Today’s links …
Posted: November 22, 2011 Filed under: Mixed links | Tags: Bild, Money, Nomi Prins, Spain, Thomas Cook Leave a comment… so far
- A very funny montage from Bild …
- … and some really clever money mapping (H/t FT Alphaville).
- A fantastic posting by Nomi Prins (H/t Zero Hedge)
- … as the FT spots that the Old Lady finds risk managers worried about UK financial system.
- Meanwhile WSJ reports Spanish t-bills sale tanks
- … and Business Week reports Thomas Cook hitting heavy turbulence
Some odds ‘n’ ends
Posted: October 28, 2011 Filed under: Mixed links | Tags: American, Charles Ponzi, Electoral Commission, Europe, Irish, Jeff Madrick, Lumet, New Zealand, Pauline Kael, Referendum, STV, voting systems Leave a comment1. An American (Jeff Madrick) in Europe
… as I write this, the leaders of the Eurozone are having trouble agreeing on a program to back bonds or expand their relief fund. More dangerous, the ponderous old guard who run the European Central Bank are not nearly as flexible as our Fed, which was once bad enough.
2. New Zealanders debate and consider voting systems
In the Herald,
Mt Eden resident Michele Donovan, who attended yesterday’s Keep MMP launch in Auckland, said she wanted to see it stay because it was the “best proportional system”, adding that the best way for the current system to be improved was by voting to keep it.
… while the Electoral Commission explains,
There’s a Referendum taking place at the same time as the 2011 General Election.
The Referendum gives you the chance to have your say on the voting system you’d like to use to elect our Parliaments in the future.
3. Voting systems again: STV Irish-style – the power of the negative
… voters who want to do everything they can to ensure a specific candidate is not elected should use their vote as effectively as possible, by placing a 7 opposite their most disliked candidate and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 opposite the others in whichever order appeals.
4. Etymology
Charles Ponzi was probably the most colorful and outlandish practitioner of the scheme that bears his name. An Italian immigrant and postman’s son who arrived in Boston in 1903, he had charm, imagination, and chutzpah of epic proportions. [more from Ron Chernow]
5. Raising Kael
Lumet liked Kael’s work. Over the previous few weeks, he had allowed her on his set as a reporter, hoping she would learn something about shooting technique. Also present that night was the caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, and after a few drinks—actually, after quite a lot of drinks—Hirschfeld and Kael started quibbling about the uses of movie criticism. Finally, Hirschfeld asked her point-blank what she thought critics were good for. Kael gestured toward Lumet. “My job,” she said, “is to show himwhich way to go.” The evening ended soon afterward. Lumet later explained, “I thought, This is a very dangerous person.” [more]
Weekending 28 October 2011
Posted: October 28, 2011 Filed under: Weekly round-up | Tags: ECB, EFSF, EU, Fitch, FT, Greece, IIF, IMF, ISDA, Peter Tchir, PSI, Reuters, The Italian Job, The Magic Pudding, Wolfgang Munchau Leave a commentSpooky?
It is entirely clear that the ‘deal’ concocted by the 17 eurozone premiers and presidents at the Brussels summit and unveiled at 4am local time on Thursday 27 October is simply fancy and fantasy.
First one needs to sprinkle any analysis with large doses of ‘alleged’ – as in ‘alleged deal’, ‘alleged agreement’ ‘alleged action’, and ‘alleged welcome’ as in ‘We welcome Italy’s plans for growth …’
In the words of Wolfgang Munchau in the FT,
The day may yet come when the eurozone finally agrees a comprehensive package to end the crisis, but this was not the day.
The bounce on stock markets through Thursday was nothing much more than whistling past the graveyard and on the eve of Halloween weekend to boot – entirely appropriate and of course by Friday everything was beginning to feel eerie with markets beginning to go off and the alleged Italian plan looking more like The Italian Job.
Second the spectacularly disastrous condition of Greece – and what has caused this collapse – needs to be gleaned from the communiqué. Third, the banks recap is smoke and mirrors while finally the general scheme of it all, EFSF2½, is imaginative fantasy in the tradition of that children’s tale, The Magic Pudding.
But first to return to the condition of Greece. Read the rest of this entry »
The GFC on television – Links
Posted: October 2, 2011 Filed under: Themed links | Tags: Alan Greenspan, Bear Stearns, Brooksley Born, Bush, Clinton, Geithner, GFC, Joe Nocera, Lagarde, Lehman, Paulson, Summers, Wall Street Leave a commentMeltdown: A spectacular series on the GFC – of course not US-made, actually a Canadian production and aired on Al Jazeera.
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/meltdown/
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/meltdown/2011/09/201191713542357406.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/meltdown/2011/09/201191714104876434.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/meltdown/2011/09/2011917141938887360.html
To be fair, should be viewed having first watched Frontline’s The Warning (which is American-made but of course PBS).
http://video.pbs.org/video/1302794657/
Links for Greek debt crisis (updated)
Posted: September 24, 2011 Filed under: Themed links | Tags: Anne Sebert, EU, Greece, Greek debt, IMF, Lee Buchheit, Pari passu, Restructuring, Sovereign debt, Willem Buiter Leave a commentThe following links may be useful in keeping track of developments and understanding issues arising.
- An essential resource is the financial information portal, capital.gr, a daily online newswire service available in both Greek and English.
- Also well worth following is the Greek and English language blog created by Aristides Hatzis of Athens University, Greekcrisis.net.
- The FT’s Alphaville blog is also a vital source of information.
- For anyone exploring legal aspects of the crisis and the issue of sovereign default the writings of American lawyer Lee Buchheit of New York law firm Cleary Gottleib on aspects of the issue in general and also specifically the Greek case are absolute must-reads. These include
Drafting a Model Collective Action Clause for Eurozone Sovereign Bonds (with G Mitu Gulati);
Greek Debt – The Endgame Scenarios (with G Mitu Gulati);
How to restructure Greek Debt (with G Mitu Gulati);
Sovereign Bonds and the Collective Will (with G Mitu Gulati);
The Pari Pasu Covenant in Sovereign Debt Instruments (with Jeremiah Pam); and
The Dilema of Odious Debt ( with G Mitu Gulati and Robert B Thompson).
The July 21 second bailout agreed by eurozone leaders worth €109 billion ($155 billion) included the use of voluntary private-sector involvement (PSI) in a debt swap that would extend maturities on existing debt. Banks and other private investors are expected to contribute €135 billion to the bailout. The Greek government gave bondholders until September 9 to say whether they intended to take up its debt exchange offer which foresees an average 21 percent haircut on portfolios. It also indicated on 26 August that it might not proceed with the swap if it did not get at least a 90 percent uptake: a development revealed by Reuters in a good old-fashioned scoop. The 9th of September has of course come and long gone with no news on uptake – but plenty of reporting of slowness of joining in the scheme.
Weekending 25 September 2011
Posted: September 23, 2011 Filed under: Weekly round-up | Tags: EU, euro, Germany, Greece Leave a commentThy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
And universal Darkness buries All.
Alexander Pope
The Dunciad
No posting last weekend – internet problems and also simply the chaos, even through the weekend itself as everyone hosed the Greeks and eurozone finance ministers, led by the Austrian minister, got uppity with US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner for suggesting they better get their act together. Briefly to recap though: the working week was bookended by the UK’s Independent Commission on Banking (ICB) or Vickers commission recommending separation of utility and investment banking in Britain and ended with a stunning example of the point of the Vickers proposals. As ICB member (and FT economics editor) Martin Wolf wrote in the FT Friday, 16 September, ‘Thank you UBS’.
As a member of the UK’s Independent Commission on Banking under Sir John Vickers I could not have asked for a better illustration of the unregulatable risks to which investment banks are exposed than Thursday’s announcement of a loss of $2bn in “unauthorised trading”. No sane country can allow taxpayers to stand behind such risks.
British bankers and their lobbyists had spent months following the publication of the Vickers group’s interim report – which presented the ring-fencing proposal in draft – pushing that hoary line that it would signal the death of the City, the end of all life inside the Square Mile – and prime minister Cameron and chancellor George Osborne seemed to be buying the argument. And then! Step forward Kweku Adoboli – and ring up $2bn plus on the UBS till.
But before that unveiling Thursday (15th) by UBS management of their little loss (clients’ funds were not affected) JPM’s Jamie Dimon stuck in his five cents-worth Monday (in an FT interview) on the evils of bank regulation: Basel III was ‘anti-American’?! And he was ‘almost’ inclined to the view that the US should fold up the tent and …
“I’m very close to thinking the United States shouldn’t be in Basel any more. I would not have agreed to rules that are blatantly anti-American,” he said. “Our regulators should go there and say: ‘If it’s not in the interests of the United States, we’re not doing it’.”
Actually it is all getting very (worryingly) xenophobic – including again this week. Everyone has their own version of the ‘Polish’ joke. The English have their ‘Paddy’ stories, the Irish have their ‘Kerry man’ tales. Kiwis and Wallabies sledge each other on and off the cricket (and rugby) field of play and so on and on. All very fine and in the nature of things but … It can get out of hand. Yes, the Greeks have problems and have brought things on their own heads but the idea that they are all beach bums, slackers and layabouts is sailing pretty close to outright racism, and no small touch of sectarianism as well, when mouthed by northern European politicians who themselves can have questions to answer. Don’t mention the Anschluss! Read the rest of this entry »
Prehistory of ‘The Special Relationship’
Posted: September 23, 2011 Filed under: Guest Essay | Tags: Britain, Charles Brandon Boynton, Cotton Bonds, Great Divergence, Special Relationship, US Leave a commentThe Prehistory of ‘The Special Relationship’ – An American on Britain and its subjugation of the world (1864)
by
Introductory Note
This essay was first published in the July 2011 edition of the political journal, Irish Foreign Affairs, a quarterly review published by the Irish Political Review Group in Dublin. Pat Walsh is also the author of the book The Rise and Fall of Imperial Ireland – Redmondism in the context of Britain’s conquest of South Africa and its Great War on Germany andIreland’s Great War on Turkey 1914 – 1924 both published by Athol Books, Belfast. It is republished here with the permission of Pat Walsh as it is an exploration of one stormy chapter of the theme behind the title of this blog – the Great Divergence – or the rise of Ameranglia.
__________________
After the United States had survived its civil war the Reverend Charles Brandon Boynton gave a Thanksgiving Sermon to the House of Representatives in which he pointed out that the enemy without was more dangerous than the enemy within:
“We should be thankful to God because He baffled the plot which was formed against us in Europe. With the evidence now before us, no candid man can doubt that the conspiracy against our Republic led to Europe, and that the foreign branch, then was more formidable than that on our own soil. The plot was prepared with as much care in France and England as in the Southern States. The European part of it was ready quite as soon as their accomplices here. When the moment arrived, France and England, by proclamation, and according to previous agreement, lifted the traitors to the position of lawful belligerents… England was on hand to aid in crippling a commercial and manufacturing rival, and gratify her jealousy of the United States, and get ready her Alabamas, and swift steamers to run the blockade. Nothing saved us at the outset from more active interference, but the perfect confidence of France and England that our ruin was sure through what had been done already. They watched and waited for our destruction in vain; but they thought it certain. They were ready to strike, but thought the blow not needed.” (National Thanksgiving Services held on December 7, 1865, in the House of Representatives of the United States of America by Reverend Charles Brandon Boynton, Chaplain of the House pp.10-11)
These were the days before the ‘Special Relationship’ when war between America and Britain was still a living memory (England had burned Washington in 1813) and perhaps a distinct possibility of the future. Read the rest of this entry »
thegreatdivergence 
A Night at the Opera …
Posted: October 20, 2011 | Author: thegreatdivergence | Filed under: Commentaries | Tags: Draghi, FT, Geithner, Greek debt, IMF, Lagarde, Obama, Sarkozy, Trichet, US | Leave a comment… with apologies to the Marx Brothers
On the evening of 19 October, the FT’s rolling blog reported, the most senior politicians, diplomats and officials of the eurozone (EZ) and with Christine Lagarde (of the IMF) in train, gathered in Frankfurt. They had an appointment – a night at the opera with M Trichet ECB president (retiring) and Draghi ECB president (incoming). They also decided to go through a pretence of wrestling with deep policy issues on the future of the eurozone with M Sarkozy dramatically dashing from a Parisian maternity ward to get to Frankfurt on time.
With the passage of the past few weeks one has gone from initial disbelief to growing incredulity to the final realisation that actually, in both the EU and the US there is a now almost complete incapacity to formulate and implement anything approaching a coherent set of economic and financial policies capable of addressing the series of interrelated problems besetting both economies. In Europe there is on the official view first the Greek problem, second, the banking crisis and third, the finalisation of EFSF2 – the package agreed in outline (which is to say not agreed at all and no more than a fraudulent pretence) three months ago. All three issues are inter-related but they are also three quite separate bits. In the US the EZ crisis also has real implications for American banking – and thus the prospective triggering of a global contagion. To be fair to the Americans they have banged on at the Europeans (Obama and Geithner in particular) but to no avail whatsoever. Again though (Democrat) Washington also is paralysed: a Republican/Tea Party politics, deeply reactionary but entirely coherent holds the political balance. They are using it in effect to unpick those small remnants of the New Deal and Johnson’s Great Society (as well as their antecedents in nineteenth century progressivism) that have survived the last couple of decades. They also believe the wrong side lost the Civil War, the Federal Government is unconstitutional, the Federal Reserve is adulterating the dollar – and an awful lot else. They have a visceral hatred of banks (but hate Washington much more) – something they share with Occupy Wall Street. Read the rest of this entry »