Let’s begin with a familiar scene. It’s a Thursday afternoon and you’re on hold to your bank, listening to a tinny loop of elevator jazz while scrolling through an inbox full of emails marked “URGENT”. When the relationship manager finally answers, there’s a brief but palpable moment of mutual disappointment, followed by an exchange of […]
Continue readingCategory Archives: Banking
154. Failing to plan, or planning to fail in FX?
Plan for the worst? There’s no shortage of advice or opinion on currency markets but, the truth is, most of it is unhelpful, unactionable, and usually wrong. Financial executives needn’t be plugged into second-by-second exchange rate movements, rather they should be on top of their company’s ongoing level of risk. Businesses that don’t have a […]
Continue reading
130. What is QE2 and do we really have to pay it back?
In our related article, “What is QE (1) and what happened in 2008?” we looked at what we now refer to as QE1. Here we are going to look at QE2 and identify how it is very different to QE1. In the 2019 election the Conservatives set aside £130Bn each year to fund the so […]
Continue reading
129. Is this a Good Way to run our Economy?
In our earlier article “Can Banks really Create Money When they Want?” we looked at how we are part of a system where privatised bodies – i.e. the banks – are the main ones creating the money for our society. And we also came to the conclusion that money is all illusory. We learnt that […]
Continue reading
128. Are there any Checks and Balances on the ability of Banks to Create Money?
Spoiler Alert: The short answer is: “No, not really. But it does depend largely on the confidence of bankers.” The traditional view of a banker is that of someone who takes money off a person who wants to save (a depositor). But banks soon realised that they did not need to keep all the depositor’s […]
Continue reading
127. Can Banks really Create Money When they Want?
Why not read our earlier article What was QE (1) and what happened in 2008? which sets the scene nicely for this post. An equally relevant and related question is this: Is money illusory? We all use money every day in some form or […]
Continue reading
126. What was QE (1) and what happened in 2008?
To understand what went on in 2008 it is useful to have some background about the UK financial system. In 1850, to avoid having a run on the bank (à la Northern Rock in 2008) banks tended to maintain a self-imposed 60% of eligible liabilities as liquid assets – this is called the liquidity reserve […]
Continue reading