Comment, analysis and other offerings from Tuesday’s FT,
Gideon Rachman: Japan edges from America towards China
How Japan reacts to its new sense of weakness – exaggerated though it may be – will matter to the whole world, writes the FT columnist. The country’s size and strategic importance make it critical to America’s Pacific strategy and to China’s geopolitical calculations.
Analysis: Finance – an exposed position
In recent weeks, there has been outrage among European politicians about Goldman Sachs’ sale of derivatives contracts to Greece, which helped to flatter its debt profile. Now it is becoming clear that this was not an entirely isolated case. During the past decade, investment banks have sold complex derivatives to state authorities across the Continent, in countries such as Austria, Belgium and Portugal, either with the aim of flattering their balance sheets or on the promise of high returns.
Insight: Shorting US Treasuries could be a mistake
There are reasons to expect the Treasury market to hold its own, and perhaps even surprise with lower yields, writes Dino Kos, managing director of equity research at Portales Partners and a former executive vice president of the markets group at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Mark Mazower: Greece’s history is defined by foreign meddling
Sympathy for the Greeks is in short supply, says Mazower, who teaches history at Columbia University. But their European partners need to come up with a better response and this will require getting to grips with the deeper roots of Greece’s predicament. I do not refer to the widely touted claim that Greece is a serial defaulter; the real constant in modern Greek history is the extraordinary degree of foreign interference in its domestic life.
Lombard: Prudential now has hard task of wooing core investors
After the exhausting globetrotting of the past two weeks, the hard work begins for Tidjane Thiam. The chief executive of Prudential may have finished wooing AIG and Washington to secure the $35.5bn (£23.5bn) deal to buy AIG’s Asian business. He has also completed a whirlwind tour of Asia to present the rationale and reassurances he believes were required for staff and regulators there.
News analysis: Oil futures turn upside down
rude futures are doing a slow-motion backflip, stoking speculation about the next move for oil prices. The futures curve, plotted with prices of oil to be delivered in successive months, has flattened. Several Wall Street analysts say the market is poised to flip even further, with spot prices rising above longer-dated futures for the first time since mid-2008.
Lex on a eurozone IMF
A European Monetary Fund would be a solution to the next eurozone debt crisis, not Greece’s current problems. But it is worth pursuing – not least because, properly constructed, such an institution might help prevent future crises.
Energy Source: Is the super-grid super-solid?
The plan is as ambitious as it looks – particularly in regard to its reliance on Norwegian hydropower for storing energy.
Money Supply: Who’s afraid of global growth?
Who’s afraid of global growth? Jürgen Stark, member of the executive board of the ECB, for one. At least, if it’s the wrong kind of growth.
Money Matters: Can you predict the stock market in an election year?
Forget who will actually win this year’s general election – what will happen to the stock market? Fund managers Blackrock have run some figures on what happens to stock markets in the run up to a general election and the year after.