July, 2018

• 30 July

  Initial coin offerings are getting a bad rap

  Initial coin offerings are a hot topic, but the focus tends to miss the most important innovation. Attention naturally is on the 81 percent that are frauds, but the honest ones raised $7 billion for cryptocurrency initiatives in 2017. Those were predominately for double-block-chain ideas, which is blockchain funding to support a blockchain project. Frauds permeate crypto projects because they’re ...

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• 30 July

  Trump hasn’t fixed the border crisis he created

  The Trump administration claims that it has mostly met a court-ordered deadline to reunite migrant families separated at the border. Even to the extent that’s true, this is a story without happy endings. More than 700 of the nearly 3,000 children originally separated from family members remain in government hands, either because their parents have already been deported or they ...

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• 30 July

  The pound finally has a friend in Mark Carney

  

  Don’t accuse Mark Carney of being a currency manipulator (anymore). True, the Bank of England Governor has something to answer for. He announced an interest-rate cut in August 2016, just as the Brexit vote sent sterling reeling. That worsened the devaluation, and proved he was no friend of the currency. It was complicated. Now, they’re back on speaking terms. The ...

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• 30 July

  Ferrari loses a little of its famous horsepower

  

  Losing Sergio Marchionne is a blow for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV. For Ferrari NV, it’s a calamity. While investors had grown used to the idea that Marchionne would retire as Fiat CEO next year, they thought he’d be leading the sportscar maker until 2021 at least. Instead, Louis Camilleri — the former boss of Philip Morris International Inc — will ...

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• 30 July

  What economists still don’t get about 2008 crisis

  

  Macroeconomics tends to advance — or, at least, to change — one crisis at a time. The Great Depression discredited the idea that economies were basically self-correcting, and the following decades saw the development of Keynesian theory and the use of fiscal stimulus. The stagflation of the 1970s led to the development of real business cycle models, which saw recessions ...

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• 30 July

  Human bankers lose to robots as Nordea sets a new standard

  

  Bloomberg Something interesting happened in Swedish finance last quarter. The only big bank that managed to cut costs also happens to be behind one of the industry’s boldest plans to replace humans with automation. Nordea Bank AB, whose Chief Executive Officer Casper von Koskull says his industry might only have half its current human workforce a decade from now, is ...

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• 30 July

  Credit Suisse moves 50 ‘banking’ jobs to Madrid

  

  Bloomberg Credit Suisse Group AG is moving 50 investment banking jobs to Madrid as part of its Brexit planning, according to two people familiar with the matter. The Swiss lender is relocating bankers at its Global Markets trading division and dealmakers from its advisory unit, the people said, asking not to be identified because the decision is private. The firm ...

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• 30 July

  BOJ steps in to buy unlimited bonds again

  

  Bloomberg The Bank of Japan (BOJ) offered to buy an unlimited amount of bonds for a third time in a week after the benchmark 10-year yield rose to an almost 18-month high ahead of the central bank’s policy decision on Tuesday. The offer, made at 0.1 percent for the five-to-10 year maturities, drew some 1.6 trillion yen ($14.4 billion) of ...

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• 30 July

  BofA to recruit specialist sales staff in US, Europe

  

  Bloomberg Bank of America (BofA) is recruiting to potentially double the size of its specialist sales staff in the US and Europe, according to two people familiar with the efforts. The bank is looking to add four to six positions — which help clients act on the firm’s research ideas — in addition to the six specialist salespeople it already ...

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• 30 July

  Storm of news to hit global economy before August calm

  

  Bloomberg People charged with running or monitoring the world economy are set for a busy week before those in the Northern Hemisphere get to enjoy their summer vacations. Central bankers in the US, Japan, the UK, Brazil and India all meet to set their respective monetary policies at a time when Eric Oynoyan, senior European interest-rate strategist at BNP Paribas ...

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