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World economy 8th July 2014

BIS, money and the “prolonged depression”

SAO PAULO | By Marcus Nunes via Historinhas | The depression may not be “Great”, but it has certainly been “Prolonged”. And like many things, good or bad, that persist, people “get used” to it! And there are those, like the BIS, who think that deepening the depression is worth it if it means reducing the risk of another financial crisis! The world´s major central banks have certainly caused a lot of damage by tightening money in the face of imaginary inflation dangers, but at least they are shrugging off the BIS “recommendations”.

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World economy 7th July 2014

The Monty Python and BIS sadomonetarism

WASHINGTON | By Pablo Pardo | The Monty Python are back in London, and one of their most famous sketches revolves around the phrase “nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.” The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) is like the Spanish Inquisition, only less funny and more predictable than the British surreal comedy group: it is the bearer of orthodoxy, even if it means sending everybody to the stake. Its prescriptions are suicidal in economic terms, wrong from a moral point of view, and unjust from a societal perspective. 

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World economy 7th July 2014

Why waste time with Taylor-Rules?

SAO PAULO | By Marcus Nunes via Historinhas | That´s what Simon Wren-Lewis does in “Taylor Rules, the ZLB and Euro Diversity”: John Taylor originally suggested his rule as both a good guide to what central banks actually do and also one that “captures the spirit of the recent research”. It has been used ever since as a yardstick by which to measure monetary policy.

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World economy 6th July 2014

Media: New offers and suppliers change business from scratch

The Corner via Deutsche Bank Research | For a long time, technological progress in the world of media has surpassed the improved image display via screen diagonal or contrast by far. This is not only shown by the gadgets which the TV viewer may use for his or her personal analysis of the games of the FIFA Football World Cup. This opens completely new opportunities and business models for the large field of visual media. 

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World economy 3rd July 2014

Global growth is back on track

LONDON | By The Corner | The final estimate of the Barclays global manufacturing confidence reveals another improvement in June, as they had initially expected, from -0.10 to 0.05, the highest level since December last year. As anticipated in the preliminary readings, the rise was driven by improvements in manufacturing activity in the US, Japan and China, where the trend in the forward-looking new orders component suggested it should last well into the second half of the year. At the same time, activity in the euro area showed further signs of momentum loss, with expansion weakening in all the big five except for Spain.

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World economy 2nd July 2014

Too big to jail bankers? Not in Iceland

MADRID | By Ana Fuentes | Everyone is commenting on BNP Paribas historic settlement and the eventual fines that other EU banks might face (read our yesterday’s post), and the missed opportunity to really punish their illegal practices. And yet no financial savvy is talking about Iceland’s Reykjavík County Court handing out severe prison sentences to four bankers for market manipulation and breach of fiduciary duty. As London-based Icelandic reporter Sigrún Davíðsdóttir explains, “this case is not one of the big ones involving major investors or bank managers (…), but there are other similar cases snarling their way through courts.”

 

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World economy 2nd July 2014

China: Banks start using new loan-to-deposit ratio

BEIJING | By Huo Kan and Wu Hongyuran via Caixin | Starting July 1 banks in China are using a new method of calculating the loan-to-deposit ratio, a change that the regulator and analysts say will allow for more loans to be extended.  The China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) announced on June 30 the new set of rules for figuring the ratio, which is capped by law at 75 percent, meaning that banks cannot lend out more than three-quarters of the deposits they accept.