Category Archives: Investing
IMF revelations: The End of European Dominance & The Rise of Emerging Markets?
As “super-injunctions” are labelled “pointless” by the rise of ‘new’ social media sites, the world seems a smaller place for those wanting to hide potential transgressions. Indeed, such accusations can have broad ramifications as the head of the International Monetary … Read More
Japan is now in recession whilst the UK’s loan to Ireland is going wrong already
After discussing the travails of the Euro zone yesterday and establishing benchmarks for what default,restructuring and reprofiling mean I was intrigued to see this come up on the news-wires. According to Reuters, European Central Bank Executive Board member Lorenzo Bini Smaghi … Read More
Are Euro zone politicians and officials buying Greek Irish and Portuguese government bonds with their own money?
As this week has progressed we have seen Euro zone officials and politicians adopt their usual tactics when trying to deal with the crisis, they bicker amongst themselves. For a while the standard response was pure hyperbole as evidenced by … Read More
The impact of Easter means that this months surge in UK inflation should not have been a “surprise”
This morning has seen an interesting move in the value of the Japanese Yen which for the first time in a while has weakened without central bank intervention. For example it is currently at 81.40 versus the US dollar versus … Read More
Three-speed Europe now apparently includes a Greece with economic growth! Whilst Ireland raids its pensioners again
Today seems a meeting of Euro zone ministers which has two main issues, the first is the simplest which is to approve the aid package recently constructed for Portugal. The second is harder which is the subject of what to … Read More
When you spend US $2.3 trillion dollars you do not expect both jobless claims and producer price inflation to rise
Yesterday we receieved data on an issue which to my mind is perhaps the most fundamental one in the world economy right now. Regular readers will be aware of my contention that the US Federal Reserve is in effect setting … Read More
Gold may Glitter but can it Deliver?
The classic “safe-haven” investment has seen a strong uptrend in its value since the autumn of 2008. Risk aversion, inflation fears, falls in the dollar and demand from the east have all been credited as drivers of this move. But … Read More
Forecasting the UK economy has proved much too difficult for the Bank of England
Today I wish to discuss the outlook for the UK economy as published by the Bank of England yesterday but before I do so two of the themes of this blog were demonstrated on the subject of Greece. The first … Read More
An explanation of why the European Central Bank is so against a debt restructuring for Greece Ireland and Portugal
On Monday I discussed how Greece had reached her current dire situation and gave some suggestions as to how she could begin to manoeuvre her way out of them. Sadly for her a key item in any real rescue for … Read More
The “dark side” of Quantitative Easing, what if we cannot stop?
The past few days have demonstrated what I feel will be one of the features of the next weeks and months. Some commodities markets have seen extreme volatility and today I wish to touch on the oil price. First let … Read More
