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 …
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 …
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, …
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, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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, …
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 …
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 …
