The luxurious lifestyle of those at the top of the world of finance inspires awe, disgust, and ambition. With the mind boggling salaries of the hedge fund traders in the millions and even hundreds of millions of dollars, it’s no wonder people are growing curious about how they made their money.
Robert Peston, the BBC’s Business Editor, talks with investment bankers, hedge fund managers, and top managers from private equity firms on how the super rich have made their money. It offers an eye opening look into how the big earners operate, and some of the potential consequences of their greed driven pursuit of more and more money and success.
From Bloomberg Nov 4, 2011:
From BBC March 4, 2003:
He might be rich, but let’s face it: he is one manipulative character. |
Well it would appear that all the talk of the European Union and the IMF standing at the ready did not calm the markets when it was being discussed over the past month. It was hoped that the markets would be calmed if they knew that Greece had support from its neighbors.
That was Plan A, now it is time for Plan B, or C, D, E…
The Greek government’s cost of borrowing has hit a new high as talks on a joint eurozone and International Monetary Fund (IMF) rescue plan begin.
The interest rate on 10-year government bonds hit 8.3% – the highest since the euro was introduced.
Rates rose as it became clear that talks over the aid package may not be finished until days before a multi-billion-euro loan is due for repayment.
Investors are becoming more convinced that Greece will need to be rescued.
Greece’s finance ministry said the talks with the European Commission and the IMF would take about two weeks, with a joint text issued on about 15 May. […] (BBC)
It would appear that Greece is about to hit the button
Wednesday, April 21, 2010 1:27:13 PM
Greece Fin Min: Will make decision on whether or not to trigger the aid mechanism soon – Notes that the IMF will have discussions over the competitiveness of the country. No further austerity measures this year are likely.
A team of British amateurs successfully launched—and recovered—a spacecraft made of nothing but paper and straw. The paper plane, which had a 3-foot wingspan, was sent 17 miles into the atmosphere using a helium balloon, the BBC reports. It captured images from space with a miniature camera as it glided back to Earth, landing almost completely undamaged just 25 miles from the launch site.Team members say the only point of the exercise, which ended up costing them $12,000, was to see if they could do it. “We wanted a daft project but we were amazed by how successful it was. We are absolutely delighted,” said one of the amateur space explorers. “I never thought we would find the plane at all. It could have ended up anywhere and I thought it would be smashed to pieces.” The operation is the latest in a recent string of impressive space endeavors involving relatively inexpensive equipment from balloons to an iPhone.
It seems that bank stress tests are catching on. In the wake of the US tests, whose results were published in May 2009, and the less exacting European ones, whose results came out on July 23, India is poised to embark on stress tests too. However the Indian bank tests are likely to be more opaque than the recent European ones – and their results will have to be taken with a bigger pinch of salt, according to a recent guest blog post in FT Alphaville.
On July 27 the Indian Reserve Bank confirmed its intention to carry out stress tests on Indian state-owned and privately-owned banks in the hope of providing reassurance about the resilience of the country’s banking system. On the same day the IRB raised interest rates more sharply than expected – to 4.5%-5.75% – for the fourth time in a year, largely in response to higher inflation and a potentially overheating economy (GDP growth is expected to be 8.5%-8.6% this year and next).
Incidentally, as Stephanie Flanders pointed out in a recent BBC blog post, Indians no longer see their nation’s closed financial system as a source of weakness. It is increasingly preferring to cut itself off from internatonal markets.
RBI governor Duvvuri Subbarao admitted that India would be “learning on the job” as it seeks to review of capital, liquidity and leverage standards of the nation’s banks, the majority of which remain state-owned.
India’s banks emerged remarkably unscathed from the global financial crisis of 2008-09 despite suffering a liquidity squeeze. Only ICICI, India’s largest privately-owned bank, needed explicit liquidity support during the mother of all crises.
However, in a that FT Alphaville post mentioned above, Hemindra Hazari, head of research at Hyderabad-headquartered Karvy Stock Broking warned that the government’s proposed tests may end up being more spin than substance.
He painted a disturbing picture of the state of Indian banking, adding that New Delhi has good reason to keep both the results and the methodology of the tests under wraps.
According to Hazari, India’s banks have widely used accounting jiggery-pokery to disguise their true bad debt position and suggestedthat they are in a far worse state than they are likely to let on to the stress testers.
Hazari said that while India’s banks may have the trappings of strength – having avoided the “cancers of subprime lending and investments in dodgy sovereign paper” – hidden dangers lurk beneath the surface.
In particular, he noted that the quality of their asset bases is “extremely mixed” and that their non-performing assets surged by 23% in the fiscal year 2009 and by 28% in the subsequent year.
Hazari does not regard non-performing assets as a reliable gauge of asset quality. This is because from 2009-10, the RBI allowed Indian banks “to classify dubious assets as restructured standard loans which are not classified as non-performing assets and which require minimal additional provisioning.”
Hazari added:
It is this nebulous category of assets, which bankers insist are of sound quality but are having “temporary” cashflow problems that have suddenly surfaced and rest innocuously in the notes to accounts on bank balance sheets. (more…)
How to add an hour to your day (Harvard Business Review)
The Bucket List lie (Jonathan Fields)
Why all happiness and success fades away (Peter Shallard)
Why what you believe gets you nowhere (Peter Shallard)
How to really shake things up (James Altucher)
There are real-life advantages to being a strategic deceiver (New York Times)
Don’t let email run your life (CNN)
Great idea – change your smoke alarm batteries with daylight savings time (Lifehacker)
Yet another reason to get off your duff and exercise (BBC)
We make risk/reward decisions every day, all day long (Tech Crunch)
Tips from Thomas Edison (Open)
It’s looks like it is a really good thing I feel happy while trading (Forbes)
Natural approaches to combating the winter blues (Dr. John Briffa)
