Erotic Investment: Snowball vs. Goldfinger
“Would you rather be the world’s best lover but have everyone think you’re the world’s worst? Or would you rather be the world’s worst…”
Sayonara to Hard Money: Here Comes Global QE
The Bank of Japan’s decision to adopt an inflation target and double its bond purchases completes the global flight to soft money.
Austerity Fatigue: LePen & Hash-ism
The road to fiscal hell is sometimes paved with the best intentions. As Europe’s politicians seek to win electorates round to brutal budget cuts, they would do well to look to the experience of Japan.
When PIIGS Beat BRICS
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. The biggest surprise for equity investors in 2011 was not the weakness of the crisis-ravaged European markets, but the carnage in the stock markets of the emerging economies.
The Retreat From Hard Money
Imagine the US economy shrinking by 30% over the past four years, the Chinese economy growing at 2%, not 10%. Imagine UK house prices down 60% and commodity prices sliding back to the levels of the mid-1970s.
Gold – The Bubble in Fear
The biblical parable of the talents contains a timely warning for the gold market. In the story the master distributes his wealth between three servants. The first and the second put their capital to work in businesses and generate healthy profits. The third, scared of losses, buries his share in the ground.
Debt Dynamics – The Lesson From Japan
Sovereign downgrade? Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Such is likely to be the response of any investor in Japan to the news that Standard and Poors has removed its triple A rating on US
Invited Response To Jim O’neill’s “A-List”
The world has come to think of Japan as the economic equivalent of Duran Duran – an over-hyped 1980s phenomenon that has fallen into justly deserved obscurity.
Too Much, Too Young – Emerging Market Risks
How much more “emerging” have the emerging markets left to do? Probably not much, given the vast amount of capital and hope invested in the asset class already.
After The Quake – Market Response
The earthquake which struck Japan on Friday with such devastating human cost was powerful enough to shift the earth’s on its axis and move the Japanese land mass six feet. It is human nature to assume that an event of such destructive force must have powerful lasting effects on stock markets too, but that is not necessarily the case.