It's started ... - by Richard... Tuesday, May 25, 2010

It's started ... - by Richard... Tuesday, May 25, 2010

UPDATED 14:00 Hrs - if you feel inclined to panic, now would be a good time.




Above: the headlines from The Times and The Daily Telegraph today (online).

My morning post yesterday: European stock markets, for the moment, are paying the price ... which means individual savers, pension funds and the rest. They saw London lose 0.2 percent, Paris slid 0.7, Frankfurt 1.3 and Madrid 1.8 by mid-morning, on fears about the health of Spanish banks and the eurozone economy. The "age of rage" comes later. This is only just starting(my emphasis).


Above pic: Spain's Economy Minister Elena Salgado arrives at the Brussels Economic Forum conference today. 

Meanwhile, the euro, core European bond yields and oil prices all tumbled, while stock-index futures suggested further sharp losses on Wall Street today. The three-month U.S. dollar London interbank offered rate rose to 0.53625 percent from 0.50969 on Monday, its highest level since July 2009.

"With the euro under pressure, Libor pushing higher and geopolitical tensions raised, investors have few reasons to try and call a bottom to this," said David Morrison at GFT. "For now, it's all about deleveraging and unwinding anything even remotely risky, and equities are top of the list," he added.

Says Jeremy Warner in his Telegraph blog:

Just as everyone thought the banking crisis largely over, it threatens to begin anew. The banking crisis helped prompt a sovereign debt crisis, which now threatens to re-infect the banking sector with a secondary bad debt experience. Markets are beginning to believe there is no way out. More worrying still, few if any can afford another round of bank bailouts.

There's still room for confidence to revive and the problem to go away, at least for the time being, he says. But it's not looking good, not good at all.

The only consolation - and it's a very small one - is that ... reality bites! Ain't life a bitch!

EURO CRISIS THREAD

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Go away and die - by Richard...

Dr Molnar, Professor Andrew Derocher and colleagues from the University of Alberta and York University, Toronto focused on the physiology, behaviour and ecology of polar bears, and how these might change as temperatures increase. "We developed a model for the mating ecology of polar bears ... ," he says.

So, we have another fracking computer model from another bunch of over-paid academics, predicting Armageddon. If you can't do something useful, will you please just go away and die?

COMMENT THREAD

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A fool and his money - by Richard...

I suppose there is no fool like a rich fool, a description which surely must apply to Californian billionaire Vinod Khosla. He has just employed ex-prime minister Tony Blair to give strategic advice to Khosla Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in companies pursuing green technologies. 

On two counts (at least) Khosla is wasting his money: firstly, Blair's star is very much on the wane; secondly, the greenie bubble is about to burst (and, in fact, is already bursting). But there is no better indication of Khosla's incipient madness than in his statement concerning the employment of Blair.

"With Tony's advice and influence, we will create opportunities for entrepreneurs and innovators to devise practical solutions that can solve today's most pressing problems," says the man. Fer Chrissakes! Blair couldn't even do that when he was prime minister. Why should he be any better at it now?

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