there's some interesting investment advice in the comment thread too.
If you want a whiz-bang return, check out Matthews International China Hong Kong Fund - MCHFX. Another cool new fund that we've recently bought is Guiness Atkinson Alternative Envergy Fund - GAAEX.
Another cool new fund that we've recently bought is Guiness Atkinson Alternative Envergy Fund - GAAEX.
I am advising central bankers next week on strengthening their preparedness. I will be telling them to abandon any focus on capital adequacy requirements. It's far too late for that to have any effect on the fall out. They should focus instead on reviewing and modernising their bankruptcy laws, enabling transfer of customer accounts and nominee assets from failing banks to healthy banks, providing for rapid auction of failed bank businesses and assets, and other practical measures for limiting loss, contagion and debilitating paralysis in the markets. It is going to be very ugly, but there are steps which if taken now can make it surviveable. I was a central banker and market supervisor during some of the period of deregulation. In retrospect it was a mistake to let Citibank and Goldman Sachs define what a good market or a good regulation might be. But there will be lots of time to learn the lessons of the coming collapse once it is past.
I am advising central bankers next week on strengthening their preparedness. I will be telling them to abandon any focus on capital adequacy requirements. It's far too late for that to have any effect on the fall out. They should focus instead on reviewing and modernising their bankruptcy laws, enabling transfer of customer accounts and nominee assets from failing banks to healthy banks, providing for rapid auction of failed bank businesses and assets, and other practical measures for limiting loss, contagion and debilitating paralysis in the markets.
It is going to be very ugly, but there are steps which if taken now can make it surviveable.
I was a central banker and market supervisor during some of the period of deregulation. In retrospect it was a mistake to let Citibank and Goldman Sachs define what a good market or a good regulation might be. But there will be lots of time to learn the lessons of the coming collapse once it is past.
btw, I never do investments anyway. It's dates you as somebody who emotionally never left the Thatcher era keep to the Fen Causeway
Very impressive.
Her response on that Kos Diary in respect of a query re the Reserve Currency of the future...
is very difficult to envision today. One thing I'm keeping my eye on is the nascent Khaleeji - the currency which will be created sometime after 2010 from Gulf Cooperation Council currency union. Although the politics are making it really complex, the Khaleeji will effectively be oil-backed with huge cash reserves of over $25 trillion by then. In our war against Islam, we may have to concede defeat when they own us and we work for them as our corporate masters.
Although the politics are making it really complex, the Khaleeji will effectively be oil-backed with huge cash reserves of over $25 trillion by then.
In our war against Islam, we may have to concede defeat when they own us and we work for them as our corporate masters.
prompted my (first) Kos response
You are presuming of course that either Central Banks or clearing banks are necessary as credit intermediaries. They are not. The requirement is for a Clearing Union, as envisaged by Keynes, and also a "Value Unit" with global validity for which the obvious candidate is a fixed unit of energy - a "Carbon Dollar" consisting of one dollar's worth of energy at the launch date. The function of Banks as credit intermediaries is to guarantee the credit of the borrower, and the bank backs this guarantee with an amount of capital set by the BIS. The actual cost of credit is simply the operating costs of the bank, and the default costs. This cost has nothing whatever to do with the actual "price" of credit indicated by central bank interest rates, As we are now seeing, the price at which they may deal with the Central Bank is secondary to banks' judgement as to the likelihood of default of their new loans. Central Banks - as opposed to monetary authorities -have never been necessary, and are now obsolete. The requirement is for a mutual guarantee of (interest free) bilateral trade credit, backed by a mutually owned default fund. In this model, banks are service providers, not credit intermediaries. The necessary "Value Units" of energy - fungible internationally - and "land rental units" fungible nationally could come about from simple new investment mechanisms (REIT's and ETF's are embryonic examples), whereby return on investment is not in fiat money, but in fungible units of use value or "production". Fiat "deficit-based" money=credit is neither sustainable nor - in a dis-intermediated "Napsterised" world - necessary. While you correctly state that the Gulf nations have it in their power to create the necessary currency - a "deficit-based" and energy backed Euro clone is not it.
They are not.
The requirement is for a Clearing Union, as envisaged by Keynes, and also a "Value Unit" with global validity for which the obvious candidate is a fixed unit of energy - a "Carbon Dollar" consisting of one dollar's worth of energy at the launch date.
The function of Banks as credit intermediaries is to guarantee the credit of the borrower, and the bank backs this guarantee with an amount of capital set by the BIS.
The actual cost of credit is simply the operating costs of the bank, and the default costs. This cost has nothing whatever to do with the actual "price" of credit indicated by central bank interest rates,
As we are now seeing, the price at which they may deal with the Central Bank is secondary to banks' judgement as to the likelihood of default of their new loans.
Central Banks - as opposed to monetary authorities -have never been necessary, and are now obsolete. The requirement is for a mutual guarantee of (interest free) bilateral trade credit, backed by a mutually owned default fund. In this model, banks are service providers, not credit intermediaries.
The necessary "Value Units" of energy - fungible internationally - and "land rental units" fungible nationally could come about from simple new investment mechanisms (REIT's and ETF's are embryonic examples), whereby return on investment is not in fiat money, but in fungible units of use value or "production".
Fiat "deficit-based" money=credit is neither sustainable nor - in a dis-intermediated "Napsterised" world - necessary.
While you correctly state that the Gulf nations have it in their power to create the necessary currency - a "deficit-based" and energy backed Euro clone is not it.
In retrospect it was a mistake to let Citibank and Goldman Sachs define what a good market or a good regulation might be.
Well - who'd have thought, etc? If you hand the hen house over to the foxes, it's not as if they're golng to eat everything and leave a bloody mess.
Props to LY for posting about this. I miss her posts here - always worth reading.
LY:
I will be telling them to abandon any focus on capital adequacy requirements. It's far too late for that to have any effect on the fall out. They should focus instead on reviewing and modernising their bankruptcy laws, enabling transfer of customer accounts and nominee assets from failing banks to healthy banks, providing for rapid auction of failed bank businesses and assets, and other practical measures for limiting loss, contagion and debilitating paralysis in the markets.
Now that is cheerful, isn't it?
