Little noticed in the last Greek sovereign debt restructuring was the fact that the new bonds were constituted under English law. Why was this, when the bonds are a liability of the Greek state and are denominated in euros? There’s a simple answer. It’s to make it more difficult for Greece to redominate the debt [...]
Compelling evidence: Sarkozy got €50m campaign financing from Gaddafi
Video published on Apr 28, 2012 by AlJazeeraEnglish. www.aljazeera.com Text published on Apr 28, 2012 by Daily Mail, www.dailymail.co.uk Nicolas Sarkozy’s dwindling hopes of being re-elected to the French presidency were last night rocked by new evidence that Colonel Gaddafi donated £42 million to the campaign that brought him to power. French law bans candidates [...]
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Brits Benefit From Cheaper European Holidays
British travellers are set to benefit from cheaper European holidays this year as the value of the pound (GBP) strengthens over European currencies. Both Euro and non-Euro currencies have been weakened over the past year, putting the British currency at a distinct advantage. This means that trips abroad are now more affordable, with the Latvian [...]
How to save ourselves from the new Middle Ages: stop building bird-choppers and start fracking
So it turns out that fracking for shale gas really is more effective at making the earth move than all the onanism of the enviros over windmills. We should thus get on with drilling and stop building the bird-choppers. In a shocking surprise anyone attuned to the way government actually works, this is in fact [...]
Squatters could gain from millionaires’ attempts to beat Stamp Duty as house prices fall
Squatters could be surprise beneficiaries of wealthy homebuyers’ attempts to avoid new higher rates of stamp duty, solicitors claim, while estate agents predict that a “trickle-down effect” could cause house prices to cease rising in London and follow falls already seen in the rest of the country. Chancellor George Osborne raised stamp duty from 5pc [...]
How can we break up the eurozone? Some of the ideas from the Wolfson Prize
Together with Policy Exchange, I’ve been helping to sift entries for the Wolfson Prize and collate feedback from our illustrious and hard-working judging panel. The Wolfson Prize asked entrants: “If member states leave the Economic and Monetary Union, what is the best way for the economic process to be managed to provide the soundest foundation [...]
Budget 2012: Winners and losers among pensioners from cutting complexity
There are 10.3m people aged over 65 in Britain, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), so changes to the tax and benefits treatment of pensioners announced in Budget 2012 will affect nearly one in six of the population. But HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) records show that fewer than half of them – [...]
And the losers from Greek CDS contracts are… German
Clinging to my naive faith in the integrity of contracts, I assume that ISDA will soon trigger the credit default swaps on Greek debt. This will happen once Athens activates its retroactive law to coerce bondholders (the Collective Action Clauses). If that does not do the job, Greece’s Swiss franc bonds most likely will, since [...]
There could still be a surprise sting in the tail for Obama from falling US unemployment
The news this week that America now has a lower unemployment rate than Britain did not make headlines here. Having moved to New York in 2010, an early and slightly bruising discovery was that Blighty is not the country making the loudest and most persistent blip on America’s economic radar. This week’s visit to Washington of [...]