Greece this week repaid €750m to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which it funded by drawing on its SDR account at the IMF. This legitimate but unusual move caught many commentators by surprise and drew attention to the little known … Continued
This week it was reported (*) that the European Commission was investigating some southern EU nations to see if they had unfairly and illegally allowed banks to count deferred tax assets towards their capital. What does this mean and what … Continued
As an economist, over the years I’ve been asked two things repeatedly by people who hold economics in touchingly high regard. One is, which way will house prices move? And the other is, what will happen to the value of … Continued
The biggest topic in the global economy remains the oil price. It’s notoriously difficult to forecast commodity prices but how can we make sense of what would push the price up or down? A basic demand and supply framework gets … Continued
We take it for granted that capitalists hire workers rather than workers hiring capital, but why? The main reason is the difficulty of diversifying labour, which means that workers ideally require some form of insurance to offset their concentration of … Continued
CDOs – collateralised debt obligations – were widely seen as the main villain of the financial crisis. CDO issuance peaked in 2007, collapsed in 2008 and is now gradually recovering. Should we be worried? * The latest Bank for International … Continued
Money can mean physical cash, or the funds in a bank account or the flows of short term funding used by government and companies. No wonder finance can be confusing. * Finance is a subject bedevilled by jargon – words, … Continued
Every year when the new MFin class starts, there is usually at least one person who asks the question: when will QE cause a big rise in inflation? The person is often from a hedge fund or trading background because … Continued
Peer to peer lending (P2PL) is an old idea given a new twist by the Internet: lending from households to businesses without a bank in between. P2P has flourished in the UK in recent years and is now growing fast … Continued
Physical money is becoming increasingly unnecessary in everyday life. Could it be heading for extinction and does it matter? I’ve just spent three days on holiday in the wonderful city of Copenhagen, using physical cash only once (when the ice cream … Continued
Shadow banking is a term that was invented by Paul McCulley, the former chief economist of the giant fund manager PIMCO, in 2007. He was one of the first to identify and analyse the growth of chains of financial transactions … Continued
Although the world appears a very turbulent place, financial volatility is currently rather low. How do we know this? One method widely used by commentators and market analysts is to refer to a measure of global risk aversion called the VIX. This post … Continued
Bonds, which are debt securities, are often known as “fixed income” investments. This is mostly correct but not strictly accurate. A typical bond pays a fixed coupon, which is an amount of money normally paid twice a year, for a … Continued
I recently gave a presentation to the Cambridge China Business Network, a student club. The title is “Like dismantling a nuclear bomb: liberalising the Chinese financial system”. The slides are shown below. Summary Liberalisation of a market means removing most … Continued
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a great example of an institution that was created for one purpose – to police the system of fixed exchange rates set up in the 1944 Bretton Woods treaty – which has survived and … Continued