The Malthusian bull market carries on February 10, 2011 IN 1980, two academics, Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich, agreed a now famous wager. Ehrlich chose five commodity metals and bet that over the next 10 years, they would get more expensive. Ultimately, Simon won, and all five metals – copper, chromium, nickel, tin and tungsten – got progressively less expensive all the way up [...]
What the other papers say this morning February 9, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES TPG LOSES ANOTHER SENIOR ASIA EXECUTIVE Mary Ma, a Chinese executive at TPG Capital, is leaving to start a fund, joining other mainland executives from western buy-out firms who will start out on their own. Ma, former chief financial officer of Lenovo, joined TPG’s Asia team as managing director and a partner in [...]
Bernanke says US job growth too low February 9, 2011 US unemployment remains too high for comfort despite the economy showing signs of strengthening recovery, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke has said. In testimony to the US House of Representatives’ Budget Committee that largely echoed a speech he delivered last week, Bernanke also warned about the dangers of unsustainable budget deficits. But his commitment to [...]
Quantitative easing must stop, say top Fed officials February 8, 2011 AMERICA’S monetary stimulus should be withdrawn at the “earliest sign” of core inflation pressures taking hold, Richard Fisher of the Federal Reserve said last night. And no extension of quantitative easing (QE2) is warranted, he said. It was “hard to envision a scenario where I would not formally dissent against another tranche of monetary accommodation,” [...]
LCH Clearnet to clear real-time freight platform February 7, 2011 CLEARING platform LCH Clearnet is to clear all trades on freight and commodity derivatives on trading venue ClearTrade Exchange. Singapore-based Cleartrade is the first regulated venue for over-the-counter cleared shipping and soft commodities derivatives. For the first time, screen trades will be fed automatically in real time from processing to clearing. The process will reduce [...]
Rising commodity prices have further to go February 6, 2011 FOR two weeks our headlines and television sets have been dominated by Egypt. Prior to the scenes in Tahrir Square, all eyes were on Tunisia; contagion is spreading across the Middle East. So what role did rising food costs play in pushing the region to the brink? And how can citizens be expected to understand [...]
Forget gold, here’s the copper rush February 6, 2011 CRACK open your piggy bank and empty your penny jar. Do it now and do it fast. Forget about the gold rush; it is all about the copper rush now. The price of the metal is going through the roof, hitting $10,000 a tonne. This sort of price action means the two pence piece in [...]
Mubarak claims he can’t leave as protesters rage February 3, 2011 EGYPTIAN President Hosni Mubarak declared yesterday that he was “fed-up” with public service but couldn’t leave his post immediately for fear of sparking further violence, as the official death toll on the nation’s streets rose into double figures. Mubarak told ABC News in an interview that “after 62 years in public service, I have had [...]
US PUBLIC DEBT CONCERNS FED’S BERNANKE February 3, 2011 AMERICA’S “extraordinarily wide” government deficit must be tackled, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke warned last night. Referring to “the daunting fiscal challenges” the US faces, Bernanke said the public finances were “unsustainable” and would remain so unless “Congress enacts significant changes in fiscal programmes.” The government’s annual deficit has risen to more than nine per [...]
FREW STEPS UP FOR THE 30 PER CENT CLUB CAUSE February 3, 2011 GOOD news – of a kind. The 30% Club has finally found a female chairman to join its ranks. For those not au fait with the club’s goings-on, it was founded to pursue the “aspiration” of getting boards at the UK’s top companies to be at least 30 per cent female by 2015. While the [...]