November 30th, 2011 I had a bizarre sense of déjà vu yesterday on learning of the mass downgrade of 37 of the world’s largest banks, including the Royal Bank of Scotland, by Standard & Poor’s. Something very similar took place in July 2007, when Moody’s downgraded hundreds of CDOs – opaque bundles of securitized ‘toxic’ subprime [...]
November 30th, 2011 The Royal Bank of Scotland has agreed to a $52m settlement over the selling, financing, packaging and securitization of subprime mortgages in the United States in just one US state — activities which he bank’s former chief executive Sir Fred Goodwin consistently denied that the bank was involved in. What I find [...]
November 28th, 2011 In the above clip, William D Cohan talks about how US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson tipped off hedge fund managers and other Wall Street executives about Washington’s plan to put Fannie May and Freddie Mac into “conservatorship”, a move that would wipe out common shareholders in the GSEs. According to an in-depth [...]
November 28th, 2011 By Paul Amery Image © Vladimir Vereschagin Book Review: Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk by Satyajit Das, published by Financial Times / Prentice Hall in August 2011 In 1494 the German author, Sebastian Brant, wrote of a ship of 110 fools who set sail in a search for [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: November 27th, 2011 Picture: courtesy of eFinancialNews Asset managers lose patience over £500,000 unpaid bill Lloyds Banking Group, whose shares tumbled last week on investor concern that it is in “chaos”, is being sued by an Aim-listed fund management company in which it owns a majority stake. Invista [...]
November 24th, 2011 Andrew Brigden of Fathom Consulting, a London-based economic and financial markets consultancy, has been poring over the latest UK economic data and concluded that austerity isn’t working for the UK economy. He says:- “Excluding government consumption, final domestic demand is currently 9.1% below its pre-recession peak and is just 1% higher than its trough. [...]
November 24th, 2011 Kyle Bass talks a great deal of sense in this HardTalk interview with the BBC’s Sarah Montague (whose apparent inability to understand much of what Bass is saying only partially mars the session). The 24 minute 30 second interview was first aired on the BBC on Saturday November 19th, 2011. Bass, founder of Dallas-based [...]
November 23rd, 2011 Updated November 24th: This handy interactive infographic shows how sovereign debt has exploded in European countries in recent years. According to the figures, the country with the highest debt-to-GDP ratio for each and every year from 1980 to 2010 was Belgium – and it was only overtaken by Greece in 2011. The [...]
November 23rd, 2011 Korea’s Samsung is making fun of the blind faith of Apple loyalistas in its latest TV campaign. Since I’m somewhat sceptical of the wonders of Apple, I quite liked the advertisement, which is for the Samsung Galaxy S II. I particularly liked the line “I could never get a Samsung. I’m creative.” [...]
November 21st, 2011 A documentary on which I worked as senior researcher and lead consultant is to be shown on BBC2 nationally on December 5th. The one-hour BBC film charts the rise and fall of the Royal Bank of Scotland, starting with its £21bn acquisition of NatWest in February 2000 and ending soon after its [...]