July 2009

Roland Koch, the leader of the German state of Hesse, has dismissed the possibility of Chinese auto manufacturer BAIC acquiring German carmaker Opel.  Below is my translation of today’s Spiegel article explaining this. Clear rejection of…

Unemployment in Spain: Two-tier flexibility - The Economist "How the burden of adjustment in Spain falls on the underprivileged" A special report on Texas: : The red and the blue - The Economist "Whisper it softly,…

This comes via der Standard, an Austrian daily.  My translation below: The international financial crisis has hit eastern Europe harder than previously expected, according to a press report. At least ten states are negotiating with…

This is my translation of an article from Dagens Nyheter, a Swedish daily. Swedish banks are planning to write down Latvian personal loans by 10 percent. However, the proposal includes only a small part of the Latvia’s mountain of debt.…

This comes via the Sydney Morning Herald: A year ago, after Stern Hu had survived 20-odd rounds of negotiations and won Rio Tinto and Australia an extraordinary 87 per cent price increase for its iron ore contracts, I asked him if he…

Marshall Auerback sent me this joke about Mark Sanford. Mark Sanford’s staff thought he was hiking in the mountains. In fairness to his aides, "I'm getting some Argentinian tail." sounds a lot like "I'm hiking the…

R.W. Baird downgraded Starwood Hotels (HOT) from Neutral to Underperform, saying it was downgrading estimates on hotels across the board. This comes via Barrons: Starwood's former strengths are now weaknesses. During the boom Starwood's…

In reaction to recent comments about more stimulus by Laura Tyson, an advisor to President Obama, we have seen a host of commentators make their opinion known.  Here are two more  well regarded pundits: James Galbraith and Warren Buffett. …

This comes via the Nationwide website: As a responsible lender which aims to support its borrowers Nationwide has responded to market conditions and made an option available which enables some existing customers in negative equity to move…

Yves had a very good post yesterday called “Why Big Capital Markets Players Are Unmanageable” on banks: the former i-banks and commercial banks.  The biggest takeaway for me came from her statements regarding the level of responsibility…