Here’s a scenario. You buy a pre-construction apartment and start paying the mortgage before it’s complete. The developer halts the project, has defaulted on its debt and it looks like the property may never get built. You hear of buyers elsewhere who have stopped making their loan payments; the government has stepped in to ensure the builders have money and ...

  Currency values fluctuate all the time, but some changes leave a lasting impression on the banking industry. In the Bretton Woods-era of fixed exchange rates, the 1967 devaluation of the British pound was one such seminal event. It made demand for dollars explode in Asia. Out of that craze, Dick van Oenen, an enterprising Dutch currency trader at Bank ...

  Thursday was expected to bring the spotlight to Europe, and what could be a historically consequential meeting on monetary policy by the European Central Bank (ECB). It’s going to raise rates. But there is now some question over how much — 25 or 50 basis points? And the constraints have never looked tighter. We all know that the world ...