Category: Central Banks

  • Tsipras announces referendum on bailout

    From FT’s Peter Spiegel: “Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, has announced a national referendum on whether his country should agree to creditors’ demands that would release desperately-needed bailout aid to avoid national bankruptcy. In a televised address to the nation after a late-night meeting of his cabinet, Mr Tsipras announced that the plebiscite would…

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  • Bank Jog

    The Wall Street Journal called recent deposit outflows from Greek banks a “bank jog” (as opposed to “bank run”). A bank run usually leads to affected banks running out of cash quickly (within days or hours). The Greek banking system has been bleeding deposits since years. But the movement has been accelerating last week: If…

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  • Count-down to Grexit?

    The ECB has painted itself into a corner. The table below is quite good. In the left column you see that customers have withdrawn around EUR 40bn from Greek banks since October 2014 (almost a quarter of all deposits). Capital flight is in full bloom. The ECB is keeping the Greek banking system alive by…

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  • Someone would like to see Greece burn

    After the close of European equity markets the Sueddeutsche Zeitung ran the following story: Without naming sources, the newspaper claims Euro-Group had decided on an emergency plan for Greece, which would include capital controls. Which is nonsense, since only Greece can decide on capital controls. Greece, of course, denied having such plans: By refusing to…

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  • EU-Greek talks end without deal

    After the IMF left negotiations with Greece, the EU also declared Sunday’s talks to have failed after a brief 45-minute meeting According to the EU Commission, a gap on fiscal measures was around EUR 2bn (1.1% of GDP) annually remains. That’s not huge, and probably not worth leaving the Euro-zone for, but who knows if…

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  • “Good evening, Mr. Bond” – Jim Rickards

    Interesting article by Jim Rickards on falling bond market liquidity. He cites the flash crash in US Treasury bond yields last October:   Falling yields mean rising bond prices. So the flash crash in yields actually was a flash rally in prices. Usually, investors only get hurt when prices fall (apart from a few short sellers).…

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  • “And the award for the most creative excuse for joining currency wars goes to…”

    … the Bank of Israel! On Monday, Bank of Israel cut interest rates in a surprise decision to 1.5% from 1.75%. Also, they are done with watching the Shekel strengthen against the dollar: “Beginning this year, and in coming years, the Bank of Israel will purchase foreign exchange in order to offset the effect of…

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  • Happy Centennial, Dear Fed

    Happy Centennial, Dear Fed! Click on above link to read the excerpt from our January 2013 “Letter to Investors”.

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