The central importance of housing to the British financial system
In Britain we seem to have a love affair with the property market. Home ownership is 69%, not especially high, but average house prices are a constant topic of discussion, mainly because property in the prosperous south east of the … Continued
The European stock market votes for nuclear power
EDF, the world’s largest quoted electric utility company, is also the leading operator of nuclear power stations, most of them in France but it now plans to build two in the UK. Nuclear power has had a somewhat volatile relationship … Continued
The international financial system isn’t going to be reformed any time soon
In a recent IMF working paper I came across the term “North Atlantic financial crisis”. I hadn’t heard this before and it was the first clue of several that the report was written by Indian economists with a well justified … Continued
Regulation leads to innovation
The Chinese government is in the process of deregulating interest rates. It took the first step in July 2013 when the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) freed the banks to set the rate charged to borrowers, other than some mortgage-related … Continued
What has gone wrong with India?
The fall in the Indian rupee in the last few weeks is a result of three things: i) a current account deficit that made the country vulnerable to a sudden exit of funds; ii) the inherent volatility and instability of … Continued
Rebalancing the Chinese economy: not much progress
It is widely agreed, including by the Chinese government, that the Chinese economy needs to be rebalanced if economic growth is to continue in the long term, without severe tensions or a full blown crisis. The heart of the problem … Continued
Analysing changes in long term interest rates: the term premium in US Treasury bonds
Long term interest rates, as captured by the yield on long term US Treasury Bonds, have recently swung upwards after falling for three decades. It’s still too soon to say that the long bull market in bonds has ended, because … Continued
Commodities don’t help an investment portfolio
Investing in commodities (oil, gas, metals etc.) has gone from being a niche activity to a mainstream portfolio choice in the last fifteen years. This was driven by the long period of fast growth of commodity prices, which made a … Continued
How to bankrupt a bank
The aftermath of the global financial crisis left many people with an impression of modern finance as extraordinarily complex, a web of multi-layered securities financed through strange off-balance sheet vehicles and held together by impenetrable mathematical formulas. There is something … Continued
A simple but misleading model of inflation
A lot of hedge fund managers seem to believe that the Fed and other central banks that have been using unconventional monetary policy, specifically “quantitative easing” (see note 1), are dooming us to much higher inflation in future. Some believe … Continued
The great mutual fund rip off
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
Even now, banks are still not safely capitalised
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
On the difficulties of using macroeconomic data for policy advice
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
How to evade capital controls
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