Viva la Fiesta, Viva la Noche, Viva los “Cental Bankers”

Yes, another line from that song I cannot get out of my head - "Loca People". But I replaced "los DJs" with "los central bankers". It seemed appropriate as they are the ones keeping the beat and making this party lively. If it wasn't for DJ Benny B we would have the...

Vote For Pedro and See Me Dance

Last year we kicked off the Institutional Investor Fixed Income voting campaign with our "Vote for Pedro" commentary (attached at the end). For those that never saw the movie "Napoleon Dynamite", please read the original commentary first to better understand our...

“Black Swan Down”- Nice Shot Janet

A few days back, as the spoo was toying with 1350, we wrote a commentary entitled "Shhh!!! Don't tell anyone, Spanish banks have problems". It was a tongue-in-cheek title that attempted to poke fun at all the doom mongers running around stating the obvious - “Spain is...

Shhh!!! Don’t Tell Anyone, Spanish Banks Have Problems

Any investment professional who does not know that Spanish banks are having a lot of trouble should be fired immediately. This is NOT news - everyone worth their salt is painfully aware that the entire peripheral European banking system is technically insolvent....

A Panicosion ECB?

On April 30th a new actor will likely arrive on the scene in Frankfurt to spice up the long running surreal horror show that is the ECB. His name is Panicos Demetriades, a Greek Cypriot professor from the University of Leicester with close ties to the only communist...

That’s as Good as Money Sir, those are IOUs

There are some important life lessons from the movie “Dumb and Dumber”. First and foremost, when you give people (or countries) easy access to funds that they can never pay back, things usually end badly. In the case of “Dumb and Dumber”, a suitcase full of cash...

The Case of the Missing “Securities Purchases”

In the minutes from the January FOMC meeting, the section on "Committee Policy Action", which usually contains most of the meat on the debate, had the following line - "A few members observed that, in their judgment, current and prospective economic conditions —...

Johnny, La Gente Esta Muy Loca

As one watches fires burn in front of the Barcelona Bolsa, rioters encircle buses in central Madrid and angry mobs attack public sector employees on their way to work in Valencia, it becomes difficult to process the true hardship being felt by the Spanish and the rest...

The Ugly Truth – Northern Europeans Have Worked For Naught

While writing at Jefferies over the past few years, I have rarely put forward a bullish case for European investments - bonds or stocks. I recall in the summer of 2011, as sentiment soured quickly in Italy and Spain, I argued vehemently that the Europeans would not...