ANIMAL SPIRITS IN WASHINGTON | By Pablo Pardo | Throughout the last two years, bank regulators have identified a number of increasingly exotic assets in the already-full-of-exotic assets banks’ portfolios. For instance, some institutions are accumulating massive amounts of Credit Default Swaps (CDS). At a time when debt spreads are not just falling, but crashing, what is the logic to hedge in such manner? The short answer is: stress tests.
NEW YORK | Because “there’s good pay and there’s obscene pay”. That’s why Brian Wenzinger, who manages more than 5 million shares of Citigroup, voted against the $15 million pay package for chief executive Vikram S. Pandit, says the New York Times. Like his firm, 55 percent of the bank shareholders rejected the company’s pay plan on Tuesday, marking the first time in Wall Street history that stock owners rebuke…
By Tania Suárez.- The new unlimited liquidity action, a.k.a. Long-Term Refinancing Operation (LTRO), has placed €529.532 billions today, with the goal of enabling again the flow of credit to the private sector. Gradually, there are prospects of an improvement in European financial markets. On one hand, the interest rates banks charge one another to lend money have dropped significantly: the 3-month Euribor has fallen to just under 1% from about…