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Daily UK and Europe Highlights - 23 July 2009
News highlights from UK and Europe. Data cupboard is full today with
various retail sales, current account and confidence numbers coming out
of the Eurozone area. Watch out for British mortgage approvals and retail sales data out today as well !
- Must read: Credit Suisse Net Rises 29% as Revenue From Trading Stocks, Bonds Doubles (Bloomberg)
- British education spending to be cut by £100 million (Telegraph)
- Ofwat regular proposes 4% cut in household water bills in U.K. by 2015 (Telegraph)
- U.K. to spend $1.8 billion electrifying two railway lines to cut emissions (Bloomberg)
- Drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline predicts swine flu gold rush (Guardian)
- Anthony Blunt: confessions of an MI5 traitor (Telegraph)
- Britain’s 'gunboat' diplomacy still angers Iceland (Telegraph)
- Berlusconi laughs off sex scandal saying "I'm no saint" [RS: this guy has no shame] (Telegraph)
- National Express reveals second takeover approach as FirstGroup drops bid (Telegraph)
- Must read: Russian Banking Executives Urge Interest-rate Cuts of 5 Percentage Points (Bloomberg)
- Russia's RTS stock index may rally 23% more this year, Analysts say (Bloomberg)
- Europe stocks poised for biggest second-half gain since '06, Analysts say (Bloomberg)
- Telenor lowers sales guidance after second-quarter net income declines 61% (Bloomberg)
- Bulgaria's new cabinet given one year by EU to stamp out crime, corruption [RS: good luck] (Bloomberg)
- Porsche chief Wiedeking to leave, paving way for merger with Volkswagen (Bloomberg)
- Must read: Hungary plans to focus on Forint debt in near term, Finance Minister says (Bloomberg)
- ABB profit beats analyst estimates; Hogan captures $500 million in savings [RS: just cost cuts here] (Bloomberg)
- Stocks advance in Europe, Asia; MSCI World posts longest rally since 2003 (Bloomberg)
- Must read: Accountants' group calls for single set of international bookkeeping rules (Bloomberg)
- Technip profit rises 13% on successful project completion (Bloomberg)
- German companies consider vaccinating staff against swine flu, Bild-Zeitung reported (Bloomberg)
- British conservatives target Brown's votes for Parliament seat in Norwich (Telegraph)
- Risanamento may be revived, avoid liquidation of assets, Il Sole reports (Bloomberg)
- ECB says Eurosystem covered bond purchase programme totals EUR 2.554bln
- ECB says EUR 152mln borrowed using the overnight loan facility, EUR 178.631bln deposited
- Ericsson CEO says more confident market truly hit bottom in Q1
- Deutsche Post profit plunges 71% in second quarter
- Bank of England says size of reserves offered GBP 29.54bln
Economic Calendar:
- Eurozone Current Account (seasonal and non-seasonal adjusted)
- Italian Retail Sales m/m
- British Retail Sales m/m
- BBA Mortgage Approvals
- Belgium NBB Business Climate
- Polish Unemployment
- Russian Weekly International Reserves
- Spanish Producer Prices
- French Business Confidence Indicator
- Denmark Consumer Confidence
- Sweden June Jobless Rate
Interesting articles from other Blogs this morning:
- Islamic finance principles to restore policy effectiveness (FT Mavercon)
- The "high frequency trading scam is way overblown." (Business Insider)
- Iron ore spot prices forge path to $100 (FT Alphaville)
- Executive pension costs revealed (FT Alphaville)
- S&P flip-flop sows confusion in the CMBS market (FT Alphaville)
- US banks warn on commercial property (FT Alphaville)
- Mario Draghi States The Obvious - musing about the Italian economy (Fistful of Euros)
Make sure you to watch the RAN Squawk 'EU Morning Briefing' video and visit the RAN Squawk News page.
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speaking of foreigners
happy veiwing!
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/30717.html
nice briefing raymond.nice to see links to other blogs too.
good categorization of must reads and economic data etc.
Thank u for the articles!
Here is a little 2-slammed-mega-coffees morning rant on another blog, on yet another "this market is poised to go higher" ad nauseum articles. The problem as I see it, there are these little tight blog communities which comprise some teeny-tiny %, and the rest of the sheeple are pretty much idiots, easily distracted by shiny objects, sports, and metamorphosing-over-time pedophiles. Can there ignorance and apathy be overcome, to affect change- I kind of doubt it.
This market still is best described as picking up dimes in front of a steamroller. Go ahead, but there is not one single piece of real economic data that supports higher stock prices. Sure, during earnings season, the shill headlines all scream, i.e. "Caterpillar beats by blah blah". Ah, but the key ratio is and will always be P/E, as in price/earnings, NOT price/expectations. But apparently the sheeple are just happy to beat expectations, some arbitraty bull-shit number made up completely as a whim. and "beating" said number is sufficient for pump city.
I am daily appalled at the pure ignorance of our populous, what we have become, not on just this issue but in general. We have money deducted form our paychecks( withholding, just numbers on a piece of paper- imagine if we had to deduct cash money every April 15, see it physically, and then hand it to the tax man. We just might pay more attention to the assholes we give it to, and how its spent), and we pay it no mind. We have money deducted from our paychecks ( just numbers on a piece of paper- but its tax-free, yay!- well, so far ), and its sent to somebody we guess, some really smart fund manager, to buy some really good shit we guess. Hey, "over time", that there money is working for us. Risk, you say? Huh, what the deauce, when did that happen? Point being, we send out good money to "invest" in a basket of companies we know absolutely nothing about. Dirty little secret here- neither do 90% of the fund managers.
Little wonder that every quarter these shill headlines about beating expectations-EXPECTATIONS folks- are met with such hurrahs and wonderment. It's insane when you think about it, but, alas alack, we the sheeple don't have clue one, its just too much bother to understand even the most fundamental aspects of the companies we own. Of course, we don't even know that do we? We don't even really keep track of the mutual funds we own, let alone what is in them.
And we wonder why Goldman et al plays us like suckers? Almost impossible not to. Shooting fish in a barrel is one thng, it would be like trying to avoid millions of sheep in the road driving at night
Joe Weisenthal went after Themis in his commentary. In conclusion Weisnethal stated:
“Look, as we said above, we don't doubt that traders are finding clever ways to game the market. There have always been ways to game the market, and institutional, big-block traders pay top-dollar to Russian mathematicians, who help them chop up their trades in such a way the orders an be executed smoothly, without giving up too much of a vig to the sharks on the other end. Some version of the sharks and whales game will always be around and this may be the latest version of it. The problem will go away, we suspect, on its own -- the real danger is if politicians and regulators get a hold of this idea, limit comptuer trading and impose some kind of forced limitation/latency , and cement in place a less-liquid environment that really does serve as an ongoing investor tax.”
I disagree Joe. This game is more dangerous than any other played before. If it does “go away,” then it will have only morphed into something even more dangerous - if we even manage to get to that point. The big players like GS have a cattle prod up the arse of the Fed and the US Gov’t, ready to pull the trigger if needed and inflict max pain on their little puppets. The game of “liquidity” is really a game of exponential debt inflation between the Street and Washington. To say “the problem will go away, we suspect, on its own” may actually show Weisnethal either lacks the understanding of how this game will end very badly or how he conveniently ignores it. In a contradiction to himself, at least he acknowledged it as a “problem” which is a gross understatement that will, in itself, have its day of reckoning.
I suspect Mr. Weisenthal has written an article based on raw input he has been given. For every weight of truth, there is a counterweight of BS and thus the system makes sure the ignoramus is not enlightened.
Bravo. This article looked muuuuuuuuuuuuuch better in Google Reader. Overall RSS appearance was an issue of mine and I wasn't surfing to ZH as often. Hopefully all the new articles appear the same way in future. The better the RSS content, the more likely I will click through, and the more ad revenue you will get from my activity.
And you have got to be kidding me with the latest capcha... 18 * -11 = -198. You really are doing negative numbers with a narrative equation and no proper operators?
Excellent the idea of selecting some articles from other blogs as part of the daily highlights.
If you can compile a list of European worthy blogs to share it will be greatly appreciated they are very very scarce.
Thanks !
Agreed, Fistful of Euros is good with their Eastern Europe analysis. The briefings will get better with time and have more thoughtful content from across the blogosphere.
As it is important to originate content, it is just as important to highlight upon the analysis of others.
Let me know if there is other content categories (like pre-Market updates, etc) that you would like to see in the morning briefs and I will take it into consideration.
Watch this space.
There is a hughe amount of blogs in europe. The problem for you Americans is that they are always in the countries language. Maybe is you use yahoo babelfish to tranlate the pages.
A good dutch blog is www.beursduivel.be
I am not American, I am Italian.
If you can provide a list of good blogs in Italian, English or Spanish that will be very much welcome.