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Economics focus: Cheap and cheerful (24 July 06:34) |
| The long-term rise in American inequality may have been smaller than it appearedPOPULISTS and professors rarely see eye to eye. But on at least one fact of economic life, they agree: wage in... |
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Correction: prediction markets (24 July 06:34) |
| In an article on prediction markets last week we said that Intrade had brokered $76m of trades this year. That number refered only to bets on the 2008 American election cycle. We said that I... |
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Insurance: Black box blues (24 July 06:34) |
| Investors still struggle to understand Europe's insurersAFTER watching bank shares drop by almost a third this year, most European investors probably consider the idea of buying insurance st... |
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Buttonwood: A time for pruning (24 July 06:34) |
| Signs that the hedge-fund industry is growing more slowlyHEDGE funds had a brilliant first half of 2008, outperforming Wall Street by 12 percentage points. Hedge funds had an awful six month... |
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Australian finance: Down under (24 July 06:34) |
| The air goes out of one of the last remaining boomsIN THE early 1990s the mining town of Newman in Western Australia was in a deep slump. Its population had dwindled to 3,000 from a peak of ... |
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Bank secrecy: Hear no evil (24 July 06:34) |
| Is the Swiss model of private banking in danger? THIS is the opportunity of a lifetime to hire more private bankers, says Alex Widmer, chief executive of Bank Julius Baer, part of Switzerlan... |
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The Big Mac Index: Sandwiched (24 July 06:34) |
| Burgernomics says currencies are very dear in Europe but very cheap in AsiaEVER since the credit storms first broke last August, the prices of stocks, bonds, gold and other investment assets... |
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Credit cards: Superprime slime (24 July 06:34) |
| American Express reveals unexpectedly weak resultsAFTER the subprime crisis, a superprime one? That depressing scenario looks plausible given the unexpectedly weak second-quarter profits fro... |
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Japan?s pension pot: Capital thinking (24 July 06:34) |
| A call to set up a sovereign-wealth fundPENSIONERS in Japan cannot help getting older, but could they be richer? The country's vast public-pension fund, to which every citizen must contribut... |
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Toxic fudge (17 July 05:59) |
| Chartered by Congress; out for themselvesADAM SMITH thought that private companies chartered to fulfil government tasks had "in the long run proved, universally, either burdensome or useless... |
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End of illusions (17 July 05:59) |
| A series of articles on the crisis gripping the world economy and global markets starts where it all began--with America's deeply flawed system of housing financeTHERE is a story about a sci... |
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Grasping at shorts (17 July 05:59) |
| America's SEC fights dirtyBEAR markets often involve bare-knuckle fights, but it is still a shock when the referee starts punching below the belt. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC... |
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Fortune telling (17 July 05:59) |
| How to bet on the next bank collapseSURPRISES, in the staid world of banking, tend to be of the unpleasant sort, as customers at IndyMac Bancorp, a California thrift, can attest. Cross a few... |
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Land of the rising price (17 July 05:59) |
| Japan has long hoped for a bit of inflation--but not this sort JAPAN, people like to argue, is one place that should greet the return of inflation with joy. The country, after all, has been ... |
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Three amigos, only one conquistador (17 July 05:59) |
| Mixed fortunes for the buyers of ABN AMROTO THE victors, the toils. Less than a year has passed since the bosses of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Fortis, a Belgo-Dutch lender, and Santander ... |
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Turning panic into opportunity (17 July 05:59) |
| How to tell when markets may have hit bottomWHEN all around are panicking, smart investors should be cooly asking whether it is time to buy. What signals should they be looking for?One of th... |
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Boxed-in Ben (17 July 05:59) |
| For the Federal Reserve chief, even good news turns out to be badJITTERY investors and anxious politicians have often relied on Federal Reserve chairmen to conjure up something to steady the... |
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Fear of failure (17 July 05:59) |
| The collapse of a big mortgage lender sparks panic about othersBY TRADITION, sequels are pale shadows of their forerunners. In this financial crisis, each episode in the saga seems even more... |
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Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: End of illusions (17 July 05:59) |
| A series of articles on the crisis gripping the world economy and global markets starts where it all began--with America's deeply flawed system of housing financeTHERE is a story about a sci... |
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America?s economy: Boxed-in Ben (17 July 05:59) |
| For the Federal Reserve chief, even good news turns out to be badJITTERY investors and anxious politicians have often relied on Federal Reserve chairmen to conjure up something to steady the... |
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Prediction markets: Fortune telling (17 July 05:59) |
| How to bet on the next bank collapseSURPRISES, in the staid world of banking, tend to be of the unpleasant sort, as customers at IndyMac Bancorp, a California thrift, can attest. Cross a few... |
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American banks: Fear of failure (17 July 05:59) |
| The collapse of a big mortgage lender sparks panic about othersBY TRADITION, sequels are pale shadows of their forerunners. In this financial crisis, each episode in the saga seems even more... |
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A brief family history: Toxic fudge (17 July 05:59) |
| Chartered by Congress; out for themselvesADAM SMITH thought that private companies chartered to fulfil government tasks had "in the long run proved, universally, either burdensome or useless... |
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Buttonwood: Turning panic into opportunity (17 July 05:59) |
| How to tell when markets may have hit bottomWHEN all around are panicking, smart investors should be cooly asking whether it is time to buy. What signals should they be looking for?One of th... |
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Economics focus: Land of the rising price (17 July 05:59) |
| Japan has long hoped for a bit of inflation--but not this sort JAPAN, people like to argue, is one place that should greet the return of inflation with joy. The country, after all, has been ... |
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Financial regulation: Grasping at shorts (17 July 05:59) |
| America's SEC fights dirtyBEAR markets often involve bare-knuckle fights, but it is still a shock when the referee starts punching below the belt. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC... |
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Aftermath of a mega-merger: Three amigos, only one conquistador (17 July 05:59) |
| Mixed fortunes for the buyers of ABN AMROTO THE victors, the toils. Less than a year has passed since the bosses of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Fortis, a Belgo-Dutch lender, and Santander ... |
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American housing: The wrecking-ball response (10 July 07:00) |
| How to deal with a glut of empty homesTUMBLING house prices in America, rising foreclosures and a glut of unsold homes have produced a variety of unusual, even desperate, responses from poli... |
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Bank security: Bodily functions (10 July 07:00) |
| Can biometrics make banking more secure?VILLAINS, beware. The fight against online fraud has a new weapon--the panic finger. Banks in Europe and South Africa are testing a device that authen... |
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Chinese and Taiwanese banks: Finally thinking Strait (10 July 07:00) |
| The first steps in what could become more financial integration in Greater ChinaCorrection to this articleXIAMEN, the 19th-century tea port known to the British as Amoy, became in the 20th c... |
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Economics focus: Promises, promises (10 July 07:00) |
| How reliably aid is given can be even more important than how much is givenDEVELOPMENT aid can be as fickle as fashion. Remember those white Make Poverty History wristbands, which briefly ma... |
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Hedge funds: The secrets of succession (10 July 07:00) |
| Can hedge funds outlive their star managers?THOSE good at running money rarely run companies well. The stellar hedge funds of the 1990s failed to make it to the top-ten this decade (see char... |
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Private equity: Annuals horribilis (10 July 07:00) |
| Private equity firms open up, a littleREMOVE the useful bits from annual reports--the accounts--and you are mainly left with a queasy stew of executive portraits and corporate mission statem... |
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Bank consolidation: Under the hammer (10 July 07:00) |
| A wave of M&A deals is expected to hit the industry--eventuallyLIKE plane-crash survivors forced to eat their fellow passengers, investment bankers have found some sources of nourishment... |
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Buttonwood: A fate worse than debt (10 July 07:00) |
| Banking-industry woes once again disrupt the credit marketsHOLLYWOOD may love to churn out sequels but markets do not think much of them. Almost four months after the rescue of Bear Stearns,... |
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The secrets of succession (10 July 07:00) |
| Can hedge funds outlive their star managers?THOSE good at running money rarely run companies well. The stellar hedge funds of the 1990s failed to make it to the top-ten this decade (see char... |
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Annuals horribilis (10 July 07:00) |
| Private equity firms open up, a littleREMOVE the useful bits from annual reports--the accounts--and you are mainly left with a queasy stew of executive portraits and corporate mission statem... |
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Under the hammer (10 July 07:00) |
| A wave of M&A deals is expected to hit the industry--eventuallyLIKE plane-crash survivors forced to eat their fellow passengers, investment bankers have found some sources of nourishment... |
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A fate worse than debt (10 July 07:00) |
| Banking-industry woes once again disrupt the credit marketsHOLLYWOOD may love to churn out sequels but markets do not think much of them. Almost four months after the rescue of Bear Stearns,... |
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The wrecking-ball response (10 July 07:00) |
| How to deal with a glut of empty homesTUMBLING house prices in America, rising foreclosures and a glut of unsold homes have produced a variety of unusual, even desperate, responses from poli... |
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Bodily functions (10 July 07:00) |
| Can biometrics make banking more secure?VILLAINS, beware. The fight against online fraud has a new weapon--the panic finger. Banks in Europe and South Africa are testing a device that authen... |
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Finally thinking Strait (10 July 07:00) |
| The first steps in what could become more financial integration in Greater China XIAMEN, the 19th-century tea port known to the British as Amoy, became in the 20th century a fortified front ... |
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Promises, promises (10 July 07:00) |
| How reliably aid is given can be even more important than how much is givenDEVELOPMENT aid can be as fickle as fashion. Remember those white Make Poverty History wristbands, which briefly ma... |
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Buttonwood: A gap in the hedge (03 July 06:32) |
| Owning shares is no shield against the scourge of inflationIT IS easy to understand why bond markets are vulnerable to inflation, since the value of most bonds is fixed in nominal terms. But... |
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Global markets: Bearish battalions (03 July 06:32) |
| Almost everything that could is going wrong for world stockmarketsTHEY rarely ring a bell at the bottom of bear markets. Investors who thought they had heard a tinkling sound when Bear Stear... |
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The Bank for International Settlements: Settling scores (03 July 06:32) |
| If the BIS is right, inflation is a more immediate threat than deflation IT IS always satisfying to be proved right, even when your prediction was that things would go horribly wrong. For ye... |
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Debt relief: Waiving, not drowning (03 July 06:32) |
| India writes off farm loans. Has it also written off the rural credit culture?A KNOT of farmers points in anticipation and dread at the spreadsheets posted on the walls of a bank in Sikandra... |
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Leveraged buy-outs : Private investigations (03 July 06:32) |
| Our calculations suggest buy-out firms may come to rue some of the "mega-deals" they did when pumped up with self-beliefIN FINANCE, as in Greek tragedy, one of the commonest pairings is betw... |
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Economics focus: The domino effect (03 July 06:32) |
| Many currencies that are backed by a current-account deficit are now falling just as the dollar hasACCORDING to economic textbooks, the currencies of economies with large current-account def... |
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A gap in the hedge (03 July 06:32) |
| Owning shares is no shield against the scourge of inflationIT IS easy to understand why bond markets are vulnerable to inflation, since the value of most bonds is fixed in nominal terms. But... |
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