June, 2009

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29
Jun 09

Are we out of recession yet?

At supper a couple of weekends ago, one of the more economically-versed of the Conservative Party MPs – spare me the endless jokes about moats and duck houses – stated that all the intelligent people he knew did not buy the alarmist climate change theory, nor the idea that we were going to be coming out of this recession quickly.

The latter is backed up by top executives in US companies selling shares in their employers. Sales outstrip purchases by 22 times. According to investment research company TrimTabs, so-called insiders of the S&P 500 sold $2.6 billion of shares in June. They bought only $120 million.  Continue reading...

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26
Jun 09

Doom, gloom and a teensy bit of marketing

I share neither a beard nor height with Grigori Marchenko, central bank governor of Kazakhstan. But we do share a detestation of the elevation of doom-and-gloom economist Nouriel Roubini to sainthood.

Dr Doom, as he is commonly known, spends his life forecasting recession. The fact that he is finally right is like a weather forecaster permanently predicting rain. It may well do so after, say, 10 years of drought, but that does not make the forecaster prescient.

Marchenko is even more incensed by Roubini’s calling Kazakhstan the second Iceland. The excitable 48 year old says the New York based economist is like the “men who are not loved in their youth by their parents or absent girlfriends, so they are on TV all the time, always trying.”  Continue reading...

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17
Jun 09

Arrogance and sex drive are the constants

From the preparations for a luxury parquet floor in a Middle East potentate’s new mansion to the London Sexual Health Programme subgroup, which is preparing for the 2012 Olympics in London. That was the wide range of conversation at an idyllic house party in Norfolk last weekend.

The problems have already started. I am not referring to the cost overrun for the Games, although a budget that soared from £2.4 billion in 2005 to the current £9.3 billion is rather worrying. (www.taxpayersalliance.com). It is the arrival of a mass of construction workers to build the Olympic facilities, with the consequent arrival of a mass of prostitutes to service them.  Continue reading...

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11
Jun 09

Ostrich to fortune

Good to see that analyst stock tips have almost no effect on stock prices, according to a study. My first post-university job in 1986 was as the Spanish analyst at Morgan Grenfell, an institution that was subsequently subsumed into Deutsche Bank. This was solely on the basis of my being half-Spanish and looking entirely Spanish (see photo).

I would tell my boss that Pepito in Madrid had told me to buy Telefonica shares and we must tell our clients. He would patiently explain that I needed to write a 20-page report on it. I could envisage few things as boring as going into depreciation rates in detail. Plus, the Spanish stockmarket was an insider’s market so reports were of little use.  Continue reading...

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