You can either believe that we’re all in this together and it’s all getting better. Or you can believe, as I do, that it is getting better for the few (5%) who own 50% of the worlds’ financial wealth and worse for the other 95% of us. Remember, the next time you see the Dow …
The Too Big to Fail Insurers – the next bail outs, another nail in Democracy’s coffin. Read More »
I wonder if we are reaching what we might call ‘Peak Collateral’? That state when the creation of assets, which the market will accept as collateral, is insufficient to sustain the demand for credit. It’s funny isn’t it, how the terms we use, or are encouraged to use, have such an influence on how an …
It’s not often we get to witness the moment when a leader sells his nation for money. Such a moment occurred in Athens last week. At the behest and on the authority of Prime Minister Samaras and President Papoulias, an amendment to Greek law was drawn up last week. There was no debate in parliament, …
In parts one and two I looked at how Argentina came to default and at how Vulture funds manage to take entire nations to court and contrive to enforce court judgements upon them. They were concerned with history and the law of sovereign defaults. In this last part I want to look more broadly at …
Argentina and America – of Vulture Funds and Justice. Part Three Read More »
Sub -level Three. Vulture world. Without carrion eaters the world would be strewn with corpses. Vultures eat the dead. Vulture funds, however, eat the still living. Argentina defaulted on its debts. It borrowed money, said it would pay it all back, signed contracts binding it to that promise and then reneged. It forced its creditors …
Argentina and America – of Vulture Funds and Justice. Part 2 Read More »
Argentina told to pay hedge funds $1.3bn Was the headline in the FT on Thursday 22nd November 2012. The judge who made the ruling, Thomas Griesa, said “After 10 years of litigation this is a just result.” I’m not so sure. In my opinion the headline and the ruling it reports are just the tip of a …
Argentina and America – of Vulture funds and Justice Read More »
We’ve all seen the film ‘Groundhog Day’. Well, we’re in it. Every morning the radio plays a song which has the chorus, “I rob you babe”. And sure enough when the news comes on, they have. A full five years of pumping money in to the banks and still our leaders will not even consider …
Why are we bailing out the banks? Part One. The Simple Answer. Read More »
Part one was the Bad Bank. Part two was, what might be in the BB courtesy of Bankia and the other Caja. Part three… Part two of this series ended talking about Recourse and Non-recourse loans. Noting that Spanish mortgages are recourse. Meaning that if the borrower defaults the lender/bank has recourse to not only the collateral …
Headline in the FT “Spain to force banks to set aside €30bn.” This is a bad joke. One which ordinary Spanish people are going to pay for in blood. First, €30bn is a joke because it is not enough and the Spanish central bank and the government know it. Second, 30bn of what? The Spanish …
What have Mark to Market accounting rules got to do with English forests and Fire sales? Officially? Nothing whatsoever. In my opinion? Everything. But it requires reminding ourselves how we got to where we are now. Back in 2008 the big banks were in fear for their lives, weighed down as they were with hundreds of billions in …
