It used to be said that ‘if the US sneezes, the rest of the world will catch a cold’. Well, the US is certainly sneezing as a result of its subprime financial crisis, but the rest of the world doesn’t seem to be taking too much notice, as least so far. As Bloomberg comments overnight, […]
Chemicals and the Economy
£80k Maserati going cheap
Would you like to buy a nearly-new, limited edition £80k ($160k, €120k) blue Maserati Cambiocorsa? It may not be too late, as it was going cheaply this week in London, and about to be crushed. Apply to the Transport for London (TfL) parking pound, near Knightsbridge, and spend your savings at Harrods round the corner. […]
Interesting quotes (3)
Some of these quotes just seemed too good to ignore… `I don’t see any impact as yet on the real economy or on the inflation rate. Obviously, there could be an impact, but we have to rely on some real evidence.’ There is ‘a sort of credit crunch’, in place affecting housing and some types […]
Leverage and bad debts
Some 20 years ago, after a couple of senior management jobs, I was sent off to study for a month at the IMD business school in Switzerland. There I spent time with Prof Jim Ellert, a noted financial analyst, who showed us how to understand a P&L and a balance sheet. He also passed on […]
Thursday’s child has far to go
The past two Thursdays have seen extraordinary things happen in financial markets. Last Thursday, BNP Paribas suspended redemptions on 3 of its funds, forcing the ECB to inject €95bn of liquidity into the financial system. Yesterday, the largest US mortgage lender, Countrywide Financial, had to raise an emergency €11.5bn loan in order to continue trading, […]
Technorati
Technorati Profile
Rolling thunder and Penn Square Bank
When I worked with ChemConnect in the halcyon days of the dot-com era in 1999-2000, we had a fantastic PR lady called Linda Stegeman. Linda ignored conventional wisdom about ‘bundling’ all your best news together to gain maximum impact. Instead, she released the stories one by one, and let them build. First Dow and Rohm […]
Interesting Quotes (2)
Credit market problems intensified last week, even though stock markets rallied strongly until Wednesday. I thought you might like to see some more comments on what is going on, from people close to the action. ‘Trust was shaken today (Wednesday). Credit depends on trust. If trust disappears, then credit disappears, and you have a systemic […]
Every mania has its illusion
All the world’s media are now carrying accounts of the ‘liar loans’ and fraud that has accompanied the growth in US mortgage lending in recent years. How did this come about? All manias gain their strength from a widely believed ‘fact’ that turns out to have been an illusion. With subprime mortgage loans, the ‘fact’ […]
Subprime: a many-headed Hydra
Yesterday, the ECB (European Central Bank) provided an unprecedented €95bn into the region’s credit markets, to maintain liquidity. Otherwise, firms would have had problems paying their bills, and employees might not have been paid their wages. This is serious stuff, and it was followed by the US Fed providing $24bn into US markets, and the […]
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