Wednesday 11 March 2009

Alice's bubble wrap

What does a trillion dollars look like?

Click to find out...

Bank overwhelmed in scramble for 'new money'

So it begins....

The Bank of England's radical action to inject billions into the economy kicked quickly into top gear today as financial groups clamoured to get their hands on its newly created money.

As the Bank's operation to pump £75 billion into markets got underway, it received bids worth more than £10.5 billion for an initial £2 billion of the freshly 'printed' money. With bids worth more than five times the value of the Bank's first gilt-buying auction under its quantitative easing strategy, the results suggested that the drastic action to breathe life into the economy had got off to a flying start.


Regulatory reports show 5 biggest banks face huge loss risk

Five of America's largest banks, most of which have received $145 billion in taxpayer bailout dollars, still face potentially catastrophic losses from exotic investments if economic conditions substantially worsen, their latest financial reports show.

45 percent of world's wealth destroyed

Private equity company Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman said on Tuesday that up to 45 percent of the world's wealth has been destroyed by the global credit crisis.

US companies pull out of retirement contributions

A wave of US companies are suspending payments to their staff 401(k) retirement plans in a bid to cut costs amid the economic downturn.

Libor’s Creep Shows Credit Markets at Risk of Seizure

Moral hazard and AIG

Norway pension fund loses 71.5 bln euros

Norway's state pension fund, one of the world's biggest investors, lost 71.5 billion euros last year on its portfolio, wiping out nearly a decade of returns, the central bank said on Wednesday.

Brazil dollar outflows reach $676 mln to March 6

Fed’s Rate Policy Didn’t Cause Housing Bubble, Greenspan Says

Yeah, right.

4 comments:

AntiCitizenOne said...

> Fed’s Rate Policy Didn’t Cause Housing Bubble, Greenspan Says

True, but your policy on treatment of reserves did.

Anonymous said...

It is worth noting that while the QE facility was over-subscribed, only banks offered gilts - there was no interest from institutional investors.

Whether or not the scheme to "breathe life into the economy" got off to a flying start or not remains to be seen. We need to establish if the money paid for these gilts is used to finance more lending or to pay down debt. I suspect the latter.

Electro-Kevin said...

How can '45% of the world's wealth' be destroyed ?

If it's real wealth then - short of something like an asteroid strike - surely it can only have been redistributed ?

Electro-Kevin said...

A Trillion Dollars was interesting.

I wonder what the £75bn looks like compared to the £1.5tn added to national debt because of bank bailouts.