Great piece outlining the very real, very possible and very very awful possibilities and implications of Italian default. I wouldn’t want anything to do with any bank that has much at all to do with European banks or European sovereign debt. The old South African Rand is seeming like a safer relative bet than at…
So European politicians have more or less agreed a deal which may, more or less, push some of their problems to one side for a period. Yes, I’m not madly optimistic about this as a cure-all. Â This is not the end of the Euro problems. Part of the deal is a “50% loss for private…
This is really fantastic news. Â The Swazi King is apparently reluctant to accept the loan from South Africa because of the conditions imposed in the agreement. I was quite harsh in criticising the granting of the loan with only conditions for improvement far down the line. Â (I still believe the first condition should be an…
I don’t think many serious investors care that S&P downgraded US debt. Bond yields are down (more on this in my next post), which means prices are up. US stocks are down, but that’s more about concerns about US and global economic prospects than the credit of the US government. Nevertheless, S&P did downgrade. Why?…
Several years ago, at the height of the thermonuclear phase of the Global Financial Crisis (compared to the slow radiation death we’re experiencing at the moment) a colleague of mine poured scorn on the US as an economy and looked towards the mighty powerhouse of Europe as an example of How To Do Things Right.…
It’s chock-full of analysis, numbers, tables and charts showing how as much as things change, the scope for financial crises changes very little. The comparison of Developed and Emerging Markets is particularly interesting in that the differences, while they do exist, are far smaller than stereotypical views. Emerging Markets do tend to have more ongoing…
Airports Company SA, “ACSA” now has some of the highest fees in the world. Apparently they need to fund the huge “investment expenditure” incurred in upgrading on our airports recently for the World Cup. This begs the questions: What business plans were used in determining investment on our airports? How did actual experience compare to…
@RichardWooding sent me a link to a Wired story about a new Bitcoin wallet app for Android. I think Richard has figured I’d enjoy taking a few pot shots at this based on my past posts on bitcoins. The article is fairly balanced, indicating the recent (and trust me on this, ongoing) problems with BitCoins.…
