février 2011
63 billets
3 tags
Hitchens on The King's Speech's gross... →
The private letters and diaries of the royal family demonstrate a continued, consistent allegiance to the policy of appeasement and to the personality of Chamberlain. King George’s forbidding mother wrote to him, exasperated that more people in the House of Commons had not cheered the sellout. The king himself, even after the Nazi armies had struck deep north into Scandinavia and clear ...
3 tags
La dégradation du JdeM →
Les conditions de travail étaient excellentes, mais l’entreprise était « lean and mean », comme on dit dans le jargon des affaires. La salle de rédaction du Journal de Montréal était la plus productive et la plus efficace de l’industrie. L’un des héritiers a pris les commandes de l’entreprise à la fin des années 1990. Et au cours des dix années suivantes, les méthodes de gestion, le...
3 tags
Hébert: PM’s rhetoric drives wedge between Quebec... →
It is no secret that the spectre of another Bloc-supported coalition is going to be a part of the Prime Minister’s election narrative.
Harper is already arguing that only a majority government could prevent the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc from striking another (unholy) alliance to unseat his party on the morning after the next election.
Duceppe knows that by embracing the coalition in...
2 tags
2 tags
Whatever happened to 'Japan'? →
So much has changed. The depression of the Japanese economy meant that the wonks and economists lost interest in the model some years ago. Japan was a scarcely-noticed absentee from the global financial crisis, having been weighed down by its own collapsed credit system for nearly twenty years. The plundering of Japanese production techniques (just-in-time production, Total Quality Management)...
2 tags
How the Servant Became a Predator: Finance’s Five... →
What exactly is the function of the financial sector in our society? Simply this: Its sole function is supplying capital efficiently to aid the real economy. The financial sector is a tool to help those that make real tools, not an end in itself. But five fatal flaws in the financial sector’s current structure have created a monster that drains the real economy, promotes fraud and corruption,...
2 tags
Swiss central bank discord provides a warning bell... →
In normal times, investors spend little time contemplating the political status of the Swiss National Bank. Now, however, they should – particularly given that geopolitical turmoil is causing the Swiss franc to soar.
For while the markets worry about Libyan politics, US unemployment, British inflation or oil prices, a curious saga is playing out in Zurich that creates food for thought.
The...
3 tags
Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on... →
Under duress, Holmes and his team provided Caldwell with background assessments on the visiting senators, and helped prep the general for his high-profile encounters. But according to members of his unit, Holmes did his best to resist the orders. Holmes believed that using his team to target American civilians violated the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which was passed by Congress to prevent the State...
3 tags
3 tags
Madman Is Wanted to Fill Euro's Job From Hell →
It comes with a nice office and a grand title. You would probably have a pretty generous expense account. And there may well be a lucrative consulting gig with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. when it is all over.
Even so, you would have to be bordering on insanity to accept the role of European Central Bank president when Jean- Claude Trichet steps down in October this year.
It’s the job from hell....
1 tag
Trust & Investment Banking: Interview with The... →
CHG: We’ll dig more deeply into this later, but what has the term “investment banking” come to mean these days?
TED: Well. Over the last decade or so, large, global, integrated investment banks have really turned into hedge funds in disguise. Either explicitly, in the form of acknowledged proprietary trading or in-house private equity funds, or implicitly, in the form of large security...
3 tags
Austerity’s inauspicious historical precedents →
Macdonald has an economic historian’s view of the current austerity debate, and he was very clear: if you look at the history of countries trying to cut and deflate their way to prosperity while keeping their currencies pegged, it’s pretty grim — all the way back to Napoleonic times. Sometimes, the peg is gold. For a good example of the destructive abilities of that particular peg, look at the UK...
2 tags
Crise fiscale en vue? →
Dans La crise fiscale qui vient, publié chez VLB Éditeur, Brigitte Alepin écrit que les problèmes de la Grèce, de l’Irlande et des États-Unis ne représentent que « le début d’une longue vague qui risque de frapper plusieurs pays, dont le Canada ». Quantité de pays ne seront pas en mesure d’équilibrer leurs finances avant longtemps. Les retraités, les travailleurs,...
2 tags
Michael Pettis on China’s very own zaiteku →
So why did corporate deposits drop? My guess is that large businesses may be finding it much more profitable to lend money to other businesses, especially those who don’t have easy access to bank credit, than to deposit cash in the bank at such negative real rates. Both the Credit Suisse report and an email I got last month from a friend of mine at Bank of China suggests that there may be an...
2 tags
1 tag
Lehman Pushed ‘Goat Poo’ Securities, J.P. Morgan... →
In a bankruptcy court filing made Thursday, J.P. Morgan says two Lehman employees “referred to both RACERS and another security called Fenway [commercial paper securities] as ‘goat poo’ to be scattered in ‘other people’s backyards.’”
The J.P. Morgan suit is in response to a lawsuit Lehman filed in May, alleging that J.P. Morgan illegally siphoned billions of dollars from Lehman as it collapsed in...
3 tags
Balls warns King on Bank credibility →
Ed Balls, shadow chancellor, has criticised Mervyn King, Bank of England governor, saying he should step out of the political arena and stop tying his credibility to the coalition’s “extreme” deficit-reduction plans.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Balls drew comparisons between Mr King’s stance and the backing lent by the Bank of England to the Treasury’s fiscal hawks during the...
4 tags
Bourses de Toronto et Londres - Les effets... →
Le positionnement concurrentiel de la Bourse de Montréal en particulier, et du marché financier québécois en général, sur l’échiquier de ce nouveau marché unifié est tributaire de l’amélioration continue de sa microstructure et de son efficacité informationnelle. L’intérêt du Québec réside donc principalement dans le budget de recherche et développement que l’entité...
2 tags
1 tag
Richard Koo goes unconventional on China →
China’s labour market structure was basically the source of China’s income disparity — and consequently also the source of that high savings/low consumption problem:
Put differently, China’s “high savings” and “high investment” were due largely to actions taken by foreign and domestic businesses investing in the country, and not to the behavior of ordinary workers. From a macroeconomic...
2 tags
Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? Matt Taibbi →
Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.
“Everything’s fucked up, and nobody goes to jail,” he said. “That’s your whole story right there. Hell, you don’t even have to write the rest of it. Just write that.”
I put down my notebook. “Just...
3 tags
Pétrole et gaz - Le PLQ connaissait le potentiel... →
Avant l’arrivée des libéraux au pouvoir, le gouvernement savait que le sous-sol québécois pouvait représenter un important potentiel en hydrocarbures, il possédait l’expertise nécessaire pour en vérifier l’ampleur et cela ne représentait pas un risque financier majeur pour Hydro-Québec. C’est ce que soutient Rita Dionne-Marsolais, qui était ministre de l’Énergie...
4 tags
LSE's Canadian Bid Gets Lower Odds of Success Than... →
Shares of the Toronto Stock Exchange owner are trading 7.6 percent below the C$43.70 a share offer from the LSE, while the owner of the New York bourse’s shares are about 1.6 percent below the bid by Europe’s biggest exchange.
Investors are questioning the C$3.2 billion ($3.25 billion) takeover of TMX Group less than four months after the Canadian government rejected BHP Billiton Ltd.’s hostile...
1 tag
From Prison, Madoff Says Banks ‘Had to Know’ of... →
In his first interview for publication since his arrest in December 2008, Mr. Madoff — looking noticeably thinner and rumpled in khaki prison garb — maintained that family members knew nothing about his crimes.
But during a private two-hour interview in a visitor room here on Tuesday, and in earlier e-mail exchanges, he asserted that unidentified banks and hedge funds were somehow “complicit” in...
2 tags
Egypt has history on its side →
True, Egypt is a relatively poor country with a sizeable proportion of the population illiterate. Yet its gross domestic product per head, at purchasing power parity, is almost double India’s and 50 per cent higher than Indonesia’s. This does not suggest that democracy is, in any sense, inconceivable. Egypt does have a well-organised Islamist movement. But does this have to be deeply...
2 tags
3 tags
À qui appartient le sous-sol québécois? →
Si les Québécois savent qu’ils tirent des richesses de leur eau par l’entremise d’Hydro-Québec, on ne peut pas en dire autant du gaz, du pétrole, du vent et de l’eau utilisée par les grands industriels. Le Devoir nous rappelait cette semaine qu’Hydro-Québec a cédé pour des « pinottes » et sans consultation ses droits gaziers et miniers au profit du secteur...
2 tags
David Brooks is an idiot, part 527 →
OK, make that the fairly affluent. Today, David Brooks suggests that economic growth has slowed because these days the affluent are more into self-improvement and life quality than they are into money. In effect, we’re suffering from a decline in materialism.
My immediate reaction was that this is all wrong — that people like David’s hypothetical Jared are actually rare, that the reality is that...
1 tag
Why Ten Million Dollar IPOs Matter →
In the 70s, 80s and 90s thousands of companies went public… these companies became the backbone of our modern economy. While Ford, International Harvester, Chrysler, PanAm and RCA shrank or declared bankruptcy, Microsoft, Cisco, Intuit, Amazon and hundreds of others were creating jobs, increasing our standard of living and making the world a better place. But the US IPO torrent has turned into...
4 tags
Geithner: I For One Welcome Our New Financial... →
I asked Geithner if he had a grand vision for the postcrisis landscape—for, say, a less bloated financial sector with a smaller role in the economy—and a map for how to get there. Could he be a figure like George Marshall, who helped win the World War and then remade Europe so that it couldn’t happen again?
Geithner hunched his shoulders, pressed his knees together, and lifted his heels up off...
1 tag
BlackRock & Larry Fink - Winning the crisis →
I really didn’t think that was such a great thing to do, and it made us get this idea that there could be an opportunity for a little mortgage boutique to be started. We had this idea that we would bring sell-side analytics to the buy-side. That was the core idea, that we were going to be able to understand the same way that financial engineers who created them did. And that little boutique is...
3 tags
Guanxi vs Analyst: Carlyle and the coming collapse... →
That social sanction is considerably different in Asia. There are several “Princelings” in China (children of party officials) who have made hundreds of millions of dollars (or more). Suharto in Indonesia complained that that which the high-and-mighty in Washington thought of as “corruption” he saw as “family values”. And thus we see Carlyle’s problem in Asia. In the United States the Guanxi...
3 tags
Why is Canadian GDP Growth Higher Under Liberal... →
Canadian economic growth is about two percentage points higher under Liberal governments. At least, that’s what my colleagues Stephen Ferris and Marcel Voia found in their recent article in the Canadian Journal of Economics (earlier ungated version here).
This is a large impact. For example, if the economy was growing at 1 percent under a Conservative government, switching to a Liberal...
3 tags
Fusions des places boursières - La Bourse ou la... →
La Bourse de Montréal, qui compte 220 employés, a fait son chemin et est désormais un centre d’excellence en produits dérivés, dit M. Lacoste. Elle détient aussi la Chambre de compensation canadienne des produits dérivés, sorte de guichet unique où l’on établit les gains et les pertes des joueurs du marché. Londres le sait. D’ailleurs, au moment de négocier sa vente à la Bourse...
2 tags
1 tag
2 tags
CPAC to Trump: You're hired! →
If CPAC is a primary for self-confidence, Donald Trump won hands down.
The real-estate mogul with a genius for self-promotion gave the most-acclaimed — and most colorful — speech at the conservative gathering this afternoon, from the moment he took the stage to the song “Money, Money, Money.”
With no visible sense of irony, he slammed libertarian Ron Paul as a losing hopeful who...
2 tags
Dure journée pour Bay Street →
Dès 1999, lors de la spécialisation des Bourses au Canada, Montréal n’avait plus sa place sur le marché des Bourses traditionnelles, avec une part de marché de 10 %. D’autant que les trois quarts des titres défilant alors sur son téléscripteur étaient également listés à la cote de Toronto. Le parquet montréalais a fait le pari des produits dérivés. Au terme d’un pacte de...
2 tags
3 tags
LSE/TMX - a deal too late? (Video) →
The London Stock Exchange has agreed an all-share merger with TMX Group, operator of the Toronto stock exchange, creating a platform with the most listed companies, and the most listings of mining companies. Lex’s John Authers and Vincent Boland discuss whether this finally is the deal to transform the LSE. (3m 45sec)
1 tag
NYSE, Deutsche Boerse Are Said to Be in Advanced... →
NYSE Euronext and Deutsche Boerse AG are in advanced talks to merge into the world’s biggest equity exchange, accelerating a day of takeovers that began with the London Stock Exchange Group Plc acquisition of TMX Group Inc., according to two people familiar with the situation who declined to be identified because the talks are private.
Since January 2000, there has been at least $95.8 billion in...
3 tags
Monetary Policy Hearing Today, or: Ron Paul Versus... →
Ron Paul is holding one of his first monetary policy hearings today, and he hasn’t sold out. Ron Paul is from the school of libertarians that hates D.C. libertarians, which is weird since Ron Paul is one of the most well-known libertarians in D.C. How does that work?
The term Kochtopus was originally used as a slur by some libertarians to describe the Koch brothers funded wing of the...
3 tags
Weber May Not Seek Second Term as Bundesbank Chief →
Bundesbank President Axel Weber may not seek reappointment when his current term expires next year, a central bank official said, calling into question the future of a policy maker tipped by some economists to take over the European Central Bank.
Weber has told some Bundesbank officials in confidence that he’s not necessarily interested in a second eight-year term, said the official, who spoke on...
3 tags
Un professeur de HEC Montréal renvoie Québec à ses... →
Un professeur en sciences comptables de HEC Montréal, Jacques Fortin, ajoute sa voix à celles qui s’élèvent contre l’exploitation et l’exploration du gaz de schiste au Québec. Il y voit un « projet de société mal ficelé financièrement ».
Selon lui, cette activité pourrait entraîner un transfert de richesses des citoyens québécois « vers un petit groupe...
2 tags
LSE to Buy Canada's TMX in $3.2 Billion All-Share... →
London Stock Exchange Group Plc, the 210-year-old bourse operator, agreed to buy Toronto Stock Exchange owner TMX Group Inc. in an all-share transaction valued at about C$3.2 billion ($3.2 billion) as the companies cut costs to counter lost market share.
“We are creating the world’s largest listings venue for the commodities, energy and natural resources sectors, as well as the premium market for...
2 tags
Obama Budget Seeks $53 Billion for High-Speed Rail →
Under the budget proposal, about $8 billion would be spent in the first year to develop or improve interconnected rail corridors that Biden said would form the backbone of a national high-speed rail system.
Such corridors would be divided into three categories: “core express” for trains achieving speeds of between 125 and 250 miles per hour or more; “regional” lines for trains traveling between...
1 tag
How AIG died →
Boyd’s case that the AIG implosion would never have happened had Greenberg stayed on as CEO can never be proven one way or the other. My suspicion is that AIG was so big and Greenberg was stretched so thin, that ultimately AIG was certain to fail in any case. But the incompetence of Greenberg’s lieutenants is quite astonishing: Boyd writes at one point that neither Stasia Kelly, the general...
3 tags
To us, it's an obscure shift of tax law. To the... →
If these proposals go ahead, the UK will be only the second country in the world to allow money that has passed through tax havens to remain untaxed when it gets here. The other is Switzerland. The exemption applies solely to “large and medium companies”: it is not available for smaller firms. The government says it expects “large financial services companies to make the greatest...
2 tags
3 tags
Europe planning to solve the wrong crisis →
So you think the crisis is over? Some of Europe’s political leaders have always framed the eurozone’s year-long upheaval as an attack by Anglo-Saxon speculators. If that is your view, you can relax. The speculators are moving in the opposite direction. The markets have calmed down. The crisis is over by definition.
That is, of course, intellectually lazy. Equally lazy is the attempt to frame it...
