December 28th, 2009
The Financial Times has caused outrage in some quarters by naming the Goldman Sachs boss Lloyd Blankfein its “Person of the Year“.
The reasons for the reaction are fairly obvious. The New York-based investment bank, known to some as a “vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity”, has shown precious little remorse for [...]
By Ian Fraser
Published: Sunday Herald
Date: December 27th, 2009
Events like Edinburgh’s Festival Fringe enjoyed record ticket sales in 2009; image courtesy of BBC
Even though the recession has now been under way for at least 18 months, and this has been the longest and deepest downturn since the Second World War, Scotland has so far avoided the [...]
December 21st, 2009
There was an important victory for press freedom and for unbiassed financial journalism at the European Court of Human Rights last week.
Eight years after several British newspapers received leaked information about Interbrew’s planned bid for South African Breweries from an anonymous third party, they have won the judicial battle for the right to [...]
By Ian Fraser
Published: Sunday Herald
Date: December 20th, 2009
Profile of the week:
Mark Fisher, integration director at Lloyds Banking Group
Some are lucky to survive disasters, others seem to thrive on them. The year 2009 saw the rise and rise of Mark Fisher, financial plumber and one-time hatchet man to Sir Fred Goodwin. Having crawled from the [...]
December 18th, 2009
According to a recent research note from the ratings agency Fitch, Chinese banks have been massaging their liabiliies and probably also their losses. They are apparently doing this by shifting corporate loans into off-balance-sheet vehicles in a bid to deceive regulators, so they can keep the credit taps on and continue to prop [...]
December 17th, 2009
US financial commentator and former tech analyst Henry Blodget and Yahoo! finance host Aaron Task are furious about how the US public keeps getting “hosed” by Treasury secretary Tim Geithner as a result of his generosity towards the “colossal pile of junk” that is Citigroup.
In this video clip from the Business Insider website, [...]
December 17th, 2009
The New York-based hedge fund manager Jim Chanos has called time on China’s economic party.
In an interview with CNBC’s Halftime Report, Chanos accused the government of the People’s Republic of over-egging the country’s economic pudding. He argued the country’s GDP has been “massively inflated by under-depreciating a very, very, very shaky capital asset [...]
December 14th, 2009
In case anyone needed reminding, Sir Howard Davies has pointed out that, following the events of last Autumn when the entire financial system came within hours of collapse and only survived through massive government intervention, the worlds of both banking and financial regulation need to be totally rethought.
Yet much of the political response [...]
December 14th, 2009
Naive British and European regulators, which allowed European banks to gorge on toxic assets seemingly without restriction, have been accused of playing a major role in stoking up the crisis.
In a blog post, Reuters’ Felix Salmon, accuses European regulators of giving out-of-control banks such as RBS free rein to bulk up their [...]
December 11th, 2009
Believe it or not, this viral commercial for Strongbow cider has been doing the rounds since June 2009, though somehow I only stumbled upon it today. However it seems more apposite than ever following the recent showdown over bonuses and nauseating self-justification from the BBA’s Angela Knight. It’s clear as day that bankers [...]