The proposal now before Congress to authorise the spending of $700bn to bail out Wall Street contains just 849 words. It avoids the need to go into further detail via its suggestion that the Treasury Secretary should simply have unlimited authority to act as he ‘deems necessary’. But 5 key questions are bound to be […]
Alan Greenspan’s comments (below), led the blog to investigate how the world’s major stock markets had moved since their recent peaks. All, as shown in the chart, are now in bear markets. Stock markets often forecast economic developments 6 – 12 months ahead, and so this represents a negative indicator for future chemical demand. Also […]
Another day, another rescue. This time on the other side of the Atlantic. HBOS, the UK’s largest mortgage lender, with a 20% market share, announced this morning that it was being rescued via a merger with the Lloyds TSB bank. The deal was brokered by the UK government. UK Finance Minister, Alastair Darling, told the […]
‘A disorderly failure of AIG could add to already significant levels of financial market fragility and lead to substantially higher borrowing costs, reduced household wealth, and materially weaker economic performance,’ according to the US Federal Reserve last night. As a result, the US government now owns 79.9% of the nation’s largest insurer, in return for […]
Pimco, the world’s largest bond fund, have repeated their belief that we are facing a ‘Minsky moment’, named after Hyman Minsky (pictured). His insight was that a long period of stability, such as that experienced over the past decade, eventually leads to major instability. This is because investors forget that higher reward equals higher risk. […]
The blog has never liked disaster movies, but it was quite a weekend for those who do. First, there was the hurricane hitting Houston and Texas. I used to live in Houston, and watching the pictures of the damage, could recognise familiar places washed away, or burnt down. The blog’s sympathy goes to all those […]
This morning, the blog is awarding itself a pat on the back. This is because, almost alone, it forecast in mid-July that oil prices ‘could easily fall $50/bbl to $100/bbl’ in the absence of any military action on Iran. And it had the courage to repeat this comment on 4 August. It added that if […]
A trend seems to be developing amongst the world’s policy makers. Last month saw China and the UK’s finance ministries warning of bad times to come. Yesterday, France’s finance minister joined the chorus, saying that she had ‘underestimated the spillover from the US financial and housing market turmoil’. Even more significantly, her boss, French prime […]
Many readers have been out of the office during August on a well-deserved break. I am therefore highlighting below the main postings over the past month, in the hope this will help them to catch up quickly on key developments – please click on the highlighted title if you want to read the original posting: […]
Another policy maker has decided realism is the best policy when talking about the current credit crunch. China’s Liu He started the trend earlier this month, by talking about the need for ‘economic restructuring’. Now the UK’s Finance Minister, Alistair Darling, has become the first western official to abandon reassurance and instead to focus on […]