Comment and analysis from Friday’s FT:
Comment: Peter Weinberg on the benefits of SWFs
SWF investing is good for the global markets and for our global community. Corporate leaders, market participants and politicians should resist the temptation to adopt a bunker mentality.
Gillian Tett: What’s lurking beneath the leveraged loan woodshed
Is something nasty lurking in the leveraged loan woodshed? That is a question a lot of investors are asking these days. Fitch suggested last week, for example, that banks could have written off about 80 per cent of their likely subprime hits. But some investors are now wondering if the banks could soon be hit by a new wave of problems – this time from the leveraged loan world.
Oil, interactive map: Key players and movements
The rising oil price, which topped $130 a barrel this week, risks pushing the global economy into a deep and prolonged slowdown.
Oil, video: The daily view
The FT’s commodities correspondent Javier Blas, discusses how high oil prices are starting to hit companies from airlines to manufacturers. The question now is how deep the impact will be – and where.
View of the day: Platinum supply
The price of platinum could see a significant increase in the medium-term as demand/supply pressures create the “ultimate” bottleneck, says Leon Esterhuizen, analyst at RBC Capital Markets. Demand is being driven by the global need for catalytic converters to reduce emissions in car exhausts, and also by the jewellery industry, and although it is expected to decline slightly as the current high prices eat into jewellery demand, it is expected to continue growing.
The Short View, video: Markets and the Fed
The market is beginning to think that the Fed has got it wrong. Many critics complain that the Fed should have responded to the credit crisis in the same way as the ECB – with measures to help liquidity in the worst-affected markets, but not by cutting rates. Text version.
Lex: When banks hit out at marking to market
It is unwise to put the boot in when you do not have a leg to stand on. Yet that is what a tarnished banking industry risks with its critique of fair value accounting. After precipitating a crisis and then borrowing large amounts of public money, it takes an audacious industry to cast accounting as a villain.