Bailout and Financial Crisis News

Following the UK election could make you a tidy bit of cash, if the Conservatives continue to drop in the polls. The trend when Labour gains and the Conservatives lose in the polls is that the value of the pound drops, according to FT Alphaville. Nomura is trying to convince everyone that the Conservatives are still going [...]

Despite the global economic downturn, business deals still take place over delicious meals every day — paid for by corporate expense accounts. After all, when you’re trying to seal that important deal, there’s nothing like a buttery steak and a glass of Claret to help you close. We’ve already shown you where you should power lunch in [...]

Will Prudential PLC actually manage to complete its proposed acquisition of AIG Asian arm? According to The Independent (UK), CEO Tidjane Thiam has been holding meetings with investors that have been going horribly. Instead, Mr Thiam infuriated a number of investors, many of whom own large stakes in Prudential, with a series of meetings characterised as [...]

“Dick Fuld is going to be bankrupted and he’s going to spend the rest of his life in court fighting legal battles. There maybe others forced to do the same.” -Dick Bove of Rochedale Securities. Bove had  all nine volumes of the examiner’s report printed and bound. (Barrons) > As it turned out, Lehman Brothers was the firm [...]

While the United Kingdom is having its own unemployment problems, there is one easy way to get a job: be Polish. The Telegraph reports of a meat packing plant which supplies a Walmart subsidiary refusing to employ individuals on its production line unless they speak Polish. The company has since backed off from their stance, but [...]

Italian-German bank Unicredit has warned clients that a U.K. debt pummelling is imminent. Says the bank’s fixed income director Kornelius Purps: Telegraph: “I am becoming convinced that Great Britain is the next country that is going to be pummelled by investors,” said Kornelius Purps, Unicredit ’s fixed income director and a leading analyst in Germany. … “Britain’s AAA-rating is highly [...]

Prime Minister Gordon Brown stands accused this morning of using the UK’s difficult economic position as a tool to maintain his grip on the country’s premiership in the run-up to the projected May 6 election. From Bloomberg: “A weak economy might perversely be good for Labour,” Jonathan Loynes, an economist at Capital Economics Ltd. in London, said [...]

It is probably time for the U.S. to consider the next set of stress tests for the banks. That is what the Financial Services Authority (FSA) is doing in the U.K. From the FSA: We have now embedded our new approach to stress testing into our normal supervisory process. This includes supplementing firms’ own stress testing with [...]

By Alexander Hotz The financial crisis has given new legs to the idea of taxing financial transactions. The European Parliament voted today to develop a new “transaction tax plan” that would “ensure that the financial industry pays for the damage caused by the financial crisis,” according to this statement. Paul Krugman, another backer of the idea, argued last [...]

Slip a derivative and this argument, summarized here in 1844 by John Stuart Mill, is Michael Mussa’s argument against providing a lexicographic preference to inflation targeting: John Stuart Mill on The Currency Question: Within the last few years another doctrine has sprung up, of which Colonel Torrens was, as we have said, the originator, Mr. Loyd, [...]

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