GPT wants to advance bid for Australand's commercial property unit. QBE debt issue means need for equity raising wanes. Megabank wants your super. Industry titan and NAB chairman, Michael Chaney, was on the hustings yesterday repeating the now obligatory call for productivity growth. But he followed up with this: …Mr Chaney also called for tax breaks for savers to encourage them to take out deposits.He also repeated calls for the government to open up Australia’s $1.3 trillion superannuation sector as a source of funds for the banks.
“Resolving this funding issue would help us avoid constraints on Australia’s economic growth,” he said. It is interesting to speculate about this contention. Would opening “up Australia’s $1.3 trillion superannuation sector” to banks help us avoid growth constraints? Chaney basically means we should channel more savings to the banks so they have more money to lend out. He needs to make this suggestion because the banks are effectively at ‘peak debt’ when it come to borrowing money offshore. In today’s environment this will have one other effect. So growth may be boosted for a time. Retail super funds up as banks cut fees. Banks behaving badly: HSBC settles in money laundering probe. The $1.92 billion deferred prosecution entered into by HSBC with US regulators is one of the most significant financial penalties imposed on a global bank.
On Tuesday in a Federal Court in Brooklyn, HSBC agreed to a legally binding settlement in which it accepted responsibility for systematic sanctions violations and the facilitation of money laundering on an industrial scale. It was also held accountable for threatening national security by providing financing facilities to a Saudi Arabian bank with links to terrorist groups. “HSBC is being held accountable for stunning failures of oversight – and worse – that led the bank to permit narcotics traffickers and others to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through HSBC subsidiaries, and to facilitate hundreds of millions more in transactions with sanctioned countries,” noted the head of the Criminal Division at the Department of Justice, Lanny Breuer.
The expansion of the measure reflects both its strengths and limitations. Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves the Drug War is a Joke | HSBC's record $1.9bn fine preferable to prosecution, US authorities insist | Business. US authorities defended their decision not to prosecute HSBC for accepting the tainted money of rogue states and drug lords on Tuesday, insisting that a $1.9bn fine for a litany of offences was preferable to the "collateral consequences" of taking the bank to court.
Announcing the record fine at a press conference in New York, assistant attorney general Lanny Breuer said that despite HSBC"s "blatant failure" to implement anti-money laundering controls and its wilful flouting of US sanctions, the consequences of a criminal prosecution would have been dire. Had the US authorities decided to press criminal charges, HSBC would almost certainly have lost its banking licence in the US, the future of the institution would have been under threat and the entire banking system would have been destabilised.
The bank processed cash for Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, regarded as the most powerful and deadly drug gang in the world, among others. HSBC and Standard Chartered to pay US over $2bn in charges. HSBC Fine for Money Laundering is Largest Bank Penalty in U.S. History. HSBC Fine Let Bank Avoid These Charges By accepting the settlement, HSBC avoided criminal charges. The bank agreed to deferred prosecution with the Manhattan district attorney's office and the Justice Department. According to The New York Times, officials briefed on the matter said the deferred prosecution agreement requires HSBC to forfeit more than $1.2 billion and to pay about $700 million in fines. According to The Times, the settlement represents a major victory for the government but raises questions about whether some financial institutions are "too big to indict.
" A money-laundering indictment or a guilty plea to money-laundering charges, The Times said, would "essentially be a death sentence" for HSBC. Although HSBC was repeatedly warned by U.S. officials about its relationship with Mexico, from 2000 to 2009, the bank considered Mexico to be a "low risk" for money laundering, a U.S. HSBC to Adopt Stricter Standards In January, HSBC hired Stuart A. Related Articles and News. Obama decided that political capital better spent elsewhere than on battle over Rice. The decision was hers, senior administration officials said.
But Obama, who pledged to defend her vigorously just five weeks ago, did not try to talk one of his most-favored candidates out of it. His decision to accept her withdrawal served as an acknowledgment that even a president fresh from reelection has only a limited amount of political latitude in a still-sharply partisan Washington. Obama has only a few weeks to negotiate a year-end deal with congressional Republicans to avert the “fiscal cliff.” And with two years left to make his mark before lame-duck status begins to set in, he plans to move quickly on immigration reform and perhaps climate-change legislation that could help define his legacy.
A prolonged fight over Rice’s nomination would have interrupted those plans — perhaps for only a few weeks, but perhaps for far longer given the bad blood such fights have stirred up in the past. Republican Sens. Karen Tumulty and Paul Kane contributed to this report. Europe gets a banking union. I didn’t think they could manage it given the timeframes, but against my predictions Europe’s financial leaders have managed to pull together a deal for the beginnings of a banking union with an agreement to let the ECB become the supervisory authority for major European banks.
The statement from the European council can be found here, and a good wrap is provided by OpenEurope: EU finance ministers last night reached a technical agreement on creating a new single financial supervisor at the ECB. The ECB will supervise banks with assets worth more than €30bn or 20% of their state’s GDP – thought to be around 200 out of 6,000 eurozone banks. National supervisors will run the day to day supervision of the other banks, although the ECB can intervene if it sees fit. This decision is the first step with the ultimate aim to allow troubled banks to have access to a supra-European resolution fund along with cross-boarder deposit insurance but all of this is yet to be sorted through. Macro Morning: Focus on the cliff. Ben Bernanke would have looked at the US PPI data last night and been convinced he is doing the right thing. During November producer prices fell 0.8% from -0.2% last and -0.5% expected with the year on year rate now sitting at just 1.5%.
Of course the Fed Chairman is expressly targeting unemployment now and will keep rates low until the rate falls to 6.5% but for mine the real target of his unconventional monetary policy is deflation. Bernanke is a depression scholar and knows what has occurred in Japan for the past 20 years and he knows that weak aggregate demand equals weak pricing power which ultimately can or does lead to deflation. Perhaps the markets know this too because the QE4 strength continued to fade overnight with US markets in the red from early trade following on from European stock markets which were weak from the get go as they caught up to the US reversal the previous day. There is a risk that US equity markets underperform over the final weeks of 2012. The fiscal cliff: On the edge. The Fiscal Cliff: International Implications. Most of the discussion has focused on the domestic repercussions of going off the fiscal cliff (or as my former colleague Chad Stone calls it, the “fiscal slope”).
I think it important to remember that, as the single largest economy, policy in the US has profound implications for economic developments overseas. This is particularly true with the eurozone still in a fragile state, and China growing (relatively) slowly. Jim’s post yesterday tabulated the numerical components of the fiscal cliff. Goldman Sachs has used its own tabulation to estimate the impact on GDP growth over 2013 (SAAR), shown in Figure 1. Figure 1: Effect on real GDP. Source: Goldman Sachs, “US Daily : The Composition of the Fiscal Cliff (Alec Phillips),” October 19, 2012 [not online]. Note that one difference between the BofA and GS calculations involves the size of the Bush tax cuts. Nonetheless, with interest rates at zero, contractionary fiscal policy is likely to have large (negative) effects. Www.imf.org/external/np/pp/eng/2012/070912.pdf.
RBA has reason to fear ‘currency wars’ Karen Maley This past week, the Bank of England’s boss officially confirmed what Australian investors have long suspected: global central banks are now deliberately driving their currencies lower to spur exports and growth. Mervyn King warned there was a risk of “currency wars” erupting next year as central banks vie with each other to drive their currencies lower in the hope of boosting exports. But many Australian investors – especially those with exposure to the manufacturing, tourism and mining sectors – say they are already suffering as a result of the world’s currency wars. They believe the dollar’s strength has a lot to do with huge bond buying programs launched by central banks in the United States, Britain, other European countries and Japan, which have artificially suppressed the value of the US dollar, the pound, the euro and the yen.
In a recent speech, RBA deputy governor Philip Lowe noted that Australia wasn’t the only country faced with this problem. Ben, please give me more $$ AMFAutorité des Marchés Financiers. C'est l'autorité française de régulation des marchés financiers. Son équivalent pourrait être la SEC américaine.Equivalent de la SEC (Security Exchange Commission) américaine. N’a pas plus d’Autorité que sa consœur n’est gage de Sécurité (cf. Madoff) Appel de MargeDemande de reconstitution du compte de marge.Le pognon que tu dois envoyer quand tu es collé sur ta position. Arbitrage Stratégie de trading profitant d'incohérences momentanées entre les prix de plusieurs actifs ou contrats. Exemple: Une action est simultanément cotée sur le London Stock Exchange et sur le New York Stock Exchange.
Back-TestingTest de la validité d'un modèle ayant pour appui des données historiques.Excuse universelle: Je ne comprends pas, le fonds a perdu 5% et pourtant, quand on fait le back testing, il aurait dû en gagner 2% ! Bâle IIProcédures rénovées de calcul des capitaux propres que se doivent de posséder les banques. CDOCollateralized Debt Obligation. Fed move will stymie RBA’s $A control. United States Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke’s move to print money has dashed hopes for a lower Australian dollar. Photo: Reuters Jason Murphy and Jacob Greber The US Federal Reserve’s decision to print money has dashed hopes for a lower Australian dollar and triggered warnings the Reserve Bank of Australia’s ability to lower the currency using interest rates is waning.
In what has been dubbed a deepening global “currency war,” the US Fed announced an increase of its quantitative easing program to $US85 billion a month from $US40 billion by creating money and using it to buy bonds. The stimulus sparked a surge in the Australian dollar to just shy of $US1.06, underscoring perceptions that local policymakers are powerless to contain the rising currency. The RBA has slashed thed official cash rate from 4.25 per cent in May to 3 per cent. “Basically the entire developed world is engaging in a currency war and has been doing this for a number of years. Japon: l’autre « mur budgétaire » AMFAutorité des Marchés Financiers.
C'est l'autorité française de régulation des marchés financiers. Son équivalent pourrait être la SEC américaine.Equivalent de la SEC (Security Exchange Commission) américaine. N’a pas plus d’Autorité que sa consœur n’est gage de Sécurité (cf. Madoff) Appel de MargeDemande de reconstitution du compte de marge.Le pognon que tu dois envoyer quand tu es collé sur ta position. Arbitrage Stratégie de trading profitant d'incohérences momentanées entre les prix de plusieurs actifs ou contrats.
Back-TestingTest de la validité d'un modèle ayant pour appui des données historiques.Excuse universelle: Je ne comprends pas, le fonds a perdu 5% et pourtant, quand on fait le back testing, il aurait dû en gagner 2% ! Bâle IIProcédures rénovées de calcul des capitaux propres que se doivent de posséder les banques. BaseDifférence entre le prix spot (à l'instant T) et le prix futur (T+1).Différence entre le prix spot et le prix futur. CDOCollateralized Debt Obligation. Pessimism reigns: confidence at GFC-lows.
Business confidence has fallen to the lowest level since the global financial crisis, as business conditions remained weak with little sign of a pre-Christmas revival, the National Australia Bank's monthly business survey shows. A strong Australian dollar, fiscal tightening and very weak confidence was expected to weigh on near-term activity and allow for a further Reserve Bank rate cut possibly in May 2013, the November NAB survey said. The monthly business condition index remained at minus 5, while business confidence fell to minus 9 from minus 1 in October. "Pessimism is the word this month, with business confidence the weakest since April 2009. Confidence did not rise in any sector and fell especially hard in manufacturing," NAB said.
Advertisement "Also providing little support for a near-term rebound is the weakness in indicators of future demand. ... "Businesses still appear reluctant to borrow despite a run of rate cuts over the past year. Conditions weaken in mining states. Bernanke walking a tightrope. Labor needs some lessons in chutzpah. Canberraobserved Laura Tingle Politics is a confidence game. That, hopefully, is confidence in the Maria in The Sound of Music sense, rather than the Arthur Daley sense. It sometimes seems you can get away with almost anything in politics with the right amount of chutzpah.
A complete policy reversal can almost sound as if you meant to do it all the time, or as if it is a sign of your great political wisdom that you are big enough to change your mind. If you are John Howard, for example, it means you can say “never ever” about introducing a goods and services tax but be lauded when you change your mind as a pragmatic reformer. If you are Paul Keating, you can point to a line of figures heading slowly south and insist they are actually heading north. Such chutzpah has always been in short supply in the Labor ranks of 2007-12. (Maybe Tony Abbott has sucked all the available chutzpah out of the atmosphere.)
A psychological jolt subsequently went through politics. It’s not a pretty sight for Labor. ++ Treasury to Swan: dump surplus plan. Laura Tingle Political editor Federal Treasury is advising the government to dump its commitment to a budget surplus as a slump in Australia’s nominal growth rate poses a threat to revenue. Treasury’s position reflects the views of many business figures and market economists who in recent months have dropped their support for getting the budget into surplus this year because of concerns that it could weaken the economy. The revelation comes after The Australian Financial Review reported last week that the government was preparing to dump its long-standing commitment to a surplus in 2012-13, and it had changed its rhetoric to emphasise the link between the surplus commitment and continuing growth in the economy. The national accounts released last week showed that while real gross domestic product was growing at a trend rate of about 3.1 per cent, nominal GDP – upon which budget forecasts are based – slowed considerably this year to 1.9 per cent.
‘automatic stabilisers’ Deficits loom for next two years. Surplus drivel. PM dismisses MP’s call to dump surplus. Construction jobs rebound as mining retrenches. How to make macroprudential policy work. IAG says good riddance UK. Www.afr.com/rw/Wires/Stories/2012-12-14/ASXAnnouncements/IAG_01367235.pdf. IAG flags loss of $240m from sale of UK operations. IAG pushes for debate on floods. Police concerned with Apple iOS 6 mapping system.