Category: business news
- Africa
- African Bank
- Alibaba
- ALSI
- America
- American Debt Crisis
- Antibiotic Resistance
- Apple
- Argentina
- asymmetric information
- Austrian Economics
- Banking Scandal
- Banks
- Basic Income
- BATS
- Behavioral Economics
- Big Data
- Big Pharma
- Bitcoin
- Blockchain
- bonuses
- Book Reviews
- Brexit
- BRIC
- BRICS
- Bruno Iksil
- Buffett Rule
- business news
- Capital in the Twenty-First Century
- Capitalism
- CDO
- CDS
- China
- Cities
- City of London Corporation
- Climate Change
- CMO
- Collateralised Debt Obligations
- Collateralised Mortgage Obligations
- Commodities
- Coronavirus
- Corruption
- Credit Rating
- Credit Rating Downgrade
- Cryptocurrency
- cryptoshares
- Davos 2014
- Deflation
- Dodd-Frank
- EBITDA
- Economic Myths
- Economic Theory
- Economics In Real Life
- Economics News
- Emerging Markets
- Eurozone Debt Crisis
- Exchange Rates
- Facebook IPO
- Featured Posts
- Fed Stress Tests
- FinTech
- Fiscal Deficit
- fiscal policy
- Fixed Rate Mortgages
- Flash Crash
- France
- Freddie Mac
- Free Trade
- FTSE-JSE ALSI
- Game Theory
- Glass-Steagal Act
- Gold
- Gold Standard
- Golden Cross
- Goldman Sachs
- Greek CDS Exposure
- Greek Debt Crisis
- High Frequency Trading
- House Flipping
- hyperinflation
- Iceland
- IMF
- Immigration
- Indicators
- Indices
- inflation
- Infographic
- Insider Trading
- Interest Rate
- Interest Rate Parity
- Interest Rate Risk
- Investing in Art
- Investment Strategies
- Investor Diaries
- IPO
- Iran Sanctions
- ISDA auction
- Japan
- Jim Yong Kim
- JP Morgan
- Just An Observation
- Keynesian economics
- Laffer Curve
- Last Investment Frontier
- Leaving the Eurozone
- Liar's Poker
- LIBOR
- LIBOR collusion scandal
- Liquidity Risk
- Listed Property
- Maps
- Market Mechanism
- Marriage
- MBS
- Medical Aid Schemes
- MF Global
- Michael Lewis
- Microcredit
- Minimum Wage
- monetary policy
- Money
- Mortgage-Backed Securities
- Mortgages
- MTN
- Multi-level Marketing
- NASDAQ
- National Debt
- Net Neutrality
- Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
- Office Politics
- Oil
- Other
- Overpopulation
- p2p lending
- Parastatals
- Penny Stocks
- Personal Finance
- Petrodollar Wars
- Platinum
- Podcast
- Ponzi Scheme
- Poverty
- Prepayments
- Price Controls
- Price Discrimination
- Pyramid Scheme
- Quantitative Easing
- Questions
- Rating Agency
- REITs
- Remittances
- RIM
- Risk On Risk Off
- rollingalpha
- SARB
- Save The Rhino
- Seigniorage
- Short-selling
- Singapore
- Snapchat
- South Africa
- South Africa's Tax System
- Spain
- Statistics
- Story of Money Podcast
- Student Loans
- Subprime Crisis
- Super Tuesday
- Swiss Franc
- tax system
- TGIF
- The Amateur Investor
- The Big Short
- The Reading List
- The Travelling Economist
- Trade Unions
- Uncategorized
- Unemployment
- Unicorns
- Unit Trusts
- US Credit Rating
- US Housing Market
- Variable Rate Mortgages
- Venezuela
- Volatility
- Volker Rule
- Warren Buffett
- Water Crisis
- Wealth Inequality
- World Bank
- Zimbabwe
Keeping It Current: What Went On Last Week [26/07/2013]
Here’s what you may have missed in the business news last week: SAC gets accused of a decade of insider trading. After seven years of investigation, the SEC is charging Wall Street Hedge Fund SAC Capital with four counts of securities fraud (AKA insider trading) and one count of wire fraud (misrepresentation via email?). These activities […]
read more
Keeping It Current: What Went On Last Week [19/7/2013]
Here’s what you may have missed in the business news last week: GlaxoSmithKline were accused of offering sexual favours. GSK sales went up by 20% in China last year. Which I know seems like “just a number” – but it is a little unusual when it’s almost triple the country’s growth rate. And it seems like […]
read more
How Ryanair Makes Money Off Delusions
Yesterday, Ryanair was delighted to announce that it had increased its profits by 13%. But the really interesting part of this story is that they only had 5% more flyers. So the question becomes: where did all this profit come from? Ryanair is famous for its unexpected charges. You constantly read these horror stories about […]
read more
Non-Profit Organisations. Kind of not at all what we think.
Here’s a headline: “Lehman Reaches Beyond Grave to Grab Millions From Nonprofits“ Spicy. It’s Twilight meets the Zombie Apocalypse meets CNBC’s Squawk on the Street. The background: Lehman Brothers was the Too Big To Fail bank that failed in 2008. When the US government let Lehman collapse, the world was suddenly all “You’re joking – […]
read more
Cash Flow. And a New Housing Market.
I have a growing list of things that are certain in life: Death Taxes Traffic Obnoxious opinions The madness of markets But I’d like to add something to the list: The ability of investment bankers to find and securitise any and every stream of cash flow. Cash Flows are a form of Moral Philosophy Statement: […]
read more
Stuff You Should Know About Reserve Requirements
Disclaimer: this particular post is going to be fairly technical. And I’m doing it because I have readers in the finance/banking field who may or may not know what Basel III actually entails. But I have a post planned for tomorrow that might change the way you look at the poor (I’m very excited about […]
read more
What is all this talk about Banks and Basel?
When I was just a young accounting kid, growing up in a small-town office family*, I used to have regular email communications with the worldly cousins in the Big City**. We would visit once or twice a year (they never visited us) and stay in out-of-town lodges located near the South African equivalent of strip […]
read more
An Excellent Moment to Explain Corporate Debt
Over the weekend, I damaged an armpit muscle. Some people might tell you that this was a direct result of monkey-climbing up a set of playground swings. But the honest truth is: I strained it with all the back-patting. The week before last, I was exclaiming in awe about the Apple share price (see the […]
read more
The Law of Unintended Consequence: a Greek Civil Service
Over the weekend, the government of Antonis Samaras passed a whole host of new austerity measures for Greece – the most controversial of which relate to public sector labour reform. All of these measures were required by the Troika (the EU, the ECB and the IMF) as conditions for the release of the next tranche […]
read more
Why Debt Can Be A Fabulous Thing
When I first set-up a facebook account (pre-2008, I’ll have you know)*, I made this little announcement in the “About Me” section: “I am a fan of debt finance. Those who are not fans of debt financing, I rebuke in the name of the mortgage, the bank, and the title deed. The rich don’t get […]
read more