Did Yellen Just Greenlight Negative Interest Rates?
Did Yellen Just Greenlight Negative Interest Rates? Federal Reserve chairwoman Janet Yellen may have just opened the door to negative interest rates in the US. Otherwise known as NIRP (or ZIRP), negative rates are one of the most dangerous monetary…
VTech moves to limit liability on breaches of data of children playing with its toys
A toy company says it’s not responsible for future data breaches, just months after 6.3 million children’s profiles on its websites were hacked. VTech, a Hong Kong-based company that makes e-learning toys, is under fire from privacy experts and parents…
Sanders and Trump breakthrough in ‘United States of Anger’
Billionaire businessman Donald Trump and socialist Senator Bernie Sanders won on Tuesday the Republican and Democratic contests respectively in New Hampshire, the first primaries of the 2016 election season. In a huge turnout in the Granite state, both candidates enjoyed…
Machines Are Starting To Become Self-Aware
“Open the pod bay doors please, Hal.” “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.” So said the sentient computer HAL at the controls of the Discovery One spacecraft to astronaut Dave Bowman in the 1968 Stanley Kubrick classic,…
Amcon Versus the Nigerian Entrepreneur [opinion]
An independent body should be empaneled urgently to take a second look at the claims filed to AMCON as the basis for drawing taxpayers’ money five years ago. This should not take eternity. The true status of the debts claimed…
Deutsche Bank Buys Its Bonds As Questions Mount Over Bank’s Future
As the price on Deutsche Bank credit default SWAPs soared, dramatically raising the cost of insurance backing the bank’s debt, the private company announced it was re-purchasing its own bonds, a move that re-assured markets at least for now. But…
Goldman Looks At European Systemic Risk
Systemic risk that was recently dormant is stirring, noted an economics research piece from Goldman Sachs. As credit spreads spike and pressure on bank equities has been building for weeks, it all just might be signaling a “reactivation of systemic…
Opinion: Moscow and the Scarecrow of World War III
The Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was quoted as saying that ground intervention in Syria could result in a third world war at the Munich conference. Despite the seriousness of this statement, no one paid any attention to him because…
UBS Hedge Fund Leverage Drops to 2009 Lows
“ We see six signs of capitulation flows data,” begins UBS’s weekly European Flow Watch research note sent to clients yesterday. According to the bank’s analysts, the six signs of capitulation in European equity markets in European equity markets are:…
Negative interest rates, explained
Negative interest rates might sound boring but they’re a hot topic among central bankers and market watchers right now. Below-zero rates started in 2009 when Sweden’s Riksbank became the first central bank in the world to push interest rates into…