system on one hand and the buoyancy of …
Continue reading ‘The bellboys are handing out stock tips in the lifts’
It is no surprise that headlines a year after the collapse of Lehman Bros declare that the lessons of the financial crisis have not been learned and there is no sytstemic improvement in the financial system. The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) says the rapid return to the City’s bonus culture shows real reform …
Continue reading Crisis: lessons not learned!
Another perspective released today is that everyone has spent $10,ooo each on the bailout of economies. $ 10 trillion is a lot of value, but may not mean much to anyone. It’s enough to buy a country, or two. We are were we are. The money is gone. The question remains about whether or not …
Continue reading $ 10 trillion and rising. Does it mean anything.
Yes, Alan Greenspan is still around. He tells us that he predicted that there would be a crash and that there will be another. If he predicted it then he should have done a lot more to manage it, otherwise, given his position, his “prediction” is facile. Saying there will be another is as helpful …
Continue reading You can’t teach an old dog new tricks: Greenspan
The last few days have seen data which suggest that the economies of France, Germany, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan have bottomed out; that is they showed positive GDP changes in the second quarter (April – June) 2009. Some of the numbers are a bit extraordinary – Singapore’s data shows growth of 20% in 2Q. …
Continue reading Recession waning: France, Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan …
