PPCC: Pisitófilos Creditófagos. Verano 2024

[tomasjos]

https://www.ft.com/


br>Agrandar

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/07/election-in-britain.html#comments
July 05, 2024

Election In Britain

The Tories have lost the election in Britain.

Labour, under Keir Stamer, did not win the election. It received less votes than it had received under Jeremy Corbyn in 2017 and 2019.
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The turnout was low. The overwhelming voter sentiment was 'anything but Tory'. There was no enthusiasms for Labour and Stamer's program.

Labour, under Corbyn, had been a real worker party with socialist tendencies.

The deep state, with the help of the Israeli embassy, had launched a media campaign against Labour alleging that it was hiding anti-semitic tendencies. Corbyn made the huge mistake of not fighting back against it. In the end he was kicked out despite Labour's healthy election results.

Jeremy Corby, no longer in Labour, has been reelected. So have been five MPs who campaigned on a pro-Gaza position.

Stamer is a controversial figure. He seems to have been placed in his position by the deep state. His previous position was the Chief of the Crown Prosecution Service. He had a major role in indicting and incarcerating Julian Assange.

After being installed he has moved Labour to the right. It is now occupying a pro-capitalism center-right position:

Washington Post 4 julio 24

    “What Keir has done is taken all the left out of the Labour Party,” billionaire businessman John Caudwell, previously a big Tory donor, told the BBC. “He’s come out with a brilliant set of values and principles and ways of growing Britain in complete alignment with my views as a commercial capitalist.”

    The Labour Party highlighted his endorsement.

Stamer will hurt the British public more than the Tory did under Sunak.

There will soon be an uproar against him.

I do note expect him to survive for long.

Posted by b on July 5, 2024 at 13:16 UTC | Permalink

Vamos, que es un Macron a la británica. Se hundirá y luego llegará Farage, y Europa acabará siendo una distopía fascista. Esto cada día pinta peor.

[sudden and sharp]

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.expansion.com/economia/2024/07/06/66884046e5fdea3f028b459e.html

https://www.expansion.com/economia/2024/07/06/66884239e5fdeacc768b45b6.html

https://www.expansion.com/economia/2024/07/06/6688411e468aebe1688b457a.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.pressreader.com/spain/expansion-nacional-sabado/20240706/page/2/textview

Starmer debe acabar con el caos pos-Brexit

https://www.expansion.com/economia/politica/2024/07/05/668793d3468aeb68168b4594.html

https://www.pressreader.com/spain/expansion-nacional-sabado/20240706/page/28/textview

Starmer promete rehacer el país y confía Economía a una 'ex' del Banco de Inglaterra

https://www.expansion.com/economia/politica/2024/07/05/66885cb6e5fdea8f278b45a7.html

https://www.pressreader.com/spain/expansion-nacional-sabado/20240706/page/29/textview

Las claves de la jornada electoral

Starmer arma un equipo compacto para el que recupera a Ed Miliband

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.expansion.com/mercados/2024/07/05/66886703468aeb160f8b4583.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.europapress.es/eseuropa/noticia-bce-arce-bce-dice-politica-monetaria-mas-dura-quedado-atras-continuara-desinflacion-erratica-20240705120424.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.expansion.com/economia/2024/07/05/6687bdc4e5fdea7d138b458d.html

https://www.pressreader.com/spain/expansion-nacional-sabado/20240706/page/27/textview

Posibilidades de pacto en la jornada

El paro en EEUU subió una décima, hasta el 4,1%, en junio

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.expansion.com/expansion-empleo/desarrollo-de-carrera/2024/07/05/6687f42ae5fdea31778b459f.html

Saludos.

[sudden and sharp]

‘Hedge funds’ pesimistas como los pilotados por Ray Dalio y Michael Burry se quedan sin blanca apostando por el colapso
https://cincodias.elpais.com/mercados-financieros/2024-07-07/hedge-funds-pesimistas-como-los-pilotados-por-ray-dalio-y-michael-burry-se-quedan-sin-blanca-apostando-por-el-colapso.html
La sucesión de máximos del S&P 500 en los últimos meses castiga a los inversores agoreros de todo el mundo y fuerza severas pérdidas. La resistencia de la economía estadounidense a la recesión y el auge de la IA rompen las apuestas en corto

[BENDITALIQUIDEZ]

‘Hedge funds’ pesimistas como los pilotados por Ray Dalio y Michael Burry se quedan sin blanca apostando por el colapso
https://cincodias.elpais.com/mercados-financieros/2024-07-07/hedge-funds-pesimistas-como-los-pilotados-por-ray-dalio-y-michael-burry-se-quedan-sin-blanca-apostando-por-el-colapso.html
La sucesión de máximos del S&P 500 en los últimos meses castiga a los inversores agoreros de todo el mundo y fuerza severas pérdidas. La resistencia de la economía estadounidense a la recesión y el auge de la IA rompen las apuestas en corto

Sí, sí, la "resistencia" y la "IA", no tienen nada que ver los artificios contables y los buybacks usando la tesorería de la empresa para que cobre una y otra vez el bonus el directivo y los fanáticos de la marca compren los productos de la marca con el dinero que sacan cuando suben las acciones (me compro el nuevo iphone con el dinero que ya le saco a las acciones de apple que tengo...)

Desgraciadamente, los buybacks, además de subir las acciones, te dan una línea de visión directa a la contabilidad real, vía efectivo en tesorería.

Cuántas de las 7 grandes tienen más efectivo en tesorería que en el trimestre anterior vs. nasdaq100:



Sube nasdaq100 y sube tesorería---> viento en popa.
Sube nasdaq100 y baja tesorería---> el tren avanza a base de quemar vagones.
Baja nasdaq100 y sube tesorería---> los directivos ordenan no subir las acciones más (porque acaban de cumplir la condición para cobrar el bonus o porque se acerca un hostión y no quieren tener a la empresa pelada de efectivo).
Baja nasdaq100 y baja tesorería---> El círculo virtuoso se transforma en círculo desastroso.

Esto lo saben los cortistas internacionales y lo sabe el brazo financiero armado de las 7 magníficas, es una guerra que también se aproxima a sus batallas decisivas, obviamente, el destino final de toda empresa es la quiebra y la correlación entre el negocio de estas siete es enorme.

Os pongo en relación "la cosa" con el balance de los bancos centrales para que juzguéis quién está jugando con fuego, salvo que pensemos que los "magnificent seven" (sus directivos) respetan más el ortograma capitalista que los bancos centrales:

[senslev]

Cuestión de tiempo, 18 meses para 2026.



https://futurocienciaficcionymatrix.blogspot.com/2024/07/tomando-el-pulso-los-mercados.html

[Derby]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/06/upshot/manhattan-real-estate-cash.html

In Manhattan Real Estate, Cash Is Everything

All-cash purchases shot up to 64 percent of home sales in the borough. Here’s who’s buying.



Across the country, buying a home in cash is increasingly common. In Manhattan, it’s become the standard.

In April, buyers paid entirely in cash for 64 percent of the homes sold in Manhattan, according to Marketproof, a provider of New York City real estate data. In contrast, cash buyers accounted for 39 percent of April sales in large U.S. metro areas, according to ATTOM, which provides national real estate data. (Manhattan was a similar outlier even within New York City.) The gap between Manhattan and the rest of the country has grown since 2022, when interest rates first spiked, making cash a more attractive option for those who have plenty of it.

In New York, “cash buyer” might bring to mind an oligarch who parks millions in a palatial apartment that sits empty most of the year. But a New York Times analysis of recent sales paints a far more expansive portrait.

Over two days in February, 52 of the 76 closings were in cash. Interviews with 28 buyers on those days and some of their agents, as well as a review of public records, revealed that the people paying cash were mostly American and often New Yorkers. They worked in health care, tech, fashion and the arts. Their ages spanned from the late 20s to the 80s. They got the cash by selling stock or a previous home, or from their parents, or from years of saving. The places they bought touched every corner of Manhattan, from the city’s most exclusive condos to its most affordable co-ops.



Notably, the highest rate of growth in cash purchases from 2021 to 2023 was among apartments under $3 million. For most Americans, spending even $1 million for an apartment may sound like an eye-popping sum, but the median sales price in the borough was $1.1 million in April, according to StreetEasy. Most of the apartments sold on Feb. 13-14 were listed for well under $1 million — the cheapest cash closing was a $250,000 studio.



The cash buyers necessarily had one thing in common: access to a lot of money. It’s a capacity that escapes most Americans, and even most New Yorkers, who find themselves priced out even more than usual with interest rates around 7 percent. While sales are down overall, prices have largely held steady because there are few apartments available to buy. As cash buyers extend their reach into the bottom of Manhattan’s market, they create another barrier for buyers who depend on mortgages. For many Americans, homeownership is the gateway to building wealth, and the overwhelming majority of first-time buyers use mortgages.

“You have a lot of power when you’re all cash,” said Bess Freedman, the chief executive of Brown Harris Stevens. “People are wielding that now.”

The Inheritors

Family money plays an outsize role in Manhattan real estate, and many of the buyers interviewed for this article relied, one way or another, on funds passed down from the previous generation. Americans aged 60 to 78 hold half of the nation’s wealth, and will pass on $16 trillion of it over the next decade to their children, in what has been coined the “great wealth transfer.”

“The baby boomers, some are passing on,” said Bruce Wayne Solomon, an associate broker with Douglas Elliman. Their estates are now in part “fueling the real estate market.”

Christen Genga, 50, a district manager at Forever 21, had never felt in a position to become a homeowner, with a modest income and graduate student loan debt. But then her mother died after a brief illness last summer, leaving her grieving, but with enough of an inheritance to consider buying.

She sank much of that money into a two-bedroom in Washington Heights for $369,000, paying cash in part to simplify the income-restricted co-op’s onerous approval process. Ms. Genga, who is divorced and has a 7-year-old son, sees an irony in the fact that without the windfall that accompanied the loss of her mother, she would not have had enough money to buy even in a building intended for people with modest incomes. “It almost has to be an inheritance,” she said. “It feels very weird.”

[Derby]

https://www.ft.com/content/b49c5b74-6ee5-4dc9-96d7-1808c12a3062

Europe needs a bolder plan for capital markets

From the green transition to the digital transformation, the requirement is enormous


The European Commission has estimated that the transition away from fossil fuels requires an additional €620bn each year to 2030 © Martin Meissner/AP

How will Europe fund the huge sums needed to invest in energy transition, digital infrastructure and defence? Despite a vast €33tn pool of savings, Europe has a plumbing problem. Its capital markets are under-developed, while its banking sector is insufficiently sized to handle the growing demands for capital expenditure. To address the investment conundrums, deeper capital markets are needed.

The requirement is enormous: the European Commission has estimated that the green transition requires an additional €620bn each year to 2030, with another €125bn needed for digital transformation. Moreover, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and the prospect of a second Donald Trump presidency in the US, are escalating demands for greater military expenditure.

Yet despite multiple bazookas from the European Central Bank, growth in lending to companies in the region since 2014 has been less than half that of the US. The gap in economic performance between the two has long nagged at Europe’s policymakers. A widening divide makes this angst acute.

“We need to mobilise private savings on an unprecedented scale, and far beyond what the banking system can provide,” former Italian prime minister and ECB president Mario Draghi argued ahead of publication of his upcoming report on enhancing Europe’s competitiveness. 

Despite some progress, there remains a vast gap in venture capital relative to GDP between Europe and the US. European companies have fewer funding options to help them invest and grow.

There is a growing chorus of calls to dust off the unfinished plans for a capital markets union, led by ECB president Christine Lagarde. Recent heavyweight reports by former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta and former French central bank governor Christian Noyer also argue the case.

But the idea of a single market for capital across Europe has been stalled for a decade. Bold ideas often get bogged down.

The recent European elections are likely to make things even more difficult, so perhaps it’s time to change tactics. To clear the system-wide blockages, policy architects should team up with financial plumbers, especially from the private sector.

Revitalising securitisation is the place to start, enabling insurers and pension funds to support Europe’s growth. Securitisation allows banks to transfer assets to investors, in turn freeing up their own lending capacity. This is particularly important as banks provide the majority of credit to European small and mid-sized businesses, which account for almost two-thirds of jobs.

Rules written in response to the financial crisis harshly penalised securitisations and the European market for them has never really recovered. An unintended consequence is that banks have resorted to complex synthetic transfers of risk, which only the largest can undertake, thus holding back regional banks.

Solvency II, the rule book for insurers, makes it economically unappealing to fund a long-term infrastructure project or buy a package of small business loans too, reducing potential returns and limiting available financing.

It’s time to recalibrate securitisation rules to better reflect the true risk profile of assets, keep pace with evolving capital markets and encourage investment for European growth. Reforms to Solvency II rules are also essential, along with system-wide tweaks to the banking framework and financial market standards.

The venture capital ecosystem must be nurtured, private credit harnessed and the cumbersome sustainability rules for funds recalibrated.

Above all, Europe needs a more flexible and diversified financial market. If capital markets union plans fail to deliver it may result in lower growth. It’s time to call in the plumbers.

[Derby]

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/big-banks-taking-hits-commercial-120000976.html

The Wall Street Journal
Big Banks Are Taking Hits From Commercial Real Estate

Commercial real estate is often talked about as a problem for smaller banks, but big banks are emerging with the most evident scars so far.

That isn’t how the stock market has behaved. Declining values for offices, apartment complexes or other commercial properties have been a factor weighing on the shares of all banks, but particularly smaller ones. The KBW Regional Banking Index is down around 12% this year, while the KBW (^BKX) Nasdaq Bank Index of larger lenders is up nearly 9%.

Regional, community and smaller banks do represent more than a quarter of commercial real estate and multifamily property debt in the U.S., which is more than twice the share for the top 25 biggest banks, according to a recent Moody’s analysis. Not all so-called CRE loans are created equal, though.



Such things as credit-card loans are pretty standardized, but real estate is fuzzier. Is it a new-construction loan or one on an existing building? Is the borrower the property’s main tenant or is it looking to lease the building out? Is it an office tower, a medical facility, a strip mall or a warehouse? Is it a big loan split between banks, or a smaller one held by one bank? And so on.

So it is important to drill down into performance, not just exposure. Based on available data for the banking system, figures recently compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence from regulatory filings for the first quarter are showing a significant disparity in the percentage of loans marked as either delinquent or nonaccrual, which the bank doesn’t expect to pay off in full at maturity.

The trouble is at big banks and their loans to properties that are intended to be leased to third parties. For CRE loans involving properties that aren’t owner-occupied and are held by banks with over $100 billion in assets, more than 4.4% were delinquent or in nonaccrual status in the first quarter. That was up over 0.3 percentage point from the prior quarter. Meanwhile, in each of the size categories of banks below $100 billion in assets, as well as for those bigger banks’ owner-occupied loans, the rate was below 1% in the first quarter.

The difference can come down to higher interest rates. Owner-occupied CRE loans tend to perform as long as the business doing the borrowing itself is healthy and able to make payments, according to Nathan Stovall, director of financial-institutions research at S&P Global Market Intelligence. Properties for lease, though, are far more sensitive to the level of interest rates. If the property’s income—affected either by the occupancy rate, or what the latest rents are—isn’t keeping up with what it now costs to pay the loan, or to refinance a loan coming due, then the loan can be problematic.


San Francisco has been contending with rising office-vacancy rates. - Jason Henry/Bloomberg News

The split might also reflect differences in geography, such as cities versus suburbs, though it isn’t only big banks that lend into downtowns. Larger banks might also face more- immediate maturities in key categories. According to a March analysis from MSCI Real Assets, national banks held 29% of the value of the tracked office debt that matured last year and have 20% of the debt due this year. The regional and local banks’ share was 16% last year and 13% this year.

CRE loans are often structured with balloon repayments of principal at the end of their terms. Banks with closer payoff dates should be taking a harder look at the likelihood of those loans’ repaying.

Many larger banks have already taken sizable provisions in anticipation of office-loan losses. The median first-quarter reserve ratio for office loans at banks tracked by Morgan Stanley analysts that disclosed this ratio was 8%. That is well above the sub-2% loss allowance ratio across all insured banks and all loan categories, according to Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. data.

The net charge-off rate at $100 billion-plus asset banks for non-owner-occupied CRE lending exceeded 1.1% in the first quarter, which was about a percentage point or more above smaller categories of banks, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence’s figures—though the rate was down more than a quarter point from the previous quarter.

To be sure, today’s problems are also yesterday’s risks, so the question is where the balance of risk might live now. If a property downturn were to more sharply affect smaller or suburban properties, or to more widely hit businesses, then it might be that the most unpleasant surprises are with the smaller or regional banks that hold such loans.

On the flip side, a higher-for-longer interest-rates scenario with a steady economy could favor those smaller banks. In that case, there might be some value in those stocks lurking behind the headline worries.

[Derby]

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/biden-would-deliver-growth-trump-would-cause-inflation-and-higher-inequality-by-joseph-e-stiglitz-2024-07

There’s No Debating Who Would Be Better for the US Economy Joseph E. Stiglitz

After Donald Trump cut taxes for the rich, introduced new inflationary pressures, and mismanaged the COVID-19 pandemic, Joe Biden made the best of a bad situation and ultimately put the US economy on a much stronger footing. If American voters care about their economic future, the choice this November should be obvious.

NEW YORK – Something has been missing from the flood of commentary following the debate between US President Joe Biden and Donald Trump. While voters’ judgments about a candidate’s personality and personal strengths are important, everyone should remember the famous dictum: “It’s the economy, stupid.” In the firehose of outright lies that Trump spewed throughout the debate, the most dangerous falsehoods concerned his and Biden’s respective economic-policy records.

Assessing a president’s management of the economy is always a tricky business, because many developments will have been set in motion by one’s predecessors. Barack Obama had to deal with a deep recession because previous administrations had pursued financial deregulation and failed to head off the crisis that erupted in the fall of 2008. Then, with congressional Republicans tying the Obama administration’s hands and calling for belt tightening, the country was deprived of the kinds of fiscal policies that might have brought the economy out of the Great Recession faster. By the time the economy was finally on the mend, Obama was on his way out, and Trump was on his way in.

Trump did not hesitate to claim credit for the growth that ensued. But while he and congressional Republicans slashed taxes for corporations and billionaires, the promised surge of investment never materialized. Instead, there was a wave of stock buybacks, which are on track to exceed $1 trillion next year.

Although Trump cannot be blamed for COVID-19, he certainly bears responsibility for an inadequate response that left the United States with a death toll far above that of other advanced economies. While the virus disproportionately claimed the lives of the elderly, it also cut into the workforce, and those losses contributed to the work shortages and inflation that Biden inherited.

Biden’s own economic record has been impressive. Immediately after taking office, he secured passage of the American Rescue Plan, which made the country’s recovery from the pandemic stronger than that of any other advanced country. Then came the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which provided funding to start repairing crucial elements of the US economy after a half-century of neglect.

The next year, Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which launched a new era of industrial policy that will ensure the economy’s future resilience and competitiveness (a sharp break from the fragility that marked the preceding neoliberal era). And with the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the US finally joined the international community in fighting climate change and investing in the technologies of the future.

In addition to providing economic insurance against the possibility of a stubborn and ever-evolving virus, the American Rescue Plan nearly halved the rate of childhood poverty in the space of a year. But it also was blamed (including by some Democrats) for the subsequent inflation.

This charge simply does not hold water. There was no excessive aggregate demand from the American Rescue Plan, at least not of a magnitude that could account for the level of inflation. Most of the blame lay with pandemic- and war-induced supply-side interruptions and shifts in demand. Insofar as Biden could combat these, he did so: he tapped the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to address oil shortages and worked to relieve bottlenecks at US ports.

Even more relevant to this election is what lies in the future. Careful economic modeling has shown that Trump’s proposals would cause higher inflation – in spite of lower growth – and greater inequality.

For starters, Trump would raise tariffs, and the costs would mostly be passed on to US consumers. Trump assumes, contrary to basic economics, that China would simply lower its prices to offset the tariffs. But if it did that, no American jobs would be saved (consistency has never been one of Trump’s strengths).

Moreover, Trump would curtail immigration, which would make the labor market tighter and increase the risk of labor shortages in some sectors. And he would increase the deficit, the effects of which might induce a worried US Federal Reserve to raise interest rates, thereby decreasing investment in housing, raising rents and housing costs (a major source of today’s inflation) even further. In addition to slowing growth by dampening investment, higher interest rates would also push up the exchange rate, making US exports less competitive. Moreover, US exports would suffer from higher-cost inputs owing to higher tariffs, and the retaliation they would provoke.

We already know that the 2017 corporate tax cuts did not stimulate much investment, and that most of the benefits went to the very rich and to foreigners (who own large shares of US corporations). The additional tax cuts that Trump is promising aren’t likely to do any better, but they will almost certainly increase deficits and inequality.

Of course, there is considerable complexity in modeling these effects. It is unclear how fast or forcefully the Fed would respond to tariff-induced inflation, but its economists obviously would see the problem coming. Would they be tempted to nip it in the bud by hiking interest rates early? Would Trump then violate institutional norms by trying to fire the Fed chair? How would the markets (here and abroad) respond to this new era of uncertainty and chaos?

The longer-run prognosis is clearer – and worse. America owes much of its economic success in recent years to its technological prowess, which rests on solid scientific foundations. Yet Trump would continue attacking our universities and demanding massive cutbacks in research and development expenditures. The only reason these cuts weren’t made during his previous term is that he did not have his party completely in tow. Now, he does.

Similarly, even though the US population is aging, Trump would allow the workforce to shrink by curtailing immigration. And though economists have emphasized the importance of the rule of law for economic growth, Trump, a convicted felon, is not exactly known for his adherence to it.
Thus, on the question of who would be better for the economy – Trump or Biden (or any Democrat who might replace him, should he drop out) – there is simply no debate.