May, 2011
You Dominique Strauss-Kahn’t make this up
Outside the hotel where Dominique Strauss-Kahn — who was arrested late Saturday — is alleged to have attacked a maid: a forlorn drapeau tricolore.
H/T: the FT’s Barney Jopson. DSK is currently in custody downtown,
The Weekender
This week on FT Alphaville,
- Europe’s Greek-out! took one look at a hard restructure…
- …And chose (for now) the soft way out.
- The IMF worried what all this meant for Europe’s core.
- Michael Cembalest turned US subprime-revisionist.
Further further reading
For the commute home, now a more expensive trip,
- IMF working paper on cyclical vs structural unemployment.
- Brazil’s middle class is getting credit crazy.
- Supportive colleagues will extend your life (and make you happy about it).
Are US house prices not falling after all?
Douse your double-dip fears, house prices are actually going up.
At least that’s the contention by Citi analysts in a note published on Friday.
But before looking at their research here’s a quick reminder of the where the S&P/Case-Shiller index stands,
The tsunami effect, charted
In the days immediately following the twin earthquake and tsunami disasters in Japan, there was much speculation about how big the impact might be on the country’s trade and exports.
Now thanks to Sean Corrigan,
Morgan Stanley wants you to pay more attention to seniors
Seniors have had a hard time of it lately.
They’ve been usurped by a trendier generation, buffeted by changing times. Now Morgan Stanley analysts want you to consider this frail group. They want you to …
US Markets Live transcript 13 May 2011
Markets Live chat transcript for the chat ending at 15:18 on 13 May 2011. Participants in this chat were: Cardiff Garcia John McDermott Joseph Cotterill, FT Izabella Kaminska CGGooooood morning
Help! We’re all being financially repressed!
There’s a wider theme running through the relatively technical question of how the European Central Bank’s massive holdings of Greek government bonds will fare in any Hellenic debt restructuring.
There are plenty of market participants who already believe the likelihood the ECB will have to suffer the same losses as private investors on their Greek debt investment,
The 2001 shift
Kevin Gaynor at Nomura — long-standing side-kick to Bob ‘The Bear’ Janjuah — has had an epiphany.
The crisis didn’t begin in the subprime fuelled mid-naughties.
It began in 2001, when the world experienced a structural shift like none other.
The return of US Markets Live: 10am in NY, 3pm in London
From Cardiff Garcia and John McDermott
After a three-week hiatus, we’re back.
We were hoping to announce our special guest host for the day, Raj Rajaratnam, but he’s tied up and says he needs to stay home.
Surprise – Moody’s accidentally rates a bond too low
Is there a Type III ratings error category? Where rating agencies completely misidentify what kind of bond they’re rating? Awkward:
(H/T Sam Jones of Moody’s rating error fame)
ETF investors mistimed the commodity correction (again)
Here’s an interesting observation regarding this month’s commodity sell-off.
It comes from short-selling data firm, Data Explorers, and it concerns commodities ETFs:
The other theme running through this week has been further drama in some of the commodity markets,
UBS on the commods crash – and getting ready for the next one
We’ve heard from Deutsche Bank, who blamed the coming end of QE for last week’s precipitous price moves.
UBS have now added their view to the causes of the commodities crash. In a nutshell, they’re citing:
Markets Live transcript 13 May 2011
Markets Live chat transcript for the chat ending at 11:17 on 13 May 2011. Participants in this chat were: Neil Hume, FT bryce.elder NHgood morning markets rabble NHand welcome to Markets Live
The LSE’s IPO pipeline
Topaz Energy & Marine, Russian Helicopters, Edwards Group, Skrill and Chelpipe.
Just some of the companies that have pulled or postponed plans to list on the London Stock Exchange.
And that
Eurostat isn’t happy with Greece and its Goldman swap
Greece’s currency swaps with Goldman Sachs may have slipped your memory.
Luckily Eurostat, in a just-published review of its methodological visits to Greece in 2010, has a quick reminder. More importantly,
In China, Coach and LVMH: win some, lose some
Slowly but steadily, it’s happening.
China’s famed production paradise for foreign companies is hollowing out. Amid spiralling wage costs and rising worker activism, some foreign manufacturers have been reassessing their China operations — and a growing number are beating a retreat to cheaper and more accommodating labour environments
The irony is that steadily increasing wages,
Where’s Lucas?
Where’s Lucas?
The man of many words has gone silent.
There was a time a Taibbi article would have provoked a scathing response from the Goldman Sachs PR man. Let’s not forget his reply to Matt Taibi’s immortal ‘vampire squid’ meme.
Further reading
Elsewhere on Friday,
- Time to be serious, according to Jeremy Grantham.
- Tight correlations muddy the (market) pot.
- Gloom and doom, and how to profit from it.
- HSBC and StanChart gain most from Chinese rule change.
Pink picks
Comment, analysis and other offerings from Friday’s FT,
Simon Tilford: Greece and Portugal should both go gracefully
Even as the ink is drying on Portugal’s European Union and International Monetary Fund bail-out agreement,
Further further reading
For the commute home,
- Can you predict who will get a Nobel in economics?
- The amazing story of JP Morgan’s hunt for Afghan gold.
- In defence of ETFs.
- What was that Goldman said about demand destruction?
- Peter Diamond is targeted.
Adventures at the long end of the muni yield curve
The Bond Buyer has a story on Thursday highlighting strong demand for tax-exempt municipal bonds, which despite recent tightening are still trading at above 100 per cent of comparable US Treasuries at the long end of the yield curve.
Core blimey! IMF’s advanced Europe worries
The IMF is back with another chart-laden mash-up of empirical evidence and conventional wisdom.
On Thursday the Fund released the first of two European outlook reports for 2011. It’s a bumper (114 pages) offering that’s well worth skimming.
A tale of two volatilities
We suppose this was inevitable.
This morning the IEA lowered its forecast for global oil product demand for the year (highlights here, full report will be publicly available in two weeks):
Forecast global oil product demand growth for 2011 is trimmed on persistent high prices and weaker IMF GDP projections for advanced economies.
And the money kept rolling in…
(And out)
The above chart is courtesy of Alex Bellefleur at Brockhouse Cooper. It’s worth reading in conjunction with this earlier graph. (The 2014 Greek bond and 2006 Argentine bond are both five-year issues.)
Since we’ll admit the Greece-Argentina comparison is controversial,
From vampire squid to 1,100-pound medical emergency
They weren’t murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further.
Meanwhile, on Planet ECB
Judge not, lest ye be judged.
ECB board member José Manuel González-Páramo, earlier on Thursday:
Let me stress that I am rather surprised to see the flippancy with which some commentators recommend that the government of an advanced economy should infringe its legal and contractual obligations,
Devaluation – the great Greek damp squib?
Perhaps there’s been a drachma-tisation of a devaluation’s worth.
A major point of leaving the monetary union, one would presume, would be for Greece to extricate itself from the single currency and switch to the new drachma,