When I used to teach an MBA elective on capital markets, I would say that if the students remembered only one thing from the course it should be that on average active fund managers fail to beat the market and … Continued
Many commentators use John Maynard Keynes’ quotation “In the long run we are all dead” to suggest that Keynes, and by association those economists today who urge a moderation of government austerity policies, didn’t care about the future. The implication … Continued
Socrates, who according to Plato argued around 400BCE that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” might have expected those of us lucky enough to have escaped the restrictions of a subsistence economy (that is, a billion or two people) … Continued
In natural (real) science you can do experiments where you can measure the influence of A on B while holding other things constant. No matter how good a theory is, it’s only taken seriously if there is an experiment that … Continued
A recent speaker on the MFin mentioned, almost in passing, that he didn’t think the Basel III regulatory system would actually be implemented, so flawed was its approach. I thought this sounded a little exaggerated but a recent speech from … Continued
The economics blogosphere and now the mainstream financial press are full of discussion about the flaws in widely cited research done by Professors Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart. These authors produced an excellent and path-breaking book This Time Is Different which … Continued
The Cambridge MFin careers report came out a few weeks ago. It showed that for the class of 2011/12, 11% were without jobs as of January 2013, four months after the end of the degree programme. Actually the figure should … Continued
The latest data on China’s foreign exchange reserves, showing a rise of $130 billion to $3.4 trillion, suggest that capital is flowing into China again after an apparent outflow ahead of the change of government in late 2012. There is also … Continued
A New York Times article recently reported data from Rosenblatt Securities showing that the percentage of total US stock trading done “off-exchange” has risen from about 15% in 2008 to over 35% in 2013 and occasionally as high as 40%. What … Continued
The US magazine Foreign Policy recently ran an article titled “Hugo’s Banker” (meaning the late President Chavez of Venezuela) describing as the world’s most powerful banker Mr. Chen Yuan, the Chairman of China Development Bank (CDB). In what sense is … Continued
A great piece of research from the authors at the University of Michigan and Princeton University (*) tests the hypothesis that the bankers inside the sub-prime mortgage bubble knew it was all too good to last. They find the hypothesis false. … Continued
A sovereign wealth fund (SWF) is an organisation that manages financial and other assets on behalf of a government or nation. But what about the holdings of foreign exchange reserves by central banks? These assets, often much larger in size, … Continued
It’s uplifting to visit a city that has a rich and glorious past but also an exciting future. So many cities attract tourists to their historic sites and buildings, who leave with a slightly melancholy sense that the best has … Continued
I came across this poem in an interestingly random way and it immediately struck a chord with me. Love After Love The time will comewhen, with elationyou will greet yourself arrivingat your own door, in your own mirrorand each will … Continued
I’ve written before about the remarkable speed at which non-conventional oil and gas, especially shale gas, are being discovered and (at least in the US) exploited. The effect of this on world energy markets is likely to be good for … Continued