After the downgrade of Greece led to the Greek crisis and the Germans worried about bailing them out, the crisis continues with the downgrade of Spain at the end of last week by Fitch. In fact, it looks like many European countries are worried, with the PIGS now the PIIGS – Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece…
I dropped into the offices of one of the credit rating agencies this week. The one that caused confidence in Greece to fall through the floor: Standard & Poors. The agencies are interesting places at the moment as many attributed the AAA-rated toxic mortgage derivatives to their watch, so now they’re being cleaner than clean…
It’s interesting to see the rise in high interest, short term loan sites. I blogged about Wonga last year, and now there’s Quick Quid. Here’s their advert: Wow! 2356% APR! That’s TWO THOUSAND, THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-SIX PERCENT annual interest!!!! 2356%!!!!!!!! OK, it sounds bad … but it’s not. Y’see these sites are designed for…
I received an interesting white paper the other day from Wim Raymaekers, Head of Banking Market at SWIFT on Liquidity Risk. Here’s the Executive Summary: Many books and papers have been and will be written about the liquidity crisis that started mid 2007, the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, and its effect on…
I was having a conversation with a firm considering entering banking in the UK. They would be an unexpected player, as their brand is seen to be trusted but totally unrelated to financial services. So I sent them this article from my collection of white papers, and thought it may be of interest to the…
This is so politically incorrect that I almost didn't post it … but then I did to show how cultures are different and sensitivities are not the same. As I left Singapore, I saw this and felt quite offended: Yet Singaporeans are desperate to avoid offending foreign visitors, as are most Asian countries, so how…
After writing earlier this week about the bullish views of HSBC on China and Asia as a whole, with the clear view that the world has decoupled, Asia is self-sustaining and China will be the largest economy in the world by 2035 or sooner, I was really interested to hear the views of Damian Glendinning…
