Imagine if you had nine of the most skilled doctors in the country examining a patient, and you had such a range of views that one doctor demanded emergency surgery and an immediate series of organ transplants, and at the…
Yearly Archives: 2010
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Thoughts on the uselessness of economics, and some views on austerity
- Topics
- quantitative easing, recession
Posted December 29th, 2010
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The convention in the market is to estimate a country’s degree of distress by looking at the yield spread over a ‘risk free’ rate. So in the case of eurozone countries, people tend to look at the spread over German…
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After December’s big sell-off in US Treasuries on the back of fears about the US’s creditworthiness, and the surprise at yesterday’s record monthly budget deficit in the UK, there’s been a lot of talk about a bond market “buyers’ strike”. …
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The 2010 Bond Vigilantes Christmas Quiz – the answers
- Topics
- Christmas Quiz
Posted December 17th, 2010
Thanks again for another bumper crop of entries for the quiz. The answers are below, and the winners are: First Prize (Amazon voucher for £103.20): Cecilia Liao from C. Hoare & Co Second Prize (The Big Short by Michael Lewis): Marton…
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The relationship between financial and non-financial credit – decoupling?
- Topics
- BBB rated
Posted December 14th, 2010
A renewed focus on European bank balance sheets, their sovereign exposures, fears of creditor bail ins and a general risk apathy saw subordinated financials spreads move significantly wider through November. I’ve charted the ratio of spreads, comparing the Merrill Lynch…
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There were echoes of August 2008 for a few hours last week. The yield spread on 10 year Spanish, Belgian and Italian government bonds over German government bonds spiked to a euro era record, while the cost of insuring Portuguese…
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Here’s the 4th annual Bond Vigilantes quiz. Twenty questions as usual, with one bonus point available – and in past years you didn’t always need a full house to win the prize. The closing date for entries is midday on…
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Enough is Enough- Time for the ECB to Step Up
- Topics
- ECB, government bonds
Posted December 1st, 2010
It is time for the European policy makers to step up and support an ever more fragile European Union. Mixed messages equal confusion which in turn results in risk aversion. And that risk aversion seems pretty sensible to me. If…
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I enjoyed this article from the Evening Standard on Thursday. Of particular interest, Anthony Hilton makes the point: “So badly have the banks played their hand in showing absolutely no contrition for their mistakes, nor displaying any willingness to share…
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Ireland is definitely facing a liquidity crisis, and that liquidity crisis could evolve rightly or wrongly into a solvency crisis. It needs help. Like any such problem, that help involves emergency short term measures (basically cash funding) and long term…










