Author: |Posted: 11:59 am on 28/10/09
Category: Snowblog
The figures are dry – the information, to the layman, even boring. “Lending to the private sector in the Eurozone shrank last month year on year for the first time ever” – even as the zone’s economy was returning to growth.
In other words, in common with Britain’s banks, Europe’s bankers have scaled back on making credit available at an unprecedented pace.
Author: |Posted: 2:35 pm on 22/10/09
Category: Snowblog
Author: |Posted: 6:44 pm on 30/09/09
Category: Gary Gibbon on Politics
The main five British banks will be doling out some jumbo bonuses after Christmas.
What’s changed today is that the Chancellor met the main British banks’ remuneration bosses first thing this morning at the Treasury and the banks said they would abide by the G20 rules which the government intends to bring into law in 2010.
So the bonuses will appear in the bankers’ Christmas stockings – just wait for the truly hideous headlines – but full payment will be deferred for something like three years and only paid across when it’s clear they weren’t short-term evaporating profits. read more
Author: |Posted: 11:19 am on 28/09/09
Category: Gary Gibbon on Politics
There are some monster bonuses coming down the tracks in the City and the government is trying to get its defences in place.
Alistair Darling will today tell the conference here that he’s going to talk to the bankers and tell them to restrain themselves this Christmas.
There’s a new law in the offing but it won’t be ready in time. It would defer bonuses and only allow them to be paid when the assets traded have made money, not crashed. read more
Author: |Posted: 6:11 pm on 25/09/09
Category: Faisal Islam on Economics
The central bankers strike back.
Former chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker today pulled the rug from under the current direction of reregulation of our financial system, which he suggested was “papering over and tinkering around the edges of a broken system”.
In testimony to the US Congress, he took the argument that many of America’s (and indeed Britain’s) biggest financial institutions remained too big to fail.
Author: |Posted: 2:05 pm on 04/09/09
Category: Faisal Islam on Economics
About two years ago I met one of the top British bankers and asked for an opinion on Brown/Darling vs Cameron/Osborne. I was shocked to hear his scepticism about the Tory business policy versus the government.
To be clear, this was Brown at his absolute peak, still ahead in the polls, just before Northern Rock and the missed election debacle. But there was an enduring concern from the top of this skyscraper that David Cameron’s efforts to rebrand the Conservatives away from nasty Big Business towards friendly Alaskan huskies had gone too far.
I ponder this after watching George Osborne’s fascinating joint appearance with Christine Lagarde, the French finance minister in the studio with Jon last night. Madame Lagarde is always great value. read more
Author: |Posted: 12:18 pm on 25/08/09
Category: Faisal Islam on Economics
Lehman’s bankruptcy changed the world.
It sent world economy into a precipitous decline that’s matched the Great Depression. It arguably changed the course of the US election. It was a violent economic event that will be debated for decades.
Much of the mystery surrounds the events of the weekend of the 13th/ 14th September 2008, when as one Lehman trader puts it ‘Lehman was put to sleep’.
There have been some excellent accounts of what went on at the offices of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the US central bank’s embassy on Wall Street. The US Frontline documentaries are superb.
Yet there is something missing from these accounts: the British angle.
Author: |Posted: 2:08 pm on 03/07/09
Category: Snowblog
I have blogged before about one of the best yet most under-used economic indicators, the Baltic Dry Index. This charts the movement (or lack of) of the world’s shipping.
To add to what I said, last month refrigerated-shipping operator Eastwind Maritime filed for bankruptcy in New York. Sweden’s Nordea bank seized and sold on 13 of its ships. Don’t hold the front page but I suspect these moves signal a further gloomy and probably prolonged period of global recession to come.
But there may be a glimmer of justice at least. read more
Author: |Posted: 3:58 pm on 22/06/09
Category: Snowblog
I am at the apparent end of a tussle with the Financial Services Authority (FSA). Or I think I am. Last month it was revealed that 51 individuals had effectively failed to pass muster as “competent” to hold key positions in Britain’s financial services industry.
Or to put it more politely, these individuals had “withdrawn” from the application process after being independently assessed by the FSA.
Author: |Posted: 3:55 pm on 12/03/09
Category: Snowblog
I blogged earlier this week about the possibility that our disgraced bank bosses had signed “gagging orders” as part of their severance deals, stopping them from talking about what happened to the banks on their watch (earlier this week we asked RBS and Lloyds TSB to confirm or deny this, but they have yet to do so).
