MADRID |By José Luis Marco at CapitalMadrid | Germany or the Troika, that for some already begins to be the same thing, may have their doubts about the level of funding of the Spanish banks and the process of consolidating their balance sheets. However, according to objective data, German main private banks capital ratios are far below those of Spanish leading financial groups.
MADRID | By José Antonio Santos at Patrivalor | Does the proposed Basel III ratio need to be changed into a more realistic one? Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Vice Chairman Thomas Hoenig believes all of the Basel capital accords, including proposed Basel III, look backward and then attempt to assign risk weights into the future, therefore don’t work. Regulators should focus on another measure of capital that more accurately reflect the capital position of banks: the tangible leverage ratio.
By Skip Worden | The “speed-journalism” at Bloomberg has been a practice at the expense of the customers who were subscribing to the company’s financial-information terminals. They are needed, but what about trusted?
LONDON | The UK’s financial system suffers a capital deficit of up to £25 billion, according to the regulator, a gap that must be covered in 2013 to reach the minimum 7 percent core tier 1 capital ratio target.
By S. V. at VozPópuli | London has made an agreement with British tax havens such as Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos so they will disclose name, address, date of birth, account number and transactions details of people with accounts in their territories. Then the UK will then send this information to Spain, France, Germany and Italy.
LONDON/MADRID | Up to 80 percent of all issuances–some €30 billion so far this year–were bought by non-resident investors, proof that confidence is on its way of being restored.
LONDON/MADRID | The link between less liquidity and worse economic figures looks clearly defined by the extreme timidity of the ECB and the fact that Germany last March joined France, Italy and Spain in the contraction zone.
BEIJING | Caixin Magazine | A ripple of skepticism recently hit prices of the yellow metal, but gold remains the ultimate hedge on inflation, as former Morgan Stanley’s Chief Economist for Asia Pacific Andy Xie explains. The global economy has already entered into stagflation with a growth rate of 2 percent and inflation at 3 percent. The inflation rate is likely to rise above 4 percent in 18 months while the growth rate will remain stuck in the same range. With inflation twice as high as the growth rate, the global economy will slip deeper into stagflation.
NEW YORK | “Warren is in the house” was his first twit. Within 24 hours, 82-year-old Warren Buffett had only posted two messages on the social network but he got more than 311,400 followers.
LONDON | Why would eurozone banks still have up to €120 billion deposited with the ECB, instead of using them to prop up businesses and consumption? At zero percent interest rate?