I last visited South Africa in 1987, during the apartheid period. Since at that time there was a cultural and economic boycott of the country, I should explain to alarmed friends that I was there because I was working for … Continued
Starting pay for new investment banking hires at the analyst (entry) level has gone up recently. This report shows that the investment banking employment cartel is now paying £45,000 for people starting this autumn in London. That looks like good news … Continued
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is the one organisation that has come out of the financial crisis of 2007-09 in better shape than it went in. Set up to police the system of fixed exchange rates that was the basis … Continued
Australia is often known as the lucky country. Not that all of its history has been lucky but in the last twenty years it has been one of the largest beneficiaries of fast Chinese economic growth. About a quarter of … Continued
When you study economics at Cambridge you are forced to get your hands dirty with some actual economic data. My colleagues and I were confined to programmable calculators and manual entry of data in those days. But the point was … Continued
It has been a long time since I walked the streets of the United States capital. Like Cambridge, much remains unchanged, but there are some telling alterations. I thought it was a sign of the times that on K street, … Continued
I’ve been accused of being rather pessimistic about the Euro mess and the risk of Europe’s historic tensions rising to the surface again. But here is a really bleak imagining of the next few years from Harvard’s Dani Rodrik. It’s unlikely … Continued
While awaiting the outcome of the Greek elections this coming weekend, the focus has been shifting in the blogosphere and on Bloomberg to the world’s most indebted government by far, Japan. Japan’s debt to GDP ratio is about 220%, around double … Continued
In case there hasn’t been enough bad news for you recently ($2bn loss at supposedly the world’s best managed bank, Greece heading for financial collapse, the UK back in recession, stubbornly weak employment data in the US) the evidence is … Continued
As everybody has by now noticed, Greece and the ECB/EU are playing a game of chicken. If the opinion polls are correct, the anti-austerity vote will rise in the second set of Greek elections in June. A failure to keep … Continued
Last week, amid all the fuss about the French and Greek elections, the Federal Reserve Board approved the acquisition by the world’s largest bank by value, ICBC (Industrial and Commercial Bank of China), of a majority stake in the Bank of East … Continued
When we launched the MFin in 2008 I think most of us had in mind as typical students people who were looking for jobs in the private sector. It was partly the fact that it is a “premium fee” (i.e. … Continued
Like a lot of people, I was disappointed that the latest vacancy for the President of the World Bank would likely be filled by another American nominated by the US President. It has been custom and practice for the head … Continued
One consequence of getting older is that friends and former colleagues appear more frequently in the news. Last week it was the planning minister, Greg Clark, who I met when we were PhD students at LSE, launching a revamp of Britain’s … Continued
The FT has an article by their Beijing correspondent, Simon Rabinovitch, saying that Chinese customers are getting angry about the big banks’ ever growing profits, which are in part at the expense of depositors who receive a negative real interest rate. … Continued