On Wednesday Feb 7th 2007 HSBC issued a profit warning. It was the first in its 142 year history. The bank told its share holders it would have to take an unprecedented charge of $10.5 billion because one of its units, its sub prime lender, was in deep trouble. And so began the sub prime …
I am off filming for a few weeks now. Apologies for not writing. I have had my head down with work. Hope you’ll forgive me. Before I go a few scattered thoughts 8 years to fix the malfunctioning heart of the world’s financial and legal systems but nothing was actually done … and now …
At this point I would like to make it clear that just because I have suggested the Global Over Class are likely to have thought ahead to what they will need to achieve before the next crisis arrives and have outlined some of what I think their Manifesto might contain, does not mean I think …
The Next Crisis – Part Three – The World Turned Upside Down Read More »
We are off on our first family holiday in five years. I am more excited than the kids. We will be gone a month and during that time almost entirely off the grid. Before we go I wanted to say thank you – to all of you who come to the blog to read and …
Some time ago (May 2012) I wrote two articles about ETFs suggesting they were The Next Accident Waiting to Happen. In that first part I described how they work and who owns and runs them. My argument was that, I think the signs are already there to suggest ETFs are where the instability and risk …
The price of gold is going down. That is what the charts, newspapers and pundits are all saying. What I think they are deliberately not saying is that the value and desirability, as opposed to the price of gold, is going up and will go up further. Make no sense? Well I think it does if …
Another quick note this to update the two part post on ETFs, ETF’s – The Next Accident Waiting to Happen, and ETF’s Part 2 that I wrote a little while ago. Towards the end of part 2 I wrote …ETF shares are themselves traded in the markets the ETFs are following, as are the …
So far so vanilla. Now lets look at how, as the ETF market has grown, the clever boys and girls of finance have found ‘innovative’ ways of pumping those ETFs up a bit, just like they did to Securities. Use of Derivatives in ‘Synthetic’ ETFs The main innovation in ETFs has been the creation of what are …
Where will the next point of instability be? Not what will trigger the next liquidity and credit crunch and cause the next landslide of panic selling and losses. We can already see many candidates for the trigger. But what will be the mechanism by which it is amplified and spread? I think that in a …
