February 3rd, 2012
[SFTW] Dear Davey: handbrake turn needed
Every government needs a thick slice of luck, and this week’s has come as Chris Huhne slid off the political road into the ditch. Ed Davey has a golden chance to drive away from an energy policy which might have been designed to make energy expensive and electricity unreliable.
Imagine no recoveries in bank senior debt
Seems kinda churlish to throw this out amidst the biggest bank bond rally since 2009. But…
We believe investors should assume a low (possibly 0%) recovery rate on most senior unsecured bank bonds
In practice,
Inflation targeting, back in the frame
We know who’s brought this on. It was Ben Bernanke, last week, with confirmation of the Fed’s 2 per cent inflation target. We suspect it’s one debate that is going to grow in intensity.
First to Bruce Corneil,
Squeaky Bumi time
We can’t let this Bumi RNS go unnoticed:
REQUISITION OF GENERAL MEETING
The Company announces that the Directors have received a notice from Borneo Bumi Energi & Metal Pte. Ltd, being the holder of not less than 5 percent of the paid-up voting share capital of the Company,
US Markets Live transcript 3 Feb 2012
Markets Live chat transcript for the chat ending at 16:05 on 3 Feb 2012. Participants in this chat were: Joseph Cotterill, FT Cardiff Garcia JCHello there JCAaargh slow ML start-up.
Economics, a space opera
FT Alphaville would like to survey the following statement:
Economists are failing to account for mass technological innovations when making forecasts and constructing models.
Agree/disagree.
And we don’t just mean critiquing the Fed’s new long-range forecasts.
Reminder: US Markets Live at 10am New York, 3pm London
Perhaps inadvisedly, we chucked the kevlar and tin into the Hudson after we saw the jobs report. We’ll talk about whether we need to retrieve them, plus have some chatter about Glencore, the latest out of Europe,
Non-farm payrolls 243,000
By Cardiff Garcia and Joseph Cotterill
Uncaptured seasonality effects or not, this is what a healthy employment report looks like.
Many of the underlying details look even better than the headline numbers,
The preferred, puzzling, ESM
Eurozone states signed the final version of the treaty establishing the European Stabilisation Mechanism on February 2.
(Click the image for the full document)
The ESM treaty now heads for ratification by 17 states,
Winter seasonality, employment report preview edition
Warning: we start by rambling about a bunch of stuff that may not interest anyone besides methodology geeks. If you want to jump straight to how this morning’s BLS employment report might be affected by seasonality issues,
Markets Live transcript 3 Feb 2012
Markets Live chat transcript for the chat ending at 12:02 on 3 Feb 2012. Participants in this chat were: Paul Murphy Bryce Elder/FT PMMorning PMWelcome to Markets Live
Temisys … eventually
“Thank you for depositing a $3bn merger rumour. An RNS will be credited to our investors in 24 hours.”
As the FT wrote on Thursday morning …
Misys missed out, drifting lower by 0.6 per cent to 321¼p on concerns that takeover speculation could be misplaced.
Further reading
Elsewhere on Friday,
- Why the collapse of the euro could be good.
- The Target2 reference guide.
- The deleveraging cycle is far from over.
- Realised volatility is absurdly low.
- Why Facebook isn’t worth $100bn.
Pink picks
Comment, analysis, and other offerings from Thursday’s FT,
Philip Stephens: A telling tale of two Mitterrands
Some arguments do not go away. I was in Brussels this week when eurozone leaders signed up to Angela Merkel’s fiscal pact.